[Advaita-l] [advaitin] The Bhashyas of Adi Shankara

Vidyasankar Sundaresan svidyasankar at gmail.com
Sun Jan 8 03:11:11 CST 2017


On Jan 6, 2017 11:03 PM, "Sunil Bhattacharjya via Advaita-l" <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:
>
> Dear Subbuji,
>
> I think Sri  Nava Shankara was indeed a great scholar and if I remember
correctly the manuscript, which Pathak found and on that basis he (Pathak)
wrote a paper, Nava (Abhinava) Shankara was born  in 788 CE in Chidambaram.
This Nava Shankara is reported to have also written many texts including
bhashyas and had gone to Kashmoir as well as to Kailash.
>

Dear Sunilji,

I have read Pathak's paper in the Indian Antiquary. It says nothing about
Nava Shankara or about Chidambaram. The paper attributes the date 788 CE to
Adi Shankara and nobody else. You cannot cite Pathak in support of this
fanciful theory of an 8th century Nava Shankara.

>
There might have some confusion in the past as the name of both Adi
Shankara and the Nava Shankara was Shankara.  It appears that
Anantaanandagiri  had written a biography of Nava Shanaka.  Antarkar had
done some work on the shankaravijayas  as part of his PhD work but did not
continue that work to sort out all confusions
>

Sorry, anantAnandagiri also says nothing about Nava Shankara. His text
claims to be an account only of Adi Shankara. However, it is an extremely
problematic text.

At the risk of sounding like I'm doing self-promotion, please note that I
have published an extensive paper in the year 2000, published in The
International Journal of Hindu Studies, examining Antarkar's papers as well
as many of the original Sankaravijaya texts. I have sent this by email to
you as well. I am only mentioning this here so that others following this
thread are aware of it.

I too hope that further research is taken up on these texts, but I hope
that whoever does it adopts sound research methodology and works towards
clarifying matters rather than confusing them even further.

Regards,

Vidyasankar

> May be there is scope for more research and hope some university or some
organization will sponsor PhD level research in this area.
>
> Regards,
> Sunil KB
> --------------------------------------------
> On Fri, 1/6/17, V Subrahmanian via Advaita-l <advaita-l at lists.advaita-
vedanta.org> wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: [Advaita-l] [advaitin] The Bhashyas of Adi Shankara
>  To: "Venkatraghavan S" <agnimile at gmail.com>, "A discussion group for
Advaita Vedanta" <advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
>  Date: Friday, January 6, 2017, 1:39 AM
>
>  On Fri, Jan 6, 2017 at
>  1:56 PM, Venkatraghavan S via Advaita-l <
>  advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org>
>  wrote:
>
>  > Namaste Sri
>  Vidyasankar,
>  > The number of the works
>  that are called bhAshya in the mAdhavIya Sankara
>  > vijaya (I sent the references earlier)
>  when read in conjunction with the
>  >
>  DiNDima appear to be 16 in number. The next verse in the
>  Sankara vijaya
>  > says that Adi Sankara
>  wrote innumerable granthAs such as upadeSa sAhasri,
>  > so these are apparently classified in a
>  different category compared to
>  >
>  bhAShyas.
>  >
>
>  There is also a text called
>  'hastāmalaka-bhāṣyam' which is admitted in
>  the
>  tradition to be a commentary penned by
>  Shankara on the verses given out by
>  the
>  disciple Hastamalaka. This text is also published by the
>  Vani Vilas
>  Press, Srirangam.
>
>  regards
>  vs
>
>
>
>  >
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