[Advaita-l] [advaitin] The Bhashyas of Adi Shankara

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Sri Vidyasankar,
The number of the works that are called bhAshya in the mAdhavIya Sankara
vijaya (I sent the references earlier) when read in conjunction with the
DiNDima appear to be 16 in number. The next verse in the Sankara vijaya
says that Adi Sankara wrote innumerable granthAs such as upadeSa sAhasri,
so these are apparently classified in a different category compared to
bhAShyas.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan

On 6 Jan 2017 8:11 a.m., "Vidyasankar Sundaresan via Advaita-l" <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> On Jan 6, 2017 12:06 PM, "Sunil Bhattacharjya" <
> sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Vidyasankarji,
> >
> > Glad to see your clarification that, to your knowledge, nobody knows how
> many bhashyas were written by Adi Shankaracharya.  May be some pf the
> pontiffs of some of the Shankara-maths would know this. I understand that
> the Brihatsabnkaravijaya gives the number as 16.
> >
>
> Dear Sunilji,
>
> I never said that nobody knows how many bhAshyas were written by Sankara
> bhagavatpAda. That is a misunderstanding of what I said. Of course, our
> AcAryas do have a reckoning and as I listed in my earlier mail, they don't
> add to 16. Rather, I asked about your source text that enumerates 16.
>
> Nobody has seen the bRhac-chankara-vijaya. T S Narayana Sastry was
> approximately the only person who claimed to have seen portions of this
> text. I don't remember seeing this number 16 in his book on Sankara.
>
> > As regards the term "Prasthanatrayi", it was not specifically used by Adi
> Shankara and the term came to be used only from the time of Madhusudana
> Saraswati.
> >
> > As regards the Bhagavadgitabhshya, I still wonder why the bhashyakara did
> not use the original Bhaagavadgita of 745 verses. I will use your own
> language. Prof. Larmarkar is not there now to defend his paper. .
> >
>
> Indeed, but I'm not the one speculating about how and why he passed away.
> And at a comparative scholarly level, Raghavan, Ingalls, Mayeda and others
> had already addressed the doubts that he raised.
>
> Best regards,
> Vidyasankar
>
> > REgards,
> > Sunil KB
> >
> >
> > --------------------------------------------
> > On Thu, 1/5/17, Vidyasankar Sundaresan <svidyasankar at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >  Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] [advaitin] The Bhashyas of Adi Shankara
> >  To: "Sunil Bhattacharjya" <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com>, "A
> discussion
> group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> >  Date: Thursday, January 5, 2017, 8:40 PM
> >
> >  Dear
> >  Sunilji,
> >  To begin
> >  with, please let us know your source for the statement that
> >  Sankara bhagavatpAda wrote 16 bhAshyas. I am not aware of
> >  such a specific number given in any of the Sankaravijaya
> >  texts or in any of the sub-commentaries on his works. To my
> >  knowledge, it is not as if such a number is given in
> >  pancapAdikA or bhAmatI or naishkarmyasiddhi or
> >  sureSvarAcArya's vArttikas or in later texts like
> >  ratnaprabhA or kalpataru, parimala etc. It is not even
> >  mentioned in Sankaravijaya texts like mAdhavIya,
> >  anantAnandagirIya, vyAsAcalIya etc.Do you know what is the
> >  original source for giving the number 16? If you have that
> >  information, please share it with the list. We hear a lot of
> >  different things in our lives, but we cannot live our lives
> >  believing every single thing we hear.
> >  It might well be that no one has
> >  seriously bothered to refute this number 16 so far, simply
> >  because no one had actually given such a detail with any
> >  great seriousness. Your bringing it up at this juncture is
> >  my first introduction to this idea. Unless a proposition is
> >  made with the force of either logical pramANa or a
> >  traditional sampradAya behind it, nobody bothers to put
> >  forth any alternative proposition(s) on the subject. As
> >  I've mentioned before, proofs by assertion and
> >  repetition don't stand up to scrutiny and we have to be
> >  careful in evaluating various sources of information and
> >  drawing conclusions from them.
> >  If you go back to the comprehensive
> >  publication of the complete works of Sankara (as
> >  traditionally attributed) published from the Vani Vilas
> >  Press, Srirangam, with the blessings and approval of the
> >  then Sringeri Jagadguru Acharya, you will find the
> >  following, in addition to the bhAshyas on the prasthAna
> >  traya. These are the bhAshya-s on vishNu sahasranAma,
> >  sanatsujAtIya, adhyAtma paTala,
> >  lalitAtriSatI, hastAmalakIya-stotra and
> >  nRsimhapUrvatApanIyopanishat. Philological / Indological /
> >  academic research scholars raise doubts on the authorship of
> >  these six texts. No matter how you view the pada and vAkya
> >  bhAshyas on kenopanishat, you will see that the total number
> >  of bhAshyas does not add up to 16. If you simply accept the
> >  yardstick of the century old Vani Vilas Press edition, no
> >  questions asked, you are already at the number 19. If you
> >  discount all the texts other than bhAshyas on the prasthAna
> >  traya, you are at the number 13.
> >  Please note that a bhAshya on the
> >  SvetASvataropanishat and the vivaraNa on the
> >  yogasUtrabhAshya are not included in this and other earliest
> >  printed publications, but others belonging broadly within
> >  the Sankaran tradition may think that these are also genuine
> >  works, whereas academic critical scholars would dispute
> >  that.
> >  As you can see,
> >  there is no good way to substantiate a proposition that Adi
> >  Sankara wrote 16 bhAshyas. It really makes me wonder where
> >  you heard that statement making such an enumeration. That
> >  said, I am glad that you are now coming around to accepting
> >  the SAnkara bhAshya on the bhagavadgItA as being of genuine
> >  authorship!
> >  Best
> >  regards,Vidyasankar
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