[Advaita-l] Advaita and Madhyamika Buddhism

[Bhaskar YR]

praNAms
Hare Krishna

This topic is briefly dealt with in a work called Vichara Sagara - you may be familiar with it. There the author, Nishchala dasa considers the question whether vedAnta shAstra needs to necessarily be in the Sanskrit language or not and concludes that 1) provided that the teaching is in line with shruti 2) is taught by a shrotriya guru, is sufficient for jnAna. The important thing is that the message is shruti sammata and is delivered by a competent authority.

>  if that is the case then the status of 'shruti' as antya pramANa will be in question.  I have heard something like this earlier also, saying any 'advaita' vAkya in any text in any language would be  sufficient to fetch the 'ekatva' jnana to eligible adhikAri.  That means we don’t have to rely entirely on shruti in Sanskrit as pramANa for brahma jignAsa and realization. Any text (some novel also) would sometime be sufficient for realizing the Atmaikatva jnana when the same thing heard through one's guru.  Under these circumstances what exactly does it mean when saMpradAya says shruti is the antya pramANa in brahma jignAsa and brahma jnana,  when any paurusheya texts / sentences also would be capable of giving that jnana??!!

Therefore the answer to the first part of your question, "can the teaching be in a language other than in Sanskrit", at least in my view, is yes. 

>  ofcourse it is agreeable that Atmaikatva jnana does not bound by any language, but again how can this stand be tenable with the shruti as untya pramANa!!?? Just wondering.



The answer to the second part of your question, "can the learning be through a book, without a live guru", is sadly no. Of course there can be exceptions to the rule, but we need to observe the rule, not the exceptions.

>  again, a (any paurusheya) book in any language taught by living guru directly to his pupil is sufficient without adhering to the traditional obligation that shruti is the ultimate pramANa?? And yes, I think that will be the case as we have jnAni-s from other varNa-s also who donot have adhikARa for vedAdhyayana.  

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar