[Advaita-l] apauruSheya ?

[Gerald Penn]

A related issue to examine in this regard is to

> In logic, truth of a statement is decided by two
> criteria - a) Correspondence b) Coherence.

Your redux on correspondence has a very objective
idealist slant to it, though, and I don't think that's
appropriate when explaining Sri Madhwacharya's reasoning.
Swatah pramanyam is a policy or principle regarding justified
belief, not truth.

> In contrast shankara does not make any
> pretensions that it can be done on the logical grounds
> and accepts it as an article of faith.

A particular proposition is deemed to be true, because it
can be traced back through anumana to a statement from
the Vedas.  The statement from the Vedas is in turn
deemed to be true because the Vedas are apaurusheya.
Now if, at the very end of this discussion, the most we
can say is, "we have to accept this last bit on faith,"
then the preceding argument, and along with it a very large swath
of ancient Indian philosophical literature, would have
just been reduced to a colossal waste of everyone's time.
Now there's got to be something more than this behind Sri
Sankaracharya's view of apaurusheyatva, hasn't there?

I recall hearing once that there were six reasons in Dvaita
for calling the Vedas apaurusheya, one of which was swatah pramanyam.
Does anyone recall the other 5?

I would also be interested to know more about Sri Sankaracharya's
view of this issue.

Regards,
Gerald Penn