[Advaita-l] On Upanishad Brahmendra - Dr VKSN Raghavan

[Divya Shivashankar]

On Upanishad Brahmendra - Dr VKSN Raghavan

Apart from the fact that the Matha bearing his name has its own importance
in Kanchi, there have been close contacts between the Upanishad Brahmendra
Matha and the Kamakoti Pitha in the comparatively short period during which
the former had come into existence.

He was originally called Ramachandrendra – a name found in the colophons of
several of his works – and that later he came to be called Upanishad
Brahmendra by reason of his systematic and successful effort to write
commentaries on the one hundred and eight Upanishads.  It has also been
shown in that paper that Upanishad Brahmendra flourished in the 18th
century A.D.  The cyclic year and its details mentioned by him at the end
of his commentary on Muktopanishad work out to 1751 A.D.  Another dated
work of his is the Paramadvaitasiddhantaparibhasha (1709 A.D.)

                        In civil life, he was name Sivarama and was the son
of Lakshmi and Sadasiva of Vadhula Gotra, of Brahmapuram on the banks of
the Palar.  He was born by the blessings of God Karinatha and Goddess
Sivakamasundari enshrined at Krishnanagari or Sattancheri on the banks of
the Palar; he says that it is on the prompting of this Deity Lord
Sivakamisa that he composed the commentaries on the one hundred and eight
Upanishads.  In more than one place in his works, he mentions that the
place of his stay in Kanchipura, which is on the way of Kailasanatha
temple, was called Agastyalaya or Agastyasrama.  As a Sannyasin, he was the
disciple of Vasudevendra.

                        Upanishad Brahmendra was a bibliophile and all his
writings, as also other works in Vedanta and Bhakti, were copied and
preserved in his Matha.  The present writer had occasion to examine
first-hand in connection with his New Catalogus Catalogorum work a large
number of Upanishad Brahmendra’s works which the present Swamiji of the
Matha, Sri Ishtasiddhindra, was kind enough to lend him.  Manuscripts of
Upanishad Brahmendra’s works are also found in the Madras Government
Oriental MSS. Library, the Adyar Library and the Oriental Library, Mysore;
and many of them bear alternate and longer or shorter names and also the
author’s own glosses.

                       The most important and sustained work of Upanishad
Brahmendra, which gave him this second name, is his commentaries on the one
hundred and eight Upanishads.  The author says that Krishnasuri, Ramananda,
Isvara, Hari and Krishnadasa prompted him to write the
Upanishad-commentaries.  All his works giving the author’s name as
Ramachandrendra were written before the Upanishad-commentaries and this is
borne out also by his mentioning some of them in the Upanishad
commentaries.  On many of his earlier works thus written, he wrote glosses
later, as Upanishad Brahmendra.  His work in the field of Upanishads is
valuable particularly in regard to the minor ones, on which we have no
other commentaries.

                        A second major work of Upanishad Brahmendra in the
Upanishad prasthana is the collection of one thousand and eight Mahavakyas
from all the Upanishads – the Ashtottarasahasramahavakyavali – and
expositions of these in a series of commentaries, the Prabha, the Lochana,
the Vivarana and the Kiranavali.  Even at the beginning of his commentary
on the Upanishads, he has shown that the Mahavakyas are not just four, but
many more.

                        In the Gita-prasthana he has given us a lucid gloss
on the Bhagavadgita closely following Sankara’s Bhashya.

                        In the Sutra-prasthana, there is a short work of
his in the form of an adhikarana-index and a concordance of the Sutras and
topics, following Sankara’s Bhashya.  In this he correlates the four
chapters and the four Padas of each chapter, with aspects of the Pranava
and phases of the Brahman, a favourite analysis of his which he uses for
the songs too which he composed in sets according to this classification.

                        The four Padas of each chapter are equated with the
further sub-divisions resulting from the admixture of the phases in the
second principle of classification, Virat-virat, Virat-sutra and so on.
The colophon of I. i of his index of the Adhikaranas run:

                        akarasthulamsakaramatrarudhadya-

                        padasyadhikaranasamkhya,

                        iti vairaje prathamah padah.

                        In the further colophons, we come across equations
of other Padas of the Sutras with Nada, Bindu, Kala, Kalatita, Santi,
Santyatita, Unmani, Puri (Vaikhari), Madhyama, Pasyanti and Para.

                        Upanishad Brahmendra’s work on the Brahmasutra
should not be judged by the above concordance alone; at the end of this
short work, he says that he wrote a commentary on the Sutra, following
Sankara’s Bhashya of course, in 3500 granthas.  The manuscript of this
remains to be identified and studied; it may be in the form of a commentary
on the Sangraha of the Sutra mentioned above; it is at its end that the
author mentions the commentary.

                        brahmasutra-brahmatara-siddhanta-vivritih krita

                        bhashyasangrahasiddhantavyakhyanagranthasangrahah

                        panchasato’parilasat trisahasramitirbhavet.

                        The independent Vedantic Prakaranas of the author
may now be noticed.  Over a dozen of these are known and as in the case of
other works, here too the texts bear the author’s own commentaries.  The
Tattvampadarthaikyasataka in one hundred Anushtubhs, with an Introduction
by the present writer, brings out the full implication of the great
Mahavakya, tat tvam asi, working out, step by step, the manifestation of
the Brahman as the Saguna Brahman, the individual souls and the universe
through Maya, the three Gunas, etc.  The work may be studied on the
background of the older texts, Panchikarana, Vakyavritti, etc.

                        The other Prakaranas, with his own commentaries,
are Karmakarmaviveka with Nauka, Tripattattvaviveka, Paramaksharaviveka,
Paramadvaitasiddhantaparibhasha, Paramadvaitasudarsanaviveka,
Bhedatamomartandasataka, Lingabhangamuktisataka, Sattasamanyaviveka and
Vivriti, Svarupadarsanasiddhanjana, Kaivalyashtaka and Siddhantaslokatraya.

                        From what has been said already in connection with
his concordance of the Brahma-sutra and its Adhikaranas, it would be clear
that our author had a fancy for correlations and equations of the different
phases of Brahman, of spiritual pursuit and indeed of the texts of Vedanta
with the phases of Pranava.  On the path of Sadhana, he was a worshipper of
Pranava and Nada, which as we shall see below, led him to music. Tara
(Pranava) and its four aspects figure out all over his commentaries and
Prakaranas.  A certain number of works of his is especially devoted to this
approach:

            Antahpranavavivriti, Bahyapranavavivarana,
Brahmasarashodasabhumika, Brahmapranavarthaprakasashodasabhumika,
Brahmapranavadipika, Viratpranavavivriti, exposition of Pranava and its
phases as signifying srishti, sthiti and samhara and a series of devotional
formulae related to the phases of Pranava which will be mentioned in a
further section.

                        The tradition of combining Bhakti towards forms of
Saguna Brahman, with Advaita has had a long history.  Many Advaitic writers
have not only composed appealing Stotras but also written treatises on the
doctrine of devotion and the efficacy of reciting and adoring the Lord’s
Name (Naman).  Upanishad Brahmendra’s other works, to be dealt with now,
belong to this field of Bhakti, Namasiddhanta and music compositions on his
Ishtadevata.  Bhaktisvarupaviveka is on the general doctrine of Bhakti.
The Bhagavatasamgrahastuti summarises the stories of the twelve Skandhas of
the Srimad Bhagavatapurana in the form of a Stotras, comparable to the
Narayaniya.  Another devotional work of his is the Sivamanasapuja.

                        Upanishad Brahmendra’s Ishtadevata was Rama.  In
Rama-Bhakti literature, he takes a conspicuous place.  He wrote a
commentary on the Adhyatmaramayana, a treatise on Rama’s worship called
Ramarchanachidvidyachandrika, a Ramarchana embodying the meaning of the
Upanishadic Mahavakyas and a hymn Ramachandradayashtaka.

                        On the Lord’s Name as Saviour (Taraka) and its
recital, he wrote the Namarthaviveka or Upeyanamaviveka (text and
commentary) in which, besides dealing with all the doctrines of this
school, Upanishad Brahmendra enunciated the idea that the name Rama is
composed of the vital syllables of both the Narayana ashtakshari mantra
(RA) and the Siva Panchakshari mantra (MA).

