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Re: ARTICLE : Just say no to "Hinduism" (was Re: ARTICLE : On attempting to define Hinduism)
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To: soc-religion-hindu@uunet.uu.net
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Subject: Re: ARTICLE : Just say no to "Hinduism" (was Re: ARTICLE : On attempting to define Hinduism)
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From: Vidyasankar Sundaresan <vidya@cco.caltech.edu>
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Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1996 19:06:11 -0700
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Newsgroups: soc.religion.hindu
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Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
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References: <ghenDwHznC.9A0@netcom.com> <ghenDwqLww.Bpu@netcom.com> <ghenDwt2DE.ME1@netcom.com>
Jaldhar H. Vyas wrote:
>
> dchakrav@netserv.unmc.edu (Dhruba Chakravarti) wrote in article
> <ghenDwqLww.Bpu@netcom.com>...
>
> > The teachings of Hinduism, whichever way you look at it, are expressly
> > against intellectual interpretations of Scriptures.
>
> I vehemently _disagree_ with this baseless statement. It completely
> ignores the vast amount of polemic literature that has been written
> through the centuries. This literature which was aimed at demolishing the
> views of rival schools _was_ based on intellectual interpretation of the
> scriptures. Indeed logic was developed to an astonishingly high level.
> Your own Bengal was the home of such decidedly non soft-headed people as
> Swami Madhusudan Sarasvati, Raghunatha Tarka Shiromani, Gadadhar
> Bhattacharya, and Jagdish Tarkalankara.
>
I completely agree with Jaldhar Vyas on this. Without intellecutal
interpretations of the scriptures, one is nowhere. To the list of people
Jaldhar gives above, you can add luminaries like Kumarila Bhatta,
Sriharsha, Gangesa Misra and others from elsewhere in India, in addition
to the three famous Vedantic teachers, Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva. If
there were to be no intellectual interpretation of the scriptures, were
all of them so stupid as to keep writing treatises that could be
understood only with a high level of intellectual interpretation?
Whether you talk of advaita or dvaita or nyAya or sAmkhya or mImAmsA,
all of them are highly intellectual schools.
> > The whole thing about
> > parA-vidyA is thus said to be yogic, that is, revealed knowledge.
Please note that the upanishad which makes the distinction between
parA-vidyA and aparA-vidyA itself characterizes the scriptures as
aparA-vidyA. The four vedas are included under aparA-vidyA, let alone
smrtis like the dharmasutras. It is a fundamental mistake to call the
scriptures parA-vidyA. The only parA-vidyA is brahmavidyA. The
scriptures tell you about parA-vidyA, they are not parA-vidyA
themselves. It is only brahman that cannot be understood purely
intellectually. The scriptures are open to intellectual interpretation.
However irreverent towards the scriptures this may seem, note that this
is the position of all advaita vedantins, including Vivekananda.
S. Vidyasankar
