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

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Vidyasankarji,

You have to realize that there is difference between a lie and a possible mistake. I could have also said that the Sringeri math lied when it gave a guruparamoara with a gap of 700 years, but I refrained from doing that. I find that you are very fond of branding other people as liars, even when they have not lied. 

You may remember that when I was enquiring from you as to who is the person to whom I should send my book so that it reaches his holiness the Shankaracharya of Sringeri math and you advised me to send a couple of copies of the book to you as you yourself were planniing a visit soon to Sringeri and you can do that for me, I promptly sent the copies to you. In page 24 of the book I wrote as follows :

<It is believed that Adi Shankaracharya at first wanted to write on the Lalita Trishati, a Samayachara textand he asked someone to fetch him a copy of that. But that person brought to him a copy of the Bhagavad Gita (obviously the vulgate versionwith 700 verses) and he took that version utself for writing the bhashya thinking that to be the will of God.> 

As regards Karmarkar's views, he said only with some reservation that if the Bhagavadgitabhshya is (at all) by Adi Shankara, then  it  could have been Adi Shankara's first work  and he might have matured by the time he wrote the later bhashyas and thus a difference could have occurred in the his styles used in the Bhagavadgitabhashya and the other bhashyas. 

That is why I was trying to see if Sri Vidysankara (who is considered, rightly or wrongly, by some people as next only to Adi Shankaracharya in scholarship)  could have authored that bhashya. Later on, after reading about the Bhashya of Bhaskara, I wanted to look, from  historical / chronological considerations, if  Abhinava Shankara, (whom the Kanchi Kamakoti math considers to be one of the greatest Shankaracharyas), could have been the author of the Bhagavadgitabhshya.  Instead of lauding my honest efforts you became hostile and critical. 

Regards,
Sunil KB


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On Wed, 1/11/17, 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>
 Cc: "Venkatraghavan S" <agnimile at gmail.com>, "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>, "yahoogroups" <advaitin at yahoogroups.com>, "V Subrahmanian" <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
 Date: Wednesday, January 11, 2017, 11:59 AM
 
 
 
 On Wed, Jan 11, 2017
 at 2:21 AM, Sunil Bhattacharjya <sunil_bhattacharjya at yahoo.com>
 wrote:
 Dear
 Sri Venkataraghavan,
 
 
 
 It seems you do not read all mails. One member of the
 Advaita group wrote that according to the guru-parampara of
 the Kanchi kamakoti math,  Abhinava Shankara who was born
 in Chidambaram, was a pontiff of the Kanchi Kamakoti math. 
 It is thus clear that  Pathak thought the Sringeri to have
 been established by this Abhinava Shankara, because the
 Sringeri math also claims that it was established in 788
 CE.
* -+
+
 I think it is time for me to let this go, but
 only after pointing out that your claim about what Pathak
 thought about Sringeri matha's establishment is an utter
 lie. His paper says nothing of this sort. You have no
 evidence in his paper to make any inference about what he
 must have thought or not have thought. Let me reiterate -
 Pathak is talking about the date of NONE OTHER than Adi
 Sankara, the one who established various maThas, the one who
 learned to recite all the Vedas by the age of 8 and all the
 other SAstras by the age of 12 and wrote his bhAshyas on
 vedAnta by the age of 16, the one who was born in kali year
 nidhi-nAga-ibha-vahni (counting from the traditional
 Aryabhata calculated beginning of kaliyuga).  
 It is extremely appalling, Sunilji, that people
 like you feel the need to disclaim every once in a while
 that you have great respect for the Sringeri lineage and
 then you also turn around and make such bombastic
 conclusions that reveal a great deal of distaste, if not
 outright enmity or hatred for the well documented history of
 that lineage. Sorry, no amount of disclaimers will change
 the real picture of what you think and how. It is obvious
 that for all your purported interest in historical research,
 you would much rather have your fanciful and speculative
 mythologies than an impartial evidence based evaluation of
 historical sources. You are doing a tremendous disservice to
 yourself and to others.
 
 
 
 
 It seems that you have not read Karmarkar's paper in
 full, otherwise you would have seen under what
 condition,according to Karkmarkar, the Bhagavad gita bhashya
 could have been composed by Adi Shankara. I have also
 mentioned in my book why Adi Shankara could not have written
 the bjashya on the Original Bhagavad Gita and that he had to
 write the bhashya on the vulgate version.
 
 
 
 So now you do indeed accept that the gItAbhAshya
 was written by Adi Sankara and that it was on the vulgate
 version of 700 verses. If you do so, then all your arguments
 that the gItAbhAshya may have been written by abhinava
 Sankara or by vidyASankara, that this abhinava Sankara must
 have been the one born in 788 AD, etc etc are utterly
 meaningless. You cannot have it both ways, don't you
 see? 
 Best
 Regards,Vidyasankar