                        A sequel of this is the practice of Bhajana,
singing songs in praise of the Lord and also formulae describing the Lord
in a string of epithets and expressing devotion to the Lord, Namavalis and
Divyanamasamkirtanas.  What Upanishad Brahmendra did in this line could be
classified into three groups.  While all of the compositions in this
category are on Rama, one set comprises longer poetic pieces to be rendered
in elaborate music and following the model of the Gitagovinda of Jayadeva
and the Krishnalilatarangini of Narayanatirtha, viz., the Ramashtapadi and
the Ramataranga with Ramatarangaslokas and Ramatarangachandrodaya.  Another
comprises a number of Ramagitas giving expression to his ideas on the
phases of Brahman-sutra, Bija, Turya, etc.  The third set is represented by
the Namavalis which are found under the names Narayanataranamavali,
Pranavanamavali, Vyavaharikapranavanamavali and so on.  The largest corpus
of our author’s compositions in this group is the Divyanamasamkirtana
consisting of vocatives addressed to Rama both as Supreme Brahman and as
Saguna Brahman. In these, as also in his Upeyanamaviveka, he says that
devotion to Rama must be done in Advaitabhavana, with the contemplation of
one’s self being identical with the Supreme Being:

                                    svananyadhiya tannamasmritih syat;

                                    ramo’ham ahameva rama iti bhavayet.

                        At his Agastyesvara Asrama, he had put up a flag,
as it were, inviting everybody to step in, participate in the great Satra
of devotional singing of the songs and Namavalis composed by him, which was
going on incessantly there and appease their spiritual hunger.  Of this
Muktisatra established by him, he says in the beginning of Ramataranga:

                                    Kanchyamagastyesagrihagneyasimhasanopari

                                    pratishthitam muktisatram
dhvajasthapanapurvakam

                                    madiyasiddhasamkalpam jnatva ye
bhusuradayah

                                    nirankusaste kurvantu
mattarangadikirtanam

                                    ahanyahani
satrannabhuktitastriptireshyati

                                    sakrinmatsatrabhuktya tu
samtriptirjayate sada.

                        With all this activity, Upanishad Brahmendra proved
quite an inspiration in his time of the votaries of the twin paths of
devotion and music.  In fact tradition current in the world of Karnatic
music says that during his visit to and stay in Kanchi, the great composer
Muttusvami Dikshita (A.D. 1776-1835), who wrote his songs in Sanskrit, was
asked by Upanishad Brahmendra to set the tunes to the latter’s
Ramashtapadi.  The manuscripts of the songs of Tyagaraja (A.D. 1767-1847),
the other great Karnatic composer and other literary materials that
belonged to him, which are preserved now in the Saurashtra Sabha, Madurai,
contain the Srimukha or call sent by Upanishad Brahmendra to Tyagaraja,
asking the latter to visit Kanchi.  The influence of Upanishad Brahmendra
and his ideas and even expression on Tyagaraja, who also adored Rama with
music, is clear and this has been already pointed out by the present writer
in his Introductory thesis in the Spiritual Heritage of Tyagaraja and his
critical Introduction to the Upeyanamaviveka.

                        There are some more songs of Upanishad Brahmendra
which show that he went on pilgrimage to the Cola-mandala and sang on the
deities at Chidambaram, Tiruvayyaru (Tyagaraja’s place) and Srivanchyam.

                        Upanishad Brahmendra was thus ceaselessly active.
He is one of the most prolific writers in the recent history of Advaita and
Bhakti.  An authentic exponent of Sankara’s Advaita, he yet introduced
several minor ideas and correlations; and this he worked out on the basis
of what were already found in the earlier authentic literature, but they
became a special characteristic of his writings.  With his piety and
spiritual exercises, he combined a practical outlook which explains not
only the collection of manuscripts in his Matha, but also the care taken by
him to mention at the end of each work of his its extent in terms of the
number of granthas.  Many of his works still remain to be studied and a
connected account of his ideas will form a useful piece of research.