[Advaita-l] Veda-s & its apaurusheyatva

[Michael Shepherd]

An alternate way of seeing this, if I may suggest, is this : the Veda, as
veda, universal truth expressed in Sanatana Dharma, are applicable at all
times in all places in all situations..

So if you wake every morning to the fresh vision of a local hill or mountain
as the first light of dawn catches and reveals it in its eternal solitude
(before those Westerners insist on climbing it..) that image is likely to
become a symbol for you of awakening consciousness -- And thus the divine
nature of Creation acquires its local names and local sacred places... which
should never become exclusive; in the same way that the birth of your child
is an unique miracle --  but also universal..

The 'authorless' should increase our awe, not diminish it. Alas, the
'scientific' materialist culture wants to pin it down, just like 'the birth
of life on our planet' ! Who cares to name the author of a truth ?

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org
[mailto:advaita-l-bounces at lists.advaita-vedanta.org]On Behalf Of Jaldhar
H. Vyas
Sent: 20 September 2009 10:24
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta
Cc: Ram Madhavan; advaitin at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] Veda-s & its apaurusheyatva



sorry I did not get a chance to respond to this earlier.

On Tue, 1 Sep 2009, Bhaskar YR wrote:

> praNAms
> Hare Krishna
>
> One of my cybernet friends, expressed his observation on vedas'
> aparusheyatva.  I'd like to get the clarification on this from the learned
> prabhuji-s of this forum.  Here is his observation :
>
> // quote //
> What puzzled me was that the veda also had intimate knowledge of the
> names,culture,topography etc of a very small place in the universe called
> bhArata-varsha. This was proof to me that veda was "authored" by Indians!
> Had it been unauthored and eternal, it will likely not show affinity
> towards India will it? Why do you think veda has no names like John and
> Peter? Why do you think it makes no reference to places such as Europe and
> Africa? Why do you think it talks of ganga and sarasvati and not of Nile
> or Amazon which are even bigger rivers? The proper nouns in the veda are
> specific to our culture and it is the proof that it is not eternal and
> unauthored. Veda as knowledge is eternal but as a text it appears to be a
> divinely inspired content in accordance with place and time in which it
> was revealed. If veda were to be revealed in another galaxy in another
> planet how will they make sense of the names
> in it? Obviously, if the veda is revealed there, its spiritual content
> will be the same, but not the textual content.

compare with scientific laws.  gravity, relativity etc. are "unauthored"
yet they are expressed in terms belonging to a particular culture like E,
g, etc.  There is no reason we couldn't say OM = ma cha squared but we
don't.  In fact science is largely responsible for the continuing rapid
expansion of the English language accross the world.  Yet despite this you
can't make arguments such as e.g. Q was not originally a letter of the
latin alphabet so any formulas containing it are invalid.  Or Isaac Newton
was prejudiced against Indians therefore gravity doesn't apply in India.
(He wasn't as far as I know, this is just an example.)  It is this kind of
second-guessing of the meaning of the Vedas that the doctrine of
apaurusheyatva is trying to prevent.  That names are similiar to laukika
names is not relevant.  You have to call them something and these were the
names at hand.


--
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
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