[Advaita-l] Fwd: {भारतीयविद्वत्परिषत्} Ancient Gita Commenataries (in The Indian Historical Quarterly, Volume 10, Issues 1-4)

[Venkatraghavan S]

Namaste Subbuji

On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at 5:57 PM, V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> That's good. But does this observation of the researcher support the idea
> that 'Shankara was criticizing Ramanuja's vishishtadvaita'?
>
The paper does not refer to Ramanuja's commentary directly. However, the
author's view is that "BhAskara's bhAShya would seem to be about seventy or
seventy five years after Sankara".

Since RAmAnuja lived several centuries after the BhAskara that wrote the
Brahma sUtra and gIta bhAshya, the paper's arguments cannot support the
idea that Sankara was criticizing RAmAnuja's vishistAdvaita. In fact, the
paper supports the view that Shankara preceded RAmAnuja's commentary.

However, the author is of the view that "there is, indeed, every
probability that most, if not all of those earlier GIta commentaries were
VaishNavite". So while we can say that Sankara was criticising some
pre-RAmAnujan vaishNava philosophy which shared many elements in common
with vishishTAdvaita (amsha amshi bhAva, etc), we cannot categorically say
that he was criticising vishishTAdvaita itself.


> Also, the paper confirms the idea that the Kashmir recension has been
> there even prior to Shankara and there have been Kashmir-based
> commentaries, some five, before. Sarvatobhadra is also one such
> pre-shankaran, it appears. Further, the number of verses and the several
> different readings identified in that Sarvatobhadra by the editor lets us
> think that even in Shankara's times the Gita-text determination was not a
> settled issue.
>

Subbuji - I am not sure the Sarvatobhadra commentary is before Sankara,
because the author says that older than the sarvatobhadra commentary is the
one by Vasugupta, who he says lived in the first half of the 9th century.
If this is true, then the sarvatobhadra, which must have been after this
timeframe, must have been composed after Sankara's time which was in the
8th century.

Regards,
Venkatraghavan