[Advaita-l] PARAMARTHIKA AND VYAVAHARIKA SATYAM

[Siva Senani Nori]

And, to answer the main point about the philosophy of Sayanacharya, it is Advaita Vedanta. Sayancharya, the person, is the brother of Madhava, who later became Vidyaranya the peeThaadhipati of Sringeri math in 14th century and the one who was instrumental in the establishment of the Vijayanagar empire. However the author Sayanacharya seems to be more than one person, and many believe that Sayana himself, Madhava and their students wrote the many works that are attributed to Sayanacharya. While the works attribute to this family are many (including the madhaveeya Sankaravijayam [definitely not the work of brothers in my opinion], madhaveeya dhaatuvritti etc.; Sayana is even said to have given the speed of light!), the book sarvasiddhantasangrah clearly shows that they considered advaitic interpretation of vedanta as the highest truth. To my knowledge, nobody disputes that Sayanacharya was an advaitin.

It might be pertinent to note a few points here:

1. Of the three prasthanas of daSopanishads, BrahmasUtrAs and Geetaa the last two have many commentaries; the Gita continues to inspire even modern leaders like Tilak and Gandhi to give their interpretation, but the 'advaitic' interpretation of Upanishads - if you want to use such a term - is the main commentary on Vedas as such.

2. Neither Sri Ramanujaachaarya nor Srimanmadhvaachaarya wrote commentaries on the Upanishads. To my knowledge, after the time of Vedanta Desika, one Ragaramanujachaarya first wrote a viSishTaadvaitic commentary on the Upanishads, and the portion where we studied this along with Sankaracharya's bhashya, the bulk of it (Rangaramanujachaya's bhashya) did not differ from Bhagavatpaada's bhashya. In places like tattvamasi or the story of two birds, we can see substantial difference.

Regards
Senani
 
 
Thank you Venkat for drawing my attention to the mistake I made.

Dear Krunal ji,

Sayanacharya wrote commentaries to the Four Veda-s. Here is a short
write-up on him:

http://www.hindujagruti.org/hinduism/knowledge/index.php?print/id:206

// 4. Sayanacharya

If anyone has written a commentary on the Vedas after Yaskacharya it
is none other than Sayanacharya. It is because of which that the
latter is glorified everywhere. He has written commentaries on all the
Vedas. In the preface to the Taittiriya Sanhita when indicating as to
the Veda about which He wrote the commentary initially, He says, “The
Yajurveda is like a wall and the pictures drawn on it represent the
Rugveda and the Samaveda. That is precisely why I am discussing the
Yajurveda first.” When writing a commentary on every branch of the
Veda He does it in different style. He also has commentaries on the
Shatapatha, Aitareya, Taittiriya and all the Braahmana holy texts of
the Samaveda to His credit.

Commentators who preceded Sayanacharya are Bhattabhaskarmishra,
Venkatmadhav, etc. and those who followed Him are ones like Uvvat and
Mahidhar. Nevertheless they have written commentaries on any one
Vedasanhita, all of them being in Sanskrut and focusing on the central
theme of sacrificial fires (yadnya) in the Vedas.’(4)    //

The Vedic philosophy is that which takes man step by step to the
ultimate realization of his Atman that is none other than Brahman.
The Vedanta is that portion of the Vedic literature where the higher
goal, purushArtha, moksha is discussed primarily.  The portion I had
quoted in the Article is occurring in this part of the Veda and hence
you see Sayanacharya commenting the way he did.

I apologise for answering a question that you did not ask.

Regards,
subrahmanian.v



On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Venkata Subramanian
<venkat_advaita at yahoo.com> wrote:
> sorry Subramamanian.  I think Krunal is asking about Sayanacharya; not Bhagavat Pada Acharyal.
>
> Thanks & Regards,
> Venkat.
>
> Sadgurubhyo Namah.
>
> --- On Wed, 17/2/10, V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] PARAMARTHIKA AND VYAVAHARIKA SATYAM
> To: makwanakb at googlemail.com, "A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
> Date: Wednesday, 17 February, 2010, 12:09 PM
>
>
> Namaste Krunal ji,
>
> Thank you for your words of appreciation.
>
> Shankaracharya propagated the Vedanta philosophy.  Since it is
> essentially Advaitic in nature, it became popular by this name.  Even
> to this day, after several centuries of His advent, by the term
> 'Vedanta' only 'Advaita' is brought up to one's mind.  Thus Vedanta,
> Advaita and Shankara have become synonyms.
>
> Best regards,
> Om Tat Sat
>
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 11:46 PM,  <makwanakb at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> Jai Siya Ram
>>
>> Subrahmanianji,
>>
>> An excellent and enlightening article on the realities by our scriptures.
>>
>> Thank you for sharing this with us.
>>
>> On a side note, what philosophy did Sayanacharya propogate? Was he of the philosophy of Advaita?
>>
>> Krunal
>> Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange
>>
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________________________________

From: V Subrahmanian <v.subrahmanian at gmail.com>
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
Sent: Wed, February 17, 2010 12:35:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] PARAMARTHIKA AND VYAVAHARIKA SATYAM


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