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Re: The definition of HINDU (Was about VK Rao's def) .. very long
vidynath@math.ohio-state.edu wrote:
> [Newsgroups line had soc.culture.indian listed twice. I fixed that. I also
> removed alt.religion.vaishnava since it has been replaced by soc.religion.v
> (which does not allow cross-posts).
I have added alt.religion.vaisnava since SRV does not allow cross-posts. And
I want some vaishnava comments here.
> In article <9601011158.AA11281@qasid.cc.iitk.ernet.in>,
> sghosh@iitk.ernet.in wrote:
> [tatvavaadins' argument]
> >b) If the objector says that an authored work can or _may_ have the
> >reputation of being unauthored, then the tattva vAdIs will challenge
> >the objector to do an experiment where the objector will be asked to
> >produce an authored work having the reputation of being unauthored.
> >c) tattva-vAdI claim - such an experiment is not possible.
> >I hope Gopal ji or Vidyanath Rao ji, you can discuss this issue with the
> >tattva-vAdIs.
> >-Sourav
> This is completely off-topic (since the claim made by Shrisa Rao and
> presumably being defended by Gopal Ramana, and with which I disagree,
> is that tattvavaadins are Hindus who do not consider Vedas to be
> infallible truth or to be scriptures),
What I can definitely say that S. Rao claims that vedas can be proven to be
unauthored and hence infallible by the above argument. Whether he considers
himself as hindu or not, is not of interest to me. The definition of
"scripture" according to tattva-vAda is apaurusheya texts, i.e. that have
never been authored, not even by God or the Absolute Truth. Everything else
that is authored have a source and since there is a source there is a
possibility of errors creeping in, hence they cannot be said to be scriptures
because of their vulnurability to errors creeping in. Only "Sruti" is
apaurusheya, nothing else. Hence all knowledge about things beyond sense
perception _have_ to be validated by Sruti and since Sruti does not have
errors, all knowledge given by them are error free.
> not having anything to do with
> defining Hinduism. But as it is interesting in its own right, and in
> the hope that someone with more knowledge will take it up, I will
> display my ignorance.
> The argument presented above seems to be an old one since Kumarilla Bhatta
> apparently rose to the challenge. (My knowledge on this based on third hand
> information; take with a large grain of salt.)
> Kumarila says that the `fourth book' of the Aitreya Aranyaka is authored
> by a human (Asvalayana?) but has been included in the shruti by the
> mistake of humans. I have no access to the works of Kumarila, either in
> Sanskrit or in translation. So I cannot offer any further information.
>From which veda is aiteriya aaranyaka? Does it have a parampara? If it has
and still there is a controversy about its non-authoredness, then some
persons in soc.religion.vaishnava have to come up with answers....
-Sourav
