[Advaita-l] “anRtatvam” according to BhAShyakAra does NOT imply a 3rd 'ontological' existence (prAtibhAsikatvam)

[V Subrahmanian]

Dear Michael ji,

I had said that SSS had not refuted either the Taitttiriya Upanishad or
Shankara's Bhashya on that particular passage where the Satyam Brahma is
stated to have 'become' the satya (vyavahara) and anRta (the mirage water
example given by Shankara).  I had cited SSS's Kannada translation too and
had not seen any footnote where he gives his personal views normally, for
that Bhashya-translation.  If SSS had disagreement with the Upanishad
statement and Shankara's bhashya (where a particular distinction is made
between vyavaharic water and the mirage water, to bring out the Upanishadic
distinction between the 'satyam' and 'anRtam'), and by extension, with
Sureshwaracharya, who labels two satyas: Paramarthika and Vyavaharika,
this would have been the best place.

But the pdf you attach says at the beginning that SSS did refute: Reply:
//That’s incorrect. He (SSS ji) certainly did refute, for example in his
Magnum Opus VedAntaprakriyApratyabhijnA://

But those paragraphs do not refute the Upanishadic statement of 'three'
things: the Paramarthika Satya Brahman and the Vyavaharika satyam world and
a sub-category within that vyavaharika: the anRta.

Nor does the footnote with V.Panoli's words:
//Cf. TaiUP 2.6 BhAShya:
iha punaḥ vyavahāraviṣayamāpekṣikaṃ satyam , mṛgatṛṣṇikādyanṛtāpekṣayā
udakādi
satyamucyate . anṛtaṃ ca tadviparītam |
But here is discussed the relative truth belonging to the plane of ordinary
experience. To
cite for instance, water is said to be real when compared to the water in a
mirage which
is unreal. Anritam: untrue, the opposite of satyam. (V. Panoli)//

say anything about the Taittiriya Upanishad and the bhashya distinction
between the 'satyam' (vyavaharika) and the 'anRtam' (the mirage water,
distinguished by Shankara from the real water).  Here too SSS does not
refute the Tai.Up. and the Bhashya.
If he is in disagreement with this statement of the Tai.Up. and Shankara's
explicit distinguishing between the 'satyam' and anRtam, he must have said
it most ideally here or somewhere. A general treatment by SSS of the term
anRtam does not address this specific instance of the Tai.Up. and Bhashya
as the anRtam term here is completely different from the general
anRtam which could convey the total unreality of the entire non-Brahman.

warm regards
subbu

On Sat, Jan 31, 2026 at 11:30 PM Michael Chandra Cohen <
michaelchandra108 at gmail.com> wrote:

> A quick follow-up from Hishi Ryoji to one of your/our discussions:
>
>
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