[Advaita-l] Fwd: [advaitin] Re: Prashthana traya

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Dear Suniji,

My suggestions are the following..

1. Any analysis of authorship of traditional texts should look at *all* the
previous academic scholarly output. Indian scholars like V Raghavan and
Kunjunni Raja, German scholars like Paul Hacker and Japanese scholars like
Hajime Nakamura and Sengaku Mayeda have all studied the gItAbhAshya and
affirmed that doubts about its authorship by Sankara bhagavatpAda are
baseless. All these clarifying studies are as accessible today as the one
or two scholarly articles expressing such doubts.

2. From the perspective of tradition, we should attempt to become
sampradAya-vit-s, and not like those who forever stay on the outside
looking in and commenting about it.

3. We should resist the urge to make fanciful and speculative suggestions
that have no basis in anything tangible, whether from the perspective of
modern academic scholarship or from the perspective of tradition. To simply
postulate vidyASankara as a possible author of the gItAbhAshya instead of
Sankara bhagavatpAda is unnecessary and quite meaningless, in my opinion.

Finally, please note that it was only because Sankara bhagavatpAda
commented on the sUtra-s, gItA and the upanishat-s that these three came to
be known as the nyAya prasthAna, smRti prasthAna and Sruti prasthAna in
later times. To think otherwise is to be historically very naive!

Namaskaras,
Vidyasankar



On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Dear Subbuji,
>
> It appears to me that the Prasthantraya division was first suggested by
> Sri Madhusudana Sarasvati.
>
> As regards the Bhagavadgita bhshya it appears to me that it was probably
> written by the great scholar Sri Vidyashankara, who was born 81 (or is it
> 76) yeas after the passing away of Sri Ramanujacharya. Sri Vidyashankara
> wrote the Bhagavad Gita bhashya to establish it as an advaitic text by
> refuting the Vishishtadvaita interpretation in  the Bhagavadgitabhashya of
> Sri Ramanujacharya.
>
> Regards,
> skb
>
>
> --------------------------------------------
>