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

[V Subrahmanian]

On Wed, Dec 26, 2018 at 7:58 PM Jaldhar H. Vyas via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> 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.
>

There is also the knowledge among Advaitins that Shankara has taken up
various versions of Advaita and critiqued them. At one place he says 'The
identity of Jiva and Brahman is the undisputed acceptance of the followers
of Upanishads.'  Going by this we can conclude that the shades of Advaita
do have variations across them in various aspects.

regards
subbu

>
> How so?  Differences in presentation sure, but in basic doctrine I don't
> see it.
>
> --
> Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
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