[Advaita-l] Traditional Scholarship vs Modern Pseudo-Intellectualism

[Kalyan K]

Dear Sri Rajaram-ji,


You say -

>We should accept a scholar as an expert in a text or a tradition only if he
>knows the related texts by heart.

The above requirement of yours can become very stringent if we are
considering a large work like the Mahabharata. The Mahabharata, in
some versions, exceeds 100,000 verses and memorizing such a text poses
great difficulties. Add to that the fact that there are multiple
versions of the Mahabharata.

Similar difficulties may be encountered for memorizing other
voluminous works like Ramayana, Puranas etc.

Please also note that, according to the above yardstick of yours, one
must also know the commentaries of Sankara by-heart (apart from the
sruti and smriti source texts that he commented upon) in order to be
called as a true scholar of advaita. That, in my opinion, is asking
for too much.

Regards

Kalyan