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

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

Lord Ganesh memorized and understood instantaneously as Vyasa dictated.
Sage Kapila did know all the Vedas according to Shankara (Vishnu
Sahasranama). Sri Vaishnavas claim that Koorathazhwar memorized entire
commentary of Shankara to refute.

If we dont know the text by heart, we should not claim to be an expert. I
cannot say that I know your name if I cannot say it is for example
Thiruchirappalli Rajaram Venkataramani Iyer.

The other option is to say that I have learnt the essence from my acharya
and interpret consistent with that but academic scholars cannot claim that.

On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 2:51 PM, Kalyan K <kalyankc.81 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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