[Advaita-l] Number of Bhashyas written by Adi Shankara

[sunil bhattacharjya]

Dear friends,.

I made the statement that  Adi Shankaracharya did not write the bhashya on
the Bhagavad Gita, as Sri Gaudapadacharya told him not to write that. In
fact, Gaudapadacharya asked Adi Shankaracharya to write a bhashya on the
Lalita Trishati, instead of writing a bhashya on the Bhagavad Gita. Some
advaitins, who had no clue as to how many bhashyas were written by Adi
Shankara, raised an unnecessary hue and cry, as they believed that Adi
Shankara must have written a bhashya on the Bhagavad Gita, to meet the
requirement of the Prashthatrayi. In fact, people started thinking about
the different prasthanas only around 16th century CE.

The great Advaitin scholar  Shri Chinmayanandaji (1913-1930)  too probably
thought that Adi Shankara could  have written the bhashya on the
Bhagavadgita to complete the requirement of three canons (i) the
Brahmasutra, (ii) the Upanshads and iii) the Bhagavadgita. Far from it. Adi
Shankara was least concerned about the prasthana requirements, if any.  In
his own confiusions, Chinmayanandaji had wrongly added the Bhagavadgita
bhashya too in the list of 16 bhashyas already mentioned in the Shankara
Vijaya.  He added the imaginay AdiShankarabhashya on the Bhagavadgita to
the list of 16 bhashyas of Adi Shankara.

It was Abhinava Shankara, born in 788 CE, who was considered as the
Navavatara (an incarnation) of Adi Shankara,  became the mathadhipati of
the Kanch kamakoti math in the 9th century CE,  and he wrote the
Shankarabhashya on the Bhagavadgita, to establish the superioriy of the
Jnana over the Jnana-karnma Samucchaya, thus defeating the thesis of
Bhaskara Bhatta on the Superiority of jnanakarma-samucchaya over Jnana.
Eventually, to hide his face, Bhatta Bhaskara changed his name to Nimbarka
and  he also withdrew the last nine chapters of his bhashya from public.
There is an episode, as to how a reputed scholar changed his name to become
Nimbarka, but his pre-nimbarka name was not declared at all.

Best wishes,
Sunil Kumar Bhattacharjya