[Advaita-l] Veda-s & its apaurusheyatva

[Praveen R. Bhat]

Hari Om, Michael-ji,

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 3:13 PM, Michael
Shepherd<michael at shepherd87.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Wires got crossed there ! Dennis Waite's comments on the translation of
> 'apaurusheyatva' as 'authorless' got half-quoted back on this list.

Apologies again for crossposting. Just to correct the chain, following
is the initial
mail from Dennis-ji, as is. (This is for record purpose only as I
indicated to Dennis-ji
on advaitin already, in order to not risk misrepresenting him in my first reply)


>On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 8:44 PM, Dennis Waite wrote:
>
>
>
> At the risk of upsetting some of the members, I have to say that my
> preferred (reasonable) interpretation of the adjective 'unauthored' is that
> the words were 'originated' by self-realized sages and subsequently passed
> on by word of mouth until such time as written materials became common.
> These sages, being self-realized, no longer identified themselves as
> body-minds, as named individuals, so they had no wish whatsoever to have
> their bodily-assigned names associated with them. They knew that what they
> were conveying was non-personal, eternal truth that had nothing to do with
> personality. The sole purpose was to pass on this knowledge so that other
> minds, believing in separation, might be enlightened. Such absolute truth is
> beyond authorship and hence is reasonably construed as 'unauthored'. But,
> obviously, the words chosen are bound to be those current at the time and
> place in which they were originally spoken. And the method of presentation
> will be as learned by the speaker from parents and teachers in that
> then-current society.
>
> The mythology of such words being literally passed down by Ishvara, Narayana
> or whoever is no different from the creation myths propounded in the various
> Upanishads. It is a ploy to make the ideas readily acceptable to minds more
> inclined to bhakti than j~nAna; i.e. part of the adhyAropa-apavAda method.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Dennis