[Advaita-l] Apoureshyatva - Faith or Logic?

[Balasubramanian Ramakrishnan]

On Wed, Jun 27, 2012 at 3:59 AM, V Subrahmanian
<v.subrahmanian at gmail.com> wrote:

>> There is absolutely nothing contradictory about non-overlapping
>> jurisdictions at the level of pramANa on the one hand and mature
>> philosophies such as the various mImAMsA sysems being able to
>> accommodate different cause-effect models on the other. A philosophy
>> is based on multiple pramANa-s and indeed one of the signal
>> contributions of the pUrva-mImAMsaka-s has been the enunciation of a
>> mature pramANa-shAstra.
>>
>> To be even clearer, let me state that it is the mImAMsA systems which
>> lay out what the pramANa-s are and what are their areas of
>> applicability.
>>
>
> I had a detailed talk about the theory of evolution viz-a-viz the Vedic
> tradition with the widely admitted authority in pUrvamImAmsA shAstra, Dr
> Mani Dravid SastrigaL.  In just one remark, a true mark of an eminent
> scholar of his genre, he dismissed the possibility of accommodating the
> above theory into the Vaidika method of thinking:  He said, in Tamil: 'avA
> tarkattai vecchunDuthAne chollara, adu eppaDi oru tIrmAnamAgum?' [They say
> only based on tarka, logic.  How can it be a conclusive proof?] And went on
> to allude to the Sutra bhashya on tarkApratiShThAnAt where it is
> established that 'a conclusion based on tarka today can be unsettled by a
> more efficient tarka of tomorrow.  It is impossible to bring together at
> one platform, at one point of time, the logicians of all the times of past
> present and future and determine things.'
>

Unfortunately this quote refers to the true nature of reality or
brahman which cannot be settled by tarka and is quite different from
the way it is being used here (in the realm of "creation" or rather
transformation of one thing into another). Ramesh has already referred
to the passages on creation and the interpretation by Sankara in the
sUtra bhAShya. There seems to be a concerted effort in misinterpreting
what Ramesh is saying - all he is saying is that the vedantic view is
*not contradicted* by theories of evolution. Whys is this so difficult
to understand?

Rama