[Advaita-l] Shanmatha Sthapanam by Adhisankaracharya

[Kaushik Chevendra]

Namaste.
This is not a new argument being put forward by the opponents of advaita.
Not on a single day they respect adi shankaracharya but when it comes to
this topic suddenly he is a vaishnava.
Regarding your questions, all can be given a single answer. The answer is
he does mention narayana usually when it comes to saguna brahman.
However that in no way proves he didn't accept the worship of other isvara
swaroopas. Everyone has a form of ishta devata and for shankaracharya it
was krishna, however does not put down any other isvara roopas. If I do a
stuti of Krishna will someone ask me why I didn't do a stuti of Rama? The
answer is no. Because they are the same lord in different forms. In the
same way for a true advaitin a stuti of krishna/vishnu will be the stuti of
other isvara roopas as well because they are the same lord.
Now where is the question coming from? Are you an advaitin or not? If you
are posing this question as an advaitin, then why do you want
references only from prasthana traya. In Smartha tradition guru parampara
is very important. Even shankaracharya says in geeta bhashya that
knowledge which doesn't come from parampara must be discarded. And
according to our guru parampara all the bhasyas, not just the prasthana
traya are considered authentic, so the stotras on various devatas are also
written by acharya.
However if you are posing this question as an opponent then you are free to
see Shankaracharya as a vaishnava. Interestingly narada purana and padma
purana say a bhagavatha is one who sees vishnu in all deities.

Namo Narayana

On Mon, 20 Jan 2025 at 08:49, Sangeerth P via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Namaskaram
>
> I was going through a book *Shankararum Vainavamum *(link
> <https://archive.org/details/sava-pki-ao>). This book is in Tamil by
> Puttur
> Krishnaswamy Iyengar swamy. There is a kandana given to this book by
> *Subramanian
> sir* in this
> <
> https://adbhutam.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/sankararum-vai%E1%B9%87avamum-%E0%AE%93%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D-%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%AE%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%9A%E0%AE%A9%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%8D/
> >
> link.
> To Make the long story short, I am very new to Shankaracharya and I am
> eager to know about it. Kindly forgive me if the following questions look
> silly or wrong. I am seriously curious to know the answers. The following
> questions revolve mostly in and around who is the Saguna Brahman that
> Adhisankaraya is telling?
>
> 1. Can you please give me references* only *from* Prastanatraya bashya* of
> Adishankaracharya where he talks about *"him as Shanmatha stapakacharya"*
> and
> *"Siva-Vishnu Abedha". *Dont take references from any other grantas(as
> there are debates if the other grantas are written only by him or by his
> successors.)
>
> 2. If *Adisankaracharya* has even done the Shanmatha stapana why was *Surya
> *put into the list and not *Indra.* As in my limited knowledge, *Indra *is
> the head of all Devas. How to understand Surya as the supreme one if he is
> afraid of someone else (Beeshasma vatapavate ...)?
>
> 3. In the book by *Iyengar Swamy* he even mentions Gita Bhasya of
> Sankaracharya(slokas 9-24,7-23) where Sankara tells that only by
> worshipping Krishna one can attain him. Even if one can argue that he is
> referring to the Supreme Brahman or some extrapolations like this. But why
> do you need to extrapolate or use certain grammatical gymnastics when the
> meaning is clearly evident that he refers to him? What is the necessity to
> extrapolate if Ramanuja/Madhva have taken the direct meaning of Krishna(or
> Vishnu) only for this sloka?
>
> 4. As per one *Panini* sutra we can tell that Nara+Ayana=Naraayana, can
> indicate only one person then how can one understand that Adishankara is
> Shanmata stapanaacharya where he gives equal status for all the 6 gods as
> Saguna Brahman. Then how can he be a Shanmatha stapanacharya? Whenever he
> talks about *padam *he uses the term Vaishnava padam(eg:BG-15-4). Inspite
> of having several other synonymous words for Vyapti, why was Shankara using
> terms like Vishnu padam etc (which are Vaishnavaitic), even if you want to
> tell that vyapti is being talked about by vaishnava padam.
>
> *If you are having some references to cite from Adhishankara kindly cite
> only from Prastanatraya bashyas of his work* and not even from any other
> grantas of Adisankaracharya as there is a lot of debates on if the other
> grantas are even written by him or the successors after him(not even
> from *Vishnu
> sahasranama Bashya* which Puttur swami has used)
>
>
>
> Regards
> Sangeerth P
> 8608658009
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