[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Dear Sunilji,

I have engaged in discussions with you long enough to work out how your
doubts arise and when the very same doubts become conclusions.

In my very first response to you on this thread, I had drawn your attention
to the works of Dr Kunjunni Raja, Dr V Raghavan, Prof Sengaku Mayeda and
others. In particular, I will reiterate that you should familiarize
yourself with Mayeda's in-depth and comprehensive analysis of the
authorship issue. Questions about style and substance have been answered
more than satisfactorily in his articles. Prof Karmarkar's stance about the
authorship of gItAbhAshya has to be ultimately set aside. Of course, that
will prove to be uncomfortable for your theses about the gItA of 745 verses
and about the dates of Sankara and the maThas.

As for SrI viyASankara, please note that all the old major SakhA maThas of
Sringeri have the term vidyASankara pAdapadmArAdhaka in their titles. There
is no rule that every notable guru in maTha history should have written
commentaries. And there is no rule that a notable author should have
presided over a maTha.

It is very easy to ask questions. It requires a lot of patience to get to
the answers. In the process, you have to keep an open mind and be ready to
give up assumptions and preconceptions whenever necessary.

I'll stop here. I have no desire to dig back into the claimed vs actually
documented histories of various institutions. I have already said much
about them in the past and don't see any need to repeat myself.

