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

[Divya Shivashankar]

Correction: Dr V Raghavan.

On Tue, Mar 11, 2025 at 5:05 PM Divya Shivashankar <divyameedin at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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.
>