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Ramanuja, the Bhagavata, and BI
In article <3eeu24$pun@ucunix.san.uc.edu>,
Vidyasankar Sundaresan <vidya@cco.caltech.edu> wrote:
>obvious that the later Puranas have been composed by lesser humans and
>attributed to Vyasa, in a futile attempt to grant them legitimacy. No
>wonder the acharyas of old, including Ramanujacharya, do not use these
^^^
>later Puranas at all.
"Use" here should be replaced with the words (when referring to Ramanuja)
"use in his commentary on Brahma-sutra". If we accept extant biographies
of Ramanuja as indeed written by his contemporaries, it is quite clear
that he _did_ know the Bhagavata and chant mantras from this Purana in his
daily life. It is also clear that he followed Pancaratra-style worship
and revered the Tamil Veda known as Tiruvaymozhi. Only he did not use
these other scriptures in his Sri-bhasya because he wanted to use materials
that would be accepted as axiomatic by the advaitins whom he spent some time
defeating. The fact that his commentary was quite successful despite the
limited resources he used should in itself be evidence of the incompleteness
of unqualified nondualism.
Some later Vaisnavas criticized Ramanuja for his choice here, particularly
some in the Madhva sampradaya. However, Ramanuja's work seems to me akin to
what's going on today in Bhaktivedanta Institute. For those of you who have
never heard of BI, that is a group of Ph.D. scientists in the Hare Krishna
movement that was given the mission by Prabhupada to disprove the Darwinian
theory of evolution (and other tenets of Western science) and establish the
Vedic version, and to do so using only standard Western scientific methods.
Already some of the popular books coming from that group include "Forbidden
Archaeology" and "Mechanistic and Non-mechanistic Science". So, we can
see this clear parallel in the mission of Ramanuja and the mission of BI.
To my knowledge, no Vaisnavas have criticized BI for not quoting Vedic
scriptures in technical reports. We have some articles by BI researcher
Sadaputa Das on the Bhakti Yoga home page.
But, this has been a long digression. Interestingly enough, one of the
first commentaries on the Bhagavata to be widely accepted was written
by Sridhar Svami, who was head of the Sankara Govardhan Math in Orissa.
Despite his background, Sridhar Svami also saw the Bhagavata Purana as
the shining sound incarnation of Krishna for Kali Yuga.
I guess this is not surprising, as the completely wise Ananda Tirtha
had also taken initiation into the Sankara school, but then upon seeing
the inconsistencies of Advaita, went on to comment on Brahma-sutra,
Rg Veda, Bhagavata, etc. So, Ananda Tirtha/Purnaprajna Tirtha/Madhvacarya
established the modern Vaisnava school known as Dvaita, having
rejected Advaita.
What else can be said? All glories to the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana!
--
"kirtaniyah sada harih"
http://riceinfo.rice.edu/~vijaypai/rvc/BhaktiYoga/Welcome.html
Vijay S. Pai / vijaypai@ece.rice.edu
