[Advaita-l] Subject: Lalitha Sahsranama - Saundaryalahari

[jaldhar at braincells.com]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2023, sunil bhattacharjya via Advaita-l wrote:

> Dear friends,
>
> Please correct me if I am wrong, I have the impression that most of the
> Advaitin teachers today imagine that Adi Shankara had written the book
> "Saundaryalahari", but they had not been able to say as to how they arrived
> at that conclusion.

The same way they arrive at most conclusions -- through parampara.


> In fact,to my understanding, the first portion consisting of 41 verses of
> that book is called "Anandalahari", was composed by a brahmin king.

There are at least 36 known tikas on Saundarylahari. 35 consider 
Shankaracharya to be the author.  One says the authors father a king (not 
a Brahmana) named Pravarasena is the author.  Well, anyone can come up 
with a crackpot theory it doesn't mean the rest of the world needs to pay 
attention to it.


> The
> second portion of that book, consisting of 59 verses of that book, is
> called  "Saundaryalahari", and that was composed  by the great Navavatara,
> Shri Abhinava Shankaracharya, who was born in the 8th century AD.

There is no such person.  If you are going to make these kind of 
outlandish assertions back them up with evidence.

Now there are some different stories about the origin of Anandalahari. 
One is that as Shiva was expounding the mantrashastra to Shakti on the 
shores of Manasarovara, a fish oveheard them and was instantly 
enlightened.  Known as Minanatha or Matsyendranatha (Machhendranath etc.) 
this figure is revered as a guru in many tantrik/Shaiva sampradayas. When 
Shankaracharya went on a yatra to Kailasa, he met Matsyendranatha and on 
the basis of their conversation composed Anandalahari and later completed 
it with an additional 59 verses of Saundaryalahari.  Other accounts say it 
was Shiva Bhagavan directly who taught him directly.  In any case, it is 
still Shankaracharya who is considered the author.


n Mon, 26 Jun 2023, Bhaskar YR via Advaita-l wrote:

>  For example, late Prof. SKR, who was headed Kalpataru saMshOdhana
> Kendra herein Bengaluru outrightly rejected soundaryalahari's authorship
> by bhAshyakAra citing the reason that it is purely a taNtra based work!!

As we discussed previously, we now have a lot more information on the 
historical status and prevalance of Tantra than was available to Prof. SKR 
or earlier historians.

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