[Advaita-l] Shanmatha Sthapanam by Adhisankaracharya

[V Subrahmanian]

A question to be asked of the Ramanuja followers who are enthusiastic about
featuring Shankara as a Vaishnava who held Vishnu to be the Supreme saguna
deity:  Would they ask themselves: how can someone who is a crypto buddhist
(as Ramanuja and Vedanta Desika would caricature Shankara)  be a vaishnava?
In other words how can a naastika be also an aastika?  How indeed could
someone who is endowed with anAdi paapa vaasana and hence would never earn
the grace of the Lord (as Ramanuja referred to Shankara) be ever someone
who held Vishnu to be the supreme? It is another matter that Vedanta Desika
also held Shankara to be one among the many ancient Bh.gita commentators
who 'agreed that Bhagavan was the only refuge' (in his Gita gloss to
Ramanuja's bhashya).

That said, here is an article that shows how the claim that 'Shankara is
ShaNmata sthApaka' is not in contradiction to his prasthana traya bhashya:

https://adbhutam.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/shankara-shanmata-eng.pdf

"Brahman/Ishwara can and does take on a form, to bless/help an aspirant in
his sadhana.: स्यात्परमेश्वरस्यापि इच्छावशात् मायामयं रूपं
साधकानुग्रहार्थम् । (1.1.vii.20) (Ishwara, out of compassion, takes on, by
His Maya, a form to grace the spiritual aspirant."

One should also note that in the Vishnu Sahasra naMa bhashya, Shankara has
cited copious statements from the itihasa purana corpus for the idea of
harihara trimurti abheda - which he says there as proving Advaita.  So, one
need not consider the VSN bhashya to be a theistic (in contrast) to
Shankara's Vedantic face in the Prasthana traya.  It should also be noted
that even the Bh.Gita Bhashya, Shankara has often used the term Vasudeva
 to mean the identity of the jiva and Ishwara.  In advaita such identity is
on the level of Nirguna Brahman and not Saguna.

Shankara himself clarifies in the Brahmasutra and other bhashyas the real
purport of that expression: ‘Tad VishnoH paramam padam’

https://adbhutam.files.wordpress.com/2023/11/tadvishnoh-paramam-padam-as-per-shankara.pdf


regards
subbu

On Mon, Jan 20, 2025 at 2:13 PM Sangeerth P via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Namaskaram
>
> I was going through a book *Shankararum Vainavamum *(link
> <https://archive.org/details/sava-pki-ao>). This book is in Tamil by
> Puttur
> Krishnaswamy Iyengar swamy. There is a kandana given to this book by
> *Subramanian
> sir* in this
> <
> https://adbhutam.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/sankararum-vai%E1%B9%87avamum-%E0%AE%93%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D-%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%AE%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%9A%E0%AE%A9%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%8D/
> >
> link.
> To Make the long story short, I am very new to Shankaracharya and I am
> eager to know about it. Kindly forgive me if the following questions look
> silly or wrong. I am seriously curious to know the answers. The following
> questions revolve mostly in and around who is the Saguna Brahman that
> Adhisankaraya is telling?
>
> 1. Can you please give me references* only *from* Prastanatraya bashya* of
> Adishankaracharya where he talks about *"him as Shanmatha stapakacharya"*
> and
> *"Siva-Vishnu Abedha". *Dont take references from any other grantas(as
> there are debates if the other grantas are written only by him or by his
> successors.)
>
> 2. If *Adisankaracharya* has even done the Shanmatha stapana why was *Surya
> *put into the list and not *Indra.* As in my limited knowledge, *Indra *is
> the head of all Devas. How to understand Surya as the supreme one if he is
> afraid of someone else (Beeshasma vatapavate ...)?
>
> 3. In the book by *Iyengar Swamy* he even mentions Gita Bhasya of
> Sankaracharya(slokas 9-24,7-23) where Sankara tells that only by
> worshipping Krishna one can attain him. Even if one can argue that he is
> referring to the Supreme Brahman or some extrapolations like this. But why
> do you need to extrapolate or use certain grammatical gymnastics when the
> meaning is clearly evident that he refers to him? What is the necessity to
> extrapolate if Ramanuja/Madhva have taken the direct meaning of Krishna(or
> Vishnu) only for this sloka?
>
> 4. As per one *Panini* sutra we can tell that Nara+Ayana=Naraayana, can
> indicate only one person then how can one understand that Adishankara is
> Shanmata stapanaacharya where he gives equal status for all the 6 gods as
> Saguna Brahman. Then how can he be a Shanmatha stapanacharya? Whenever he
> talks about *padam *he uses the term Vaishnava padam(eg:BG-15-4). Inspite
> of having several other synonymous words for Vyapti, why was Shankara using
> terms like Vishnu padam etc (which are Vaishnavaitic), even if you want to
> tell that vyapti is being talked about by vaishnava padam.
>
> *If you are having some references to cite from Adhishankara kindly cite
> only from Prastanatraya bashyas of his work* and not even from any other
> grantas of Adisankaracharya as there is a lot of debates on if the other
> grantas are even written by him or the successors after him(not even
> from *Vishnu
> sahasranama Bashya* which Puttur swami has used)
>
>
>
> Regards
> Sangeerth P
> 8608658009
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