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gauDapaada, vivekachuuDaamaNi (was Re: shankara's view ..)
Sankar Jayanarayanan <kartik@Eng.Auburn.EDU> wrote:
>> If this is the reason they doubt the authorship of vivekachuuDaamaNi then they
>> better learn something more about advaita, before examining the works of one of
>> the stalwarts of advaita. The upadeshasaahasrii and the gauDapaada kaarikaa are
>> accepted as genuine works and shaMkara _clearly_ adopts the ajaata vaadi
>> position. I hope you saw my previous post on this.
>
>I don't know much about the actual position of advaita, but I came across
>that in atleast two books.
>
>I even came across a journal claiming that Gaudapada is not the Guru of
>Samkara's Guru, Govindapada, but actually someone much earlier! One reason
>for the claim was that Samkara salutes Gaudapada as the one who extracted
>the correct meaning of the Vedas, but shouldn't that be Badarayana? Another
>reason was that Gaudapada's Karika is so Buddhistic that many arguments in it
>are identical to Nagarjuna's, which is more probable if Gaudapada was
>influenced by Buddhism. But it is known that Buddhism perished sometime
>before, so Gaudapada probably wrote that at a time when Buddhism was prevalent,
>which was about three centuries earlier.
Well, Buddhism was not quite dead at Gaudapada's times. By the advaitic
tradition itself it was mainly Kumarila Bhatta who routed the Buddhists, who
would have been a contemporary of Govindaachaarya. So the view that Gaudapada
was 300 years before does not hold much water. If both Govindaachaarya and
gauDapaada had lived for, say 80 years each, there would be no problem with the
usual advaitic story.
There is no problem with Gaudapada using some Buddhist metaphors. After all
this a common practice among Indian schools to use things which are correct
from other schools. Ex, Shankara accepts certain miimaamsa doctrines in the the
suutra bhaashhya.
In fact in the aalaatashaanti prakaraNa (quenching of the fire brand),
gauDapaada uses the classical Buddhist metaphor in a different way. Finally he
says "The doctrine of ajaata vaada is peculiar to vedanta and was _not_ taught
by the buddha". I don't know how these scholars come to the idiotic conclusion
that gauDapaada was a buddhist because he used the "fire-brand" metaphor.
Just because they publish it in journals, it doesn't mean that their research
is correct. The _fact_ is that their basic surmises are wrong.
As I mentioned elsewhere, this is the typical, either A or B, judeo-christian
way of interpreting things. It does not hold for interpreting Indian works.
These people should realize that just because advaita opposed Buddhism, it
doesn't mean that they reject _all_ their arguments. This is so simple to the
Indian mind, at least an advaitin, that it seems ridiculous to even mention it.
Swami Nikhilanda has also mentioned these types of arguments that gauDapaada
was a buddhist and is quite critical of such interpretations.
>This quote is from "the encyclopaedia of Indian philosophy" editted by
>Karl H.Potter(page 335).
>
>Vivekachudamani
>This is a sizable work, extremely popular among advaita adepts. Ingalls argues
>that it is not genuine Samkara since it propounds theories not found in
>Samkara's unquestioned works. For example, "the author of Vivekachudamani makes
>an absolute equation of the waking and dream states after the fashion of
>Gaudapada. Samkara may liken the two to each other, but he is careful to
>distinguish them. Again, and most decisive of all, the Vivekachudamani accepts
>the classical theory of the three truth values, the existent, the non-existent
>and that which is anirvachaniya...Now, Paul Hacker has pointed out that when
>Samkara uses the word anirvachaniya, he uses it in a sense quite differently
>from that..."
>
>Hacker, interestingly enough, finds reason to affirm the genuineness of the
>work on the basis of colophons, but Mayeda, like Ingalls following out the
>criteria Hacker proposes elsewhere, holds it to be spurious.
I find the view among western scholars, that the suutra bhaashyaa is some kind
of totem pole around which every other work of our aachaarya should execute a
dance, quite laughable. It shows their ignorance of both our advaitic and the
Indian mentality. Different things are taught to aspirants of various grades!
This concept is very simple. So there is no problem with shaMkara being a
shR^ishTi dR^ishTi vaadin in the suutra bhaasshya and an ajaata vaadi in the
upadeshasaahasrii and the kaarikaa bhaashhya. These people better learn such
simple concepts before writing our history.
Ex, shrii ramaNa comes out as an uncompromising ajaata vaadin in most of his
works. Suddenly in the aksharamaNa maalai (Marital garland of letters) he
sings "azaku sundaram pOl nEyum akamum muttRapinnamMAyiruppOm aruNAchalA" -
"let us be inseparable like azaku and sundara (Ramana's father and mother)". If
shrii ramaNa had been born, say 500 years back, this work of his would have
been declared spurious. Note here that the apparent "difference" in
philosophies is much more than shaMkara's differences in the suutra bhaashhya
and the upadeshasaahasrii!
As far as the vivekachuuDaamaNi goes, it may have not been written by shaMkara.
But this judgment _cannot_ be made based on the differences it has with the
suutra bhaashhya. Vidya had mentioned elsewhere, that some of this is based on
poetry style. This is a _much_ better way of judging things. The most important
works of shaMkara are mentioned in the maadhaviiya shaMkara vijaya and I think
the vivekachuuDaamaNi is not mentioned. I would be really surprised if a work of
such high caliber was neglected by the author.
Ramakrishnan.
--
Two monks were arguing about a flag. One said, "The flag is moving." The other
said, "The wind is moving." The sixth patriarch happened to be passing by. He
told them, "Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving." - The Gateless Gate
