[Advaita-l] Fwd: Panchapadika and Prapanchasara-vivaranam of Bhagavan Padmapadacharya

[Bhaskar YR]

Humble sAshtAnga praNAms Sri Jaldhar Vyas prabhuji
Hare Krishna

Kindly allow me to share my thoughts here.  With regard to authorship issues Prof. SKR's view points are there in his work shankara and adhyAsa bhAshya.   


Ah but he hasn't rejected Tantrik approach.   भूतानि
विनायकमातृगणचतुर्भगिन्यादीनि यान्ति भूतेज्याः भूतानां पूजकाः ।            isnot a
reference to random tAntrik deities but a specific pantheon of a specific tAntrik tradition namely the vAmashrota; so-called because it was spoken from the leftward facing head of Bhagavan Sadashiva.

>  As you remember we have discussed this bhAshya earlier also in detail.  If I remember right geeta commentary based on shankara bhAshya by somany Acharya-s like madhusUdana in gUdArtha Deepika, shivananda, chinmayananda, gaMbhirananda, shankaraananda (geeta tAtparya bOdhini), DVG Kannada commentary, Sri SSS Kannada explanation do not talk about these references and interestingly Prof. SKR who has written extensively on Tibetan philosophy and Sri vidyA has not justified this bhAshya vAkya from this angle.  Anyway thanks for giving additional output with regard to this.  

An important tantra of this sampradaya is the viNAshikhA which mainly focuses on Tumburu.  According to amarakosha following purANas, Tumburu is a divne Gandharva and a musician who is the rival of nArada but here he is a form of Bhairava.  He is the vinAyaka mentioned by Acharya not gaNesha though it seems the two were sometimes confused.  In his maNDala he is surrounded on four sides by His sisters jayA, vijayA, ajitA and aparAjitA.

>  If possible kindly elaborate prabhuji, tumburu is a form of bhairava, and vinAyaka mentioned in bhAshya is not popular gaNesha but it is tumburu in the form of bhairava.  We have ashta bhairava-s like kAla bhairava, unmatta bhairava, ruru bhairava, krOdha bhairava, saMhAra bhairava etc.  and he and veerabhadra are bhUta gaNa-s and shivAmsha saMbhuta-s but I have not come across the relationship with tumburu and vinAyaka in any of the puranic allegories.  

They are accompanied by hosts of mAtR^is but these are different from the sapta or ShodaShamAtRikAs we worship in pUjas.

>  Kindly elaborate this also prabhuji. How the sapta mAtrukA-s in bhAshya different from devi's popular sapta mAtruka svarUpa i.e. brAhmi, mAheshwari, kaumAri, vaishNavi, vArAhi, indraaNi, chAmunda.  What are other sapta mAtruka-s which bhAshyakAra had in his mind when saying it is tAmasi pUja.  

Two exmples of how popular this sect once was are one, an inscription from outside India altogether.  In Cambodia (where Buddhism supplanted Hinduism only relatively recently) a king called Jayavarman invited a Brahmana from Java called Hiranyadamana to perform his Rajabhisheka and Hiranyadamana taught the Rajapurohita Shivakaivalya the shirashchheda, sammohana, nayottara,and viNAshikhA which are the four principle tantras of the vAmaShrota.  Significantly, this inscription dates this event to
802 AD which is within the generally accepted dates for the life of Shankaracharya.  Secondly in the Buddhist ma~njushrImUlakalpa, it is said that Tumburu is a Boddhisattva who meditates on Mt. Kailasha accompanied by His four sisters.  This work is still studied in Tibet and exists in Tibetan and Chinese translations along with the original Sanskrit.

>  Though it is very valid and logical justification, kindly pardon me prabhuji I failed to reconcile this with that of vinAyaka, mAtrugaNa, chaturbhagini in bhAshya vAkya.  For that I think first we have to establish that tumburu=bhairava=vinAyaka without any ambiguity.    

Thus it is entirely plausable that Shankaracharya was making a specific reference to this sampradaya and the offhand way he mentions it is because he expected His reading audience to be familar with it.

>  Yes, but it is not clear whether shankara while writing this bhAshya had the inscriptions like this in mind or popularly known deities like mAtru gaNa, sapta mAtruka and vinAyaka!! There  could be a possibility that being a sanAtana vaidika dharma follower he might be having the popular pUrANic characters only when writing vinAyaka and sapta mAtrukA-s.  

>  And it has
> not been taken as seriously as PTB in the traditional circle for the 
> vyAkhyAna-s on bhAshya and most of the time ignored.

Which traditional circle and which context?  SmArtas who are shrIvidyA upAsakas do speak highly of it.

>  Prof. observes the widespread belief that these are shankara's was due to a series of 20 volumes entitled The works of shankara (shankara granthAvaLiH) published by vANi vilAs press during the early years of the 20th Century.  And which has been approved by the then pointiff of Shringeri Sri Sacchidaananda shivaabhinava nrusimha bhArati svAminaH.  But we are not told what methods were employed to ascertain the veracity of the claim that all these works were shankara's / bhAshyakAra's.  The claim that all these were works of shankara was not accepted even in the orthodox circles of those days.  The scholarly tradition has all along ignored all these works (like prapanchasaara, trishati bhAshya, Soundarya lahari, yoga sUtra bhAshya etc.) with the exception of his commentaries on the prasthAna traya.  And he further writes : a very simple test is the citation by the long line of authors belonging to the Advaita fold.  None of the earlier authors has ever cared to mention or cite from, any of the minor dissertations and of course from any devotional hymn contained in the vANi vilAs edition of shankara's works.  A possible exception is US which has been quoted by sureshwara, the vArtikakAra in his NS.  That no author of any standing has cared to prepare glosses on the works (contained in volumes 13 to 20) is an additional argument.  Here he takes the prapancha sAra text and observes what I quoted earlier.  


>  And he continues
> to observe that the authorship of the gloss on prapanchasAra by 
> padmapAda is as doubtful as the authorship of the original work.

I'd like to know his reasons but this sounds like circular thinking to me.
I think Natrajji's comparison of the writing style in PS vivAraNa and pa~nchapAdikA shows a good deal of similarity.

>  Sri SSS has something to say on this prabhuji.  Would share it tomorrow after looking at his observation in vedAnta vichArada itihAsa ( a Kannada work).  Prof. SKR like Sri SSS doubts the authorship of paNchapAdika and observes it can not be conclusively proved that it is indeed from the pen of shankara's direct disciple padmapAda.  

In the Shankaradigvijaya Padmapadacharya is depicted as being an expert in mantrashastra.  Even if SDV is unreliable as an accurate historical source it does show that atleast from the time of the author Madhava it was not considered strange that an advaitin could also be a tantrik.  This is not some new idea.

>  But he is of the opinion that since different biographies saying different narrations of shankara's biography it is difficult to take any one particular biography as authentic and reliable.  

Your humble servant 
Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar