Apowrusheyatva

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Ramakrishnan wrote:

> While I can _believe_ that some parts of the vedas were "seen" by mantra
> drashtas, I can hardly accept that all of it was unauthored and is "flawless"
> as the dvaitins claim. I saw the arguments for apaurusheya and was not very

I'm not sure that even the pUrva mImAm.sakas talk of "flawlessness" the way
the dvaitins do. The dvaitins have their own complicated definitions of what
constitutes a flaw and then they provide arguments of why Sruti is not flawed
according to their definitions. It would be much simpler to define Sruti to
be "flawless" (whatever one means by that term) and get on with it.

> My specific doubt is whether the advaitic school accepts that the idea that
> _all_ parts of the shruti are equally acceptable. gauDapaada definitely
> dis-agrees and shaMkara agrees with him atleast in the kaarikaa bhaashhya.

Neither the pUrva mImAm.sA school nor the advaita vedAnta talks of _all_
Sruti being equal. For the former school, Sruti serves to inform man of fruits
of actions, that would not be known otherwise, and therefore to impel man to
action, to seek those fruits. Thus, pUrva mImAm.sA looks at the Sruti as
consisting mainly of injunctions to action, and the rest of the Sruti has to
be _interpreted_ in the context of these injunctions. That which is purely
descriptive is called "arthavAda", i.e. explanatory notes, somewhat like
Cliff's notes, I suppose! Obviously, the pUrva mImAm.sA ends up classifying
Sruti into hierarchies, the topmost being the vidhis (injunctions) and the
lowermost being the arthavAda.

advaita vedAnta disagrees mainly with the idea that all of Sruti has to be
interpreted in the context of injunctions. It also disagrees that the upanishads
are arthavAda only. Sankara reverses the pUrva mImAm.sA attitude towards the
different portions of Sruti, and holds the upanishads to be revelatory of
brahman/Atman, and hence more than arthavAda. Also, since brahman is never
attained through action, according to advaita, the idea that they have to be
interpreted in the context of vidhis is refuted. Sankara explicitly says in
the sUtrabhAshya and elsewhere, that the karmakANDa, consisting of vidhis and
mantras is addressed to a completely different kind of audience as compared to
the jnAnakANDa. The karmakANDa applies only to those who are attached to
actions and its fruits, as also to those who are involved in action, albeit
disinterestedly. The karmakANDa is therefore applicable in terms of nitya,
kAmya, nimitta and also nishkAma karmas. (nitya = daily, enjoined karma;
kAmya = karma undertaken with a desire in mind; nimitta = optional karma;
nishkAma = karma done disinterestedly, as per the formulation of the gItA).
The jnAnakANDa on the other hand does not relate to karma at all, but only
to jnAna, and therefore addresses itself to those of a completely different
temperament - those who sacrifice karma with its fruits completely, and
are thirsty only for jnAna. Thus, advaita vedAnta also does not accept any
idea that holds _all_ Sruti to be equally acceptable.

A large part of the mAdhvas harping on accepting _all_ Sruti is a backlash
against Sankara's rather sharp distinction between the jnAna and karma kANDas.
Note however, that they are not true to this claim themselves. They impose an
artificial criterion by which vishNu is the highest, and every word in the
Veda refers only to vishNu. They therefore end up mutilating the meaning of
even as straightforward a sentence as "aham brahmAsmi". "a" is vishNu, it
seems, because it is the first letter in the alphabet, "mi" stands for lakshmI,
vishNu's consort, and so on. Their claim that they accept _all_ of Sruti to be
flawless is only a convenient cover under which they take liberties with
Sruti, to the extent of claiming that the actual chAndogya statement is not
"tattvamasi" but "atattvamasi". Thus, every statement which so much as hints
at non-duality is tortured to mean something totally out of the context.
The followers of rAmAnuja are more honest in this regard. They seek to reconcile
statements of non-duality with statements which presuppose duality by means of
other statements within the vedas.

However, both these approaches completely
neglect the technique of adhyAropa-apavAda (sublation of superimposition),
which is the technique of the upanishads, even according to the paingala
upanishad itself. It is very obvious that this technique is used in all the
important upanishads, for example, in the taittirIya's description of five
koSas, where each layer is initially taught as the reality, only to be sublated
in favor of the inner one, till the innermost non-dual Atman is reached.
Similarly, in the br.hadAraNyaka's teaching of neti, neti, and in yAjnavalkya's
famous dialogue where he is asked how many gods there are. We are first told
there are more than three thousand, which number is progressively cut down
till one reaches the One brahman. In the face of this teaching, it is not
wise to hold that _all_ of Sruti is equally acceptable. Every teacher in the
various vedic traditions has recognized that some portions of the vedas
contradict other portions, and therefore searches for samanvaya - agreement
in teaching, and explains away the contradictions as apparent and not real.
The mAdhvas don't seem to want to even concede this, because of their binary
logic, by which every thing can either be real or unreal. By their own logic,
they have to either dismiss Sruti because of its "real" contradictions, or
claim that there are no contradictions at all. They prefer the second
alternative, and claim to be the champions of Sruti. I don't think anybody has
accepted their claims to be the only true interpreters of the Vedas.

Finally, as far as the dvaita mailing list is concerned, I would be extremely
wary of accepting any of the arguments offered there regarding "apaurusheyatva"
as representing the official dvaita position on these issues. Shrisha Rao,
one of the leading lights of this list, has conducted a rather frivolous debate
on soc.religion.vaishnava with me, where he claimed that kumAriLa bhaTTa's
school could not be called pUrva mImAm.sA, because it should really be called
uttara mImAm.sA. Any scholar worth his name would inform you that uttara
mImAm.sA is used interchangeably with vedAnta in the tradition, and that
kumAriLa bhaTTa was no vedAntin. It is not advisable to take seriously the
arguments of one who is so ignorant of the history and tradition of vedic
exegesis. It might be better to contact one of the dvaita maThas in Udipi,
and understand the dvaita position from their authentic pundits.

S. Vidyasankar