[Advaita-l] Adhyasa Bhashya - Reflections On Scope And Relevance

[Vikram Jagannathan]

Namaskaram,

A quick addition - full reference to Shri Mahaperiyaval's quote:
https://lakshminarayanlenasia.com/articles/HinduDharma.pdf
Part 12, Chapter 3, Page 452 in the PDF.

prostrations,
Vikram


On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 10:28 AM Vikram Jagannathan <vikkyjagan at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Namaskaram Subbu ji, Sudhanshu ji, Krishnaprakasha ji,
>
> Thank you for your responses. Your responses validate my current
> understanding. Since this article would be shared with scholars from other
> sampradhayams, I am requesting for additional pairs of eyes to possibly
> double-check accuracy and correct representation of mainstream Advaita
> siddhanta.
>
> There is a modern popular view amongst others that, restating the 3rd
> question from the original thread, Swami Sankaracharya’s Advaita Vedanta as
> a whole - and Adhyasa Bhashya in particular - arose primarily as a
> pro-Vedic response to Buddhist and Jaina critiques, thereby helping
> displace much of those philosophies from India; and that, it is claimed, is
> the full scope of Advaita Siddhanta.
>
> This to me undermines the true value of Advaita siddhanta and also
> patronizes it in an attempt to reconcile with others.
>
> H. H. Kanchi Kamakoti Mahaperiyaval, in the 3rd chapter of the book Hindu
> Dharma, has communicated the following:
>
> Many believe that Buddhism ceased to have a large following in India
>> because it came under the attack of Sankara. This is not true. There are
>> very few passages in the Acarya's commentaries critical of that religion, a
>> religion that was opposed to the Vedas. Far more forcefully has he
>> criticised the doctrines of Sankhya and Mimamsa that respect the Vedic
>> tradition. He demolishes their view that Isvara is not the creator of the
>> world and that it is not he who dispenses the fruits of our actions. He
>> also maintains that Isvara possesses the laksanas or characteristics
>> attributed to him by the Vedas and the Brahmasutra and argues that there
>> can be no world without Isvara and that it is wrong to maintain that our
>> works yield fruits on their own. It is Isvara, his resolve, that has
>> created this world, and it is he who awards us the fruits of our actions.
>> We cannot find support in his commentaries for the view that he was
>> responsible for the decline of Buddhism in India.
>
>
> prostrations,
> Vikram
>
>
> On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 9:09 AM Krishnaprakasha Bolumbu <
> kpbolumbu01 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Pranamam
>>
>> To say that “the later acharyas perfected what Shankara only began” is
>> really a sectarian statement, not a philosophical one. Each of the later
>> teachers — Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha, Nimbarka, and others — certainly
>> gave their own interpretations of the Brahma Sutras, but always in relation
>> to the basic framework of Adhyasa that Shankara had already set. Each of
>> them, in one way or another, takes a position on whether adhyasa is real or
>> unreal, whether ignorance has a positive existence or is only an absence,
>> and whether liberation is based on knowledge or on devotion. In that sense,
>> Shankara’s Adhyasa Bhashya becomes the philosophical ground zero for all
>> later Vedanta traditions, even for those who disagreed with him.
>>
>> KP
>>
>