[Advaita-l] dakSiNAmUrti stOtra from sUta saMhita

[Sunil Bhattacharjya]

Dear Satishji,

It is unfortunate but true that those who are well versed in Veda and Vedanta have not been told for what reason a Vedantic should consider the Tantra. Nobody mentioned anywhere  why Adi Sankara felt the need to write bhashya on the Lalta Trisati Bhashya after writing bhashyas on the Upanishadas, Brahmasutra and the Bhagavad Gita? Nobody ever said why Ubhaybharati asked Adi Sankara questions on some topics pertaining to conjugal life. Was it just to test his knowledge in that area and thus to save her husband from defeat  or was there any other reason?


I think that is further delving into this area in an Advaita forum may not be pleasant.

Regards,
Sunil KB



________________________________
 From: Satish Arigela <satisharigela at yahoo.com>
To: A discussion group for Advaita Vedanta <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> 
Sent: Thursday, June 21, 2012 5:18 AM
Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] dakSiNAmUrti stOtra from sUta saMhita
 


From: Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>
> I condemn your intemperate rant and warn you such things have no place in advaita-l. Even more unforgivably your criticism isn't even marginally based on fact.
 
We will get to the criticism part shortly. You can be assured that your warnings/threats will have zero effect on me, so I suggest that you shut your mouth.
 
>If such a thing were true (and I don't believe it is) I fail to see the relevance here.  No historian has claimed "abrahamic" influence on the kurma purana or devibhagavata purana or suta samhita (which is part of the skanda purana.)
 
Though a generic statement, I was also referring to Sriram. But first read clearly or get clarified the intent before sending a response. There was no claim of an Abrahamic influence, but a mere observation that some smArta-s seem to behave that way.
Sriram being a specific example for a specific case.
 
>Discrimination doesn't mean "whatever offends my pet theories."  In the case of the allah upanishad it is discarded because it is such an anomaly. It has no relationship whatsoever to any of the other members of the class of works called upanishad.  The shloka under >contention on the other hand is very much in the mainstream of Smarta thought.
 
Agree with the discrimination part. However it is easy to see that there are no pet theories involved here atleast from my side.
 
>Uh there was no blind quoting.  The very poster you were responding to explained the implications of that shloka.
 
To dwell on the implications of a shloka which is inaccurate and does not take into acount the complete picture on a topic is not any different from "bilndly quoting"(meaning: beleieving in the meaning of the shloka without giving the thought as to whether this is true?, accurate? , reflects the ground reality? etc)
 
>It establishes that abheda bhavana is the yardstick by which superiority is to be measured.  Some tantrika margas may have it, many do not.  How do we sort out which is which?  By reference to shruti and smrti which is abheda throughout.  (Atleast according to the >Advaita >Vedantic view which is the only one which concerns us on this list.)
 
You can have your own so called advaita yard sticks or twigs but that does not give you any authority to inaccurately represent any tradition whether vaidika or tAntrika. Shruti smriti being abheda is nothing  more than one group's claim. There are others who use the very same shruti smriti to suggest the exact opposite and to derive something similar but a different position.
 
Going by your words above, the generic statement in the sUta saMhita, about tAntrika-s must be inaccurate. Is it not?
 
>The Smarta attitude towards tantra as towards other types of ritual and devotional practices is not to reject them outright but to take what is good (as per our definition of good) in them and discard the rest.
 
Yes, well known and common knowledge. So?
 
>That's certainly a sentiment I can get behind but what relation does it have to the current topic?  On what grounds do you call the idea that for smartas, tantras are only acceptable insofar as they are in harmony with the Vedas, "vague" or "late" or "interpolated"?  (I suppose >I >should give you biased but as there is no 100% objective view it doesn't mean much.)
 
Part of that depended on a few things that I know about the person who said it. Anyway, the objection was not to the statement about smArta-s accepting only those tantra-s which are in harmony with shruti. It is about the later statement, which is loose and says generalizes about tAntrika-s. The part which says this is why tAntrika-s do not get moxa etc etc..
 
That aside, historically, smArta-s did adopt tantra-s which are not in harmony with shruti/smriti but making some changes to rituals. And these are copied wholesale into the purANa-s, many times without even changing the basic text from the root tantra-s.
I am not implying such copying is bad... or that it should not be done. I was only saying, copying from tantra-s wholesale like this and then making statements against them is not a honest thing to do. This is the reason for using the words intellectual dishonesty.
 
>The shloka in question comes from the puranas which are expressly said to be for bringing the vaidika marga to all people. 
 
The shaiva-s, vaiShNava-s and other Agamic/tAntrika groups have similar material meant for the laity.
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