[Advaita-l] [advaitin] Works of Sri Vidyashankara

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Dear Sunilji,

Please, once again, my entreaty to you is this - if you want to ask
historical questions, you must be prepared to evaluate historical sources
with critical care.

Your statement,

"I feel that as Sri Vedantadeshika himself was a disciple of Sri
Vidyashankara in Kanchipuram, he would have certainly valued Sri
Vidyashankara's bhashya on the Bhagavadgita,"

is based on two unsubstantiated and extraordinary assumptions, on top of
which you have added your own suppositions. This is no way to approach such
problems, if you want to get any sort of clarity on the past of our
tradition.

That SrI vedAntadeSika was a disciple of SrI vidyASankara is the first
unsubstantiated and extraordinary assumption.
That SrI vidyASankara was teaching at Kanchipuram is the second.

That Sri vidyASankara must have written the bhagavadgItA bhAshya is your
own unsubstantiated and extraordinary supposition.

Proof by assertion, proof by repetition and conclusions by speculation are
the surest ways to lead yourself astray in such questions. I am sorry, but
this is an almost cavalier attitude towards the subject and is basically
Sruta-hAni plus aSruta-kalpanA.

What exactly is the problem with accepting that the gItAbhAshya was written
by Adi Sankara? Just because one or two quite recent scholars, writing in
the English language, have raised unnecessary doubts? What about the many
other recent scholars, also writing in the English language, who have laid
all those doubts to rest, with their more detailed analyses of the texts
from our tradition? Why don't you examine those studies in some detail? If
you need references, please see Hajime Nakamura's two volume History of
Early Vedanta, or Sengaku Mayeda's introduction to his translation of the
upadeSasAhasrI. All the necessary journal articles that touch upon the
authorship of the gItAbhAshya are referenced in those books.

Best regards,
Vidyasankar


On Wed, Dec 28, 2016 at 1:36 AM, Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Namaste,
>
> I feel that as Sri Vedantadeshika himself was a disciple of Sri
> Vidyashankara in Kanchipuram, he would have certainly valued Sri
> Vidyashankara's   bhashya on the Bhagavadgita, even though he might have
> shafted later on to Sri Ramanujacharya's camp, Secondly had Sri
> Vidyashankara not composed an advaitic version of the Bhagavad Gita
> bhashya, we would certainly have had a bhasya by the eminent Sri Vidyaranya.
>
> Secondly the order given by Vedantadeeshika as follows need not
> necessarily have been in the quoted chronological order. The chronological
> order could have been   पिशाच - रन्तिदेव - गुप्त  - यादवप्रकाश -  शङ्कर -
> भास्कर -  नारायणार्य -  यज्ञस्वामि -  प्रभृतिभि:, If Adi Shankara would
> have composed the Bhagavadgita bhashya there was no need of Sri
> Yadavaprakasha to write another bhashya on the Bhagavad Gita bhashya.
>
> Would you kindly help us by quoting  the exact words / concepts in  the
> Ramanuja-bhashya, which can prove that the  Shankara's bhaṣya preceded
> Ramanuja's  bhāṣya and that Ramanuja-bhashya indeed refuted
> Shankara-bhashya of the Bhagavad gita specifically and that what Sri
> Ranujacharya wrote was not a general refutation of Adi Shankara's advaitic
> views.
>
> Regards,
> Sunil KB
>