[Advaita-l] A 5th Century AD view of Vedanta (Some Comments)

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Wed, 26 Dec 2018, Venkatraghavan S wrote:

> Namaste,Thanks for posting this. There is a chapter on Prof Hajime
> Nakamura's 'A History of Early Vedanta Philosophy' which elaborately
> discusses this chapter from the mAdhyamaka hRdaya, along with Bhavya's
> autocommentary on the hRdaya,  tarkajvAla.

I'll have to check again to be sure but IIRC Peof. Qvarnstrom does mention 
Prof. Nakamuras earlier work.  Apparently Nakamamura was working from the 
Tibetan translation.  This book is a critical edition corrected on the 
basis of the sanskrit manuscript found in 1936.

> 
> The professor's view is that the school presented is not the vedAnta of
> gauDapAda and Sankara, but contains within it traces of a more ancient
> school of puruShavAdins - the doctrine of puruSha, which is different from
> more developed ideas appearing in advaita siddhAnta. He says "...there are,
> in Bhavya's concept of Purusa, the remnants of a primitive, simple and naive
> idea."
>

The Purusha described here is definitely not the Purusha of Samkhya. But 
yes one could make a case that this is an earlier form of Advaita Vedanta. 
Qvarnstroms footnotes trace parallels from the ideas presented by Bhavya 
back to the upanishads.

> A reading of the translation presented in your other email does show some
> critical differences with advaita.

How so?  Differences in presentation sure, but in basic doctrine I don't 
see it.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>