[Advaita-l] Books by SK Ramachandra Rao

[Ramakrishnan Balasubramanian]

On Jan 5, 2008 12:06 AM, Ramesh Krishnamurthy <rkmurthy at gmail.com> wrote:
> namaskAraH,
>
> SK Ramachandra Rao, one of the encyclopedic scholars of the Dharma in
> recent times, has authored 2 books on Sri Vidya:
>
> 1. The Tantrik practices in Sri Vidya
> 2. Sri Vidya Kosha
>
> I would like to know whether any of our group members have read these
> works and can comment on their contents. I am specifically looking to
> know whether the former is an abridgement/subset of the latter.
>

I started replying to this a couple of days back and deleted my reply
after some thought. After some more thought, here is my view for all
it's worth. The late S K Ramachandra Rao, apart from the usual
"Padmapada did not know squat, I know best" rants, also had these
views (which I found recently reading through one of his books)

1. Krishna-yajur veda has some mantras which are not to be found in
the R^ig samhitaa and hence they are later interpolations and not
genuine.
2. Krishna-yajur veda will become clean if all the braahmaNa passages
are expurgated from it.
3. It is unlikely that braahmaNa pasages have any intrinsically deep
meaning associated with them.
4. BraahmaNa passages are not actually like vedic mantras, and are
inventions of "later authors".

I have no wish to argue with anyone. The problem is that he tends to
spout off his own views, but also has associations with the Sringeri
mutt. Some of his books have even been published by organizations tied
closely to the mutt. This may mislead people into thinking that he is
a traditional author associated with the mutt. As for me, once I see
drivel such as the above, it tends to make me suspicious of the
author's works in general. Srividya, etc., are guhyam, and best
learned through some proper sources. For diaspora like myself it's an
issue, but for you it should not be so tough. Even here I have found
the Biblical saying "Ask and it shall be given" to be true. Whenever I
desired learning something, things have worked out somehow or the
other. This has happened so many times that I have begun to expect it
as a normal occurrence.

Rama