[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Caricature of Advaita, Shankaracharya, etc. by the Gaudiya head

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

On Fri, 28 Oct 2022, Kaushik Chevendra wrote:


> They claim to be of the madwa
> sampradaya but hold Jiva as part of Brahman. And the world as non different.
> At the same time the devata taratamya is thrown out of the window. So they
> can't be madwas.


The claim is that Chaitanya's guru Ishvara Puri had a guru called 
Madhavendra Puri (Note that Puri is a name of Dashanami sannyasins.) who 
in turn was the disciple of Lakshmipati Tirth (1420-1487 AD) of Madhva 
sampradaya.  However the reknowned historian of Dvaita Sampradaya late Dr. 
B.N.K Sharma points out there are no records in Udupi of Lakshmipati Tirth 
having a shishya named Madhavendra Puri.

Also the dates do not match up.  Vishvaambhara Mishra (Chaitanyas' 
purvashrama name.  Chaitanya Bharati was his sannyasa name after getting 
diksha from Swami Keshava Bharati an Advaitin.) was educated in the tol 
(pathashala) of the Bengali Naiyayika Vasudeva Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya.

Vasudeva later became an Advaitin and moved to Jagannathapuri where he 
became the court pandit of Gajapati Prataparudra a great patron of 
Sanskrit.  At that time, Prataparudra was in a "cold war" with Krishnadeva 
Raya of Vijayanagara (whose court Pandit was the Madhvite Vyas Tirtha.) 
Instead of weapons the conflict was fought with Sanskrit polemics with 
Vasudeva representing Odisha and Advaita and Vyas Tirth Vijayanagara and 
Dvaita.

Lakshmipati Tirth was a student of Vyas Tirth and Chaitanya was as 
mentioned the student of Vasudeva.  Thus they are roughly of the same 
generation.  But then it is highly unlikely that there were three 
generations from Lakshmipati to Ishvara Puri (who was supposedly an old 
man when he met Chaitanya.)

The supposed lineage from Vyasa Tirtha is first given in Chaitanya 
Charitamrta which was written around the time when, as I mentioned 
previously, the Gaudiyas were being looked down upon by their fellow 
Vaishnavas for lacking sampradaya.


> It seems as though they are off shoots of the vishitadvaita
> sampradaya. They hold golaka above vaikunta unlike all the other vaishnava
> schools.

Here is my opinion on their origin.  In the 13th century AD, Devagiri 
(modern Daulatabad in Maharashtra) was a powerful kingdom in Western India 
and a center of sanskriti. The minister of that realm was Hemadri Acharya 
who is an authoritative figure in dharmashastra for Shuklayajurvedis.  He 
had a protoge called Vopadeva who wrote many works in shastras, notably 
Mugdhabodha which is an alternative system of Vyakarana to Panini. 
Devagiri was ruled by Yadava vamsha and Maharaja Ramachandra of that 
family was very interested in Krishna Bhagavan his illustrious ancestor. 
So Hemadri directed Vopadeva to write Muktaphala which is a compendium of 
shlokas from the Bhagavata and he himself wrote the commentary to it.  He 
also wrote Harililamrta which is a summary of the adhyayas of the 
Bhagavata and Paramhamsapriya which deals with grammatical irregularities 
in the Bhagavata.  Unfortunately, Devagiri was in short time conquered by 
the Muslims and its scholars scattered.  The Mugdabodha became very 
popular in Bengal virtually supplanting Panini.  The Muktaphala was also 
popular; so much so that during 17th century sectarian conflicts in Kashi, 
some claimed that Vopadeva was the actual author of the Bhagavata!  There 
was a 15th century Swami Vishnu Puri from Mithila who was inspired by the 
Muktaphala to write a similar work called Bhaktiratnavali which also 
became popular and spread knowledge of the Bhagavata.  It seems likely to 
me that these Ishvara Puri and Madhavendra Puri were in his lineage not 
some Madhva.  So far all the authors mentioned have been Smartas but if a 
segment of the Bengali sannyasi community already had a prediliction for 
Krishnabhakti due to these influences then at the time when the 
controversy between Dvaita and Advaita reached its apex, some may have 
been moved to defect to the Vaishnava camp.


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