With happy 2017 wishes,
Vidyasankar
On Jan 2, 2017 12:46 AM, "Sunil Bhattacharjya" <
sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Dear Vidyashankarji,
>
> I think you have not known that my doubts about the authorship of the
> Bhagavadgitabhashya by Adi Shankara, arose only after I came to know about
> Prof. Karmarkar's analysis. It looks as if due to prejudice many have not
> cared to read the paper of Karmarkar. So there is no case of force-fitting,
> and it was only the open way of examining new information.
>
> Good that now I find that the general opinion is that Sri Vidyashankar had
> not written any text. But there must be some reason why both the Kudali
> Sringeri and the Sringeri mathas have the grand Vidyashankar temples in
> their premises, but similar honour to the other post-AdiShankara pontiffs
> are miising.
>
> Regarding Nava Shankara or Abhinava Shankara, it was Shri Pathak who got
> the three page document on that according to which this Nava Shankara was
> born in 788 CE. Shri Pathak published a paper on that. It is interesting to
> see that the Sringeri matha also claimed the date of their first
> mathadhipati from that time. This probably gave an impression to some
> scholars like Udaivir Shastri that the Sringeri math was established by
> this Abhinava Shankara. Abhinava Shankara, for your kind information is one
> of the pontiffs of the Kanchi Kamakoti matha.
>
> As regards Shri Niranjan Saha's paper I wrote back to him in private as he
> asked for a review of his paper. I am yet to hear from Shri Saha.
>
> I don't condemn the mathas other than the Sringeri matha, and I also look
> with an open mind at what others are saying, even if they differ from the
> opinion of the Sringeri, for which I have great respect. I wish I belonged
> to the inner circle of the Shringeri matha, so that I could have helped the
> matha to undo the wrongs the historians had done to that matha.
>
> Regards,
> Sunil KB
>
> --------------------------------------------
> On Sun, 1/1/17, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara
>  To: "Sunil Bhattacharjya" <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com>
>  Cc: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-
> vedanta.org>, "Venkatraghavan S" <agnimile at gmail.com>
>  Date: Sunday, January 1, 2017, 9:54 AM
>
>  Dear
>  Sunilji,
>  In general, if you want to answer questions of
>  textual and historical import, you have to have a more solid
>  basis first to ask questions, not just some doubts and
>  hunches. Secondly, you should try not to force fit data to
>  preconceived conclusions.
>  It looks like you are determined, somehow or
>  the other, to come up with a different author for the
>  gItAbhAshya than Adi Sankara. So, in your estimation, it
>  must be anybody else, either an entirely mythical and
>  non-historical abhinava Sankara or the historical
>  vidyASankara who has traditionally not been known to have
>  written any texts at all.
>  Our list member, Niranjan Saha, has already
>  shared with you, by private email, a very recent paper
>  surveying the academic scholarly output regarding the
>  authorship of the gItAbhAshya. Please read it with some
>  care.
>  I don't understand why you would throw out
>  both the tradition that says that this bhAshya is by Adi
>  Sankara and also the bulk of the modern scholarship that
>  concludes that this traditional attribution is right.
>  Instead, you are basing your argument upon a solitary paper
>  that is now quite outdated, along with a highly speculative
>  attempt at reconstructing history. The entire exercise is
>  very strange indeed!
>  Best regards,
>
>  Vidyasankar
>  On Jan 1, 2017 2:29 AM,
>  "Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
>  wrote:
>  Namaste
>  Venkataraghavanji,
>
>
>
>  Thank you for your mail. may I request you kindly to send me
>  a photocopy of  T.K. Gopalaswamy Aiyengar's paper
>  titled "BhAskara on the
>
>  Gita" presented at the GIta SamIkshA conference held in
>  Tirupati on March, 1970.
>
>
>
>  Would you think that Abhinava Shankara, another very famous
>  avatara of Adi Shankaracharya, could have written the
>  Bhagavadgita bhashya, if and when all evidences confirm
>  that  a fresh bhashya on the Bhagavadhita was needed to be
>  written by Sri Vidyashankara to refute  Sri
>  Ramabujacharya's Bhagavadgitabjashya, as one advaitic
>  bhashya was already therein Sri ramanujacharya's time.
>  This will be satisfy the objection that language style of
>  the Bhagavadgitabhshya was different for Adi Shankara's
>  other bhashyas.
>
>
>
>  Tthe Bhagavadgitabhashya does not have 745 verses, even
>  though the Gita press edition of the Mahabharata clearly
>  shows that the Bhagavad Gita had 745 verses. One possibility
>  is that Sri Vidyashankara had just to refute only the
>  version with 700 verses on which Sri Ramanujacharya wrote
>  his bhashya.  But if any one before Sri Ramanujacharya
>  wrote the advaitic bhashya on the Bhagavadgita, then the
>  question as to why the 45 verses were omitted still
>  stands,
>
>
>
>  Regards,
>
>  Sunil KB
>
>
>
>  ------------------------------ --------------
>
>  On Sat, 12/31/16, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-
>  vedanta.org> wrote:
>
>
>
>   Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri
>  Vidyashankara
>
>   To: "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta"
>  <advaita-l at lists.advaita-
>  vedanta.org>
>
>   Date: Saturday, December 31, 2016, 10:06 AM
>
>
>
>   Namaste,
>
>   One thing we can use to determine objectively
>
>   if Shankara bhagavatpAda
>
>   wrote the gIta
>
>   bhAshya, or if it was a later advaitin in his
>  tradition,
>
>   is
>
>   to see if there is any evidence from
>
>   other commentators that are
>
>   chronologically
>
>   proximate to him.
>
>
>
>   It is
>
>   widely accepted that BhAskara, a bhedAbhedavadin, who
>  is
>
>   said to have
>
>   lived around c. 800 AD
>
>   ("BhAskara the VedAntin", Daniel Ingalls), is
>  a
>
>   close contemporary of Shankaracharya. BhAskara
>
>   quotes Shankara's brahma
>
>   sUtra bhAshya
>
>   quite extensively in his own bhAshya to this prasthAna.
>
>   BhAskara, in turn, is quoted by VAcaspati
>
>   Mishra in BhAmati. Therefore, he
>
>   must have
>
>   lived between Shankara's and VAcaspati's
>
>   lifetimes.
>
>
>
>   Now turning to
>
>   the question if there are any references to
>  Shankara's
>
>   gIta
>
>   bhAshya in any of BhAskara's works.
>
>   Unfortunately, not too many surviving
>
>   works
>
>   of BhAskara are available to us. Thankfully, there are
>  some
>
>   fragments
>
>   available from his gIta bhAshya (9
>
>   chapters of his gIta bhAshya are
>
>   published
>
>   by the Benares Sanskrit University, edited by Dr.
>
>   Subhadropadhyaya, 1964).
>
>
>
>   In the few fragments of the BhAskara gIta
>
>   bhAshya available today, there is
>
>   one
>
>   interesting comment he makes when commenting on sloka
>
>   2.21:
>
>   वेदाविनाशिनं
>
>   नित्यं य
>  एनमजमव्ययम्
>
>   ।
>
>   कथं स पुरुषः
>
>   पार्थ कं घातयति
>  हन्ति
>
>   कम् ॥ २१ ॥
>
>
>
>   These are Shankara's words in his
>
>   commentary to the bhAshya:
>  हेत्वर्थस्य
>
>   च
>
>   अविक्रियत्वस्य
>
>   तुल्यत्वात् *विदुषः
>
>   सर्वकर्मप्रतिषेध एव
>
>   प्रकारणार्थः
>
>   अभिप्रेतो भगवता*
>
>   ।
>
>
>
>   Turning to BhAskara, he
>
>   quotes Shankara in the bhAshya to the same verse:
>
>   अत्र क्लेशभीरव:
>
>   केचित् स्वमतं
>
>   भगवत्यारोप्य
>
>   वर्णयन्ति *विदुष:
>
>   सर्वकर्मप्रतिषेध
>
>   एव
>
>   प्रकरणार्थोSभिप्रेतो
>
>   भगवता* इति.
>
>
>
>   In commenting on this verse, BhAskara
>
>   criticises Shankara's bhAshya by
>
>   saying
>
>   that Shankaracharya is simply attributing his own views
>  onto
>
>   Lord
>
>   Krishna when he says "in this
>
>   context, Krishna's view is that for the wise
>
>   person total renunciation of karma is
>
>   prescribed".
>
>
>
>   Its quite
>
>   clear here that BhAskara is quoting Shankara's gIta
>
>   bhAshya
>
>   verbatim. Given that BhAskara also
>
>   quotes Shankara in his Brahma sUtra
>
>   bhAshya,
>
>   we can conclude that the Shankara that wrote the gIta
>
>   bhAshya must
>
>   have lived at the same time as
>
>   the Shankara that wrote the brahma sUtra
>
>   bhAshya. A reasonable simplification to make is
>
>   that it is indeed the same
>
>   person.
>
>
>
>   (The above references to
>
>   BhAskara's bhAshya and his quotation of
>
>   Shankara's
>
>   bhAshya are from T.K.
>
>   Gopalaswamy Aiyengar's paper titled "BhAskara
>  on
>
>   the
>
>   Gita" presented at the GIta
>
>   SamIkshA conference held in Tirupati on March
>
>   1970. The proceedings of the conference have
>
>   been published by Sri
>
>   Venkateswara
>
>   University, Tirupati. It is available in electronic
>  form
>
>   at
>
>   archive.org)
>
>
>
>   Regards,
>
>   Venkatraghavan
>
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