Question re: Gaudapada Karikas.

[Guest guest]

I have a question regarding the gauDapAda kArikAs attached to the mANDUkya

upanishad, that I hope some learned member of this list can clarify.

 

I have been told that in the SrI bhAshya, Sri Ramanuja cites kArikA 1.16,

prefacing the quote with the words: "jIvasyaiva hi nirodha.h SrUyate."

Does this mean that he is giving to this quotation the authority of

Sruti?

 

To place the question in context, the advaita school considers all the

kArikAs to be the composition of gauDapAda. Hence they are not included

under the term Sruti. On the other hand, the dvaita school of Madhva

considers the first 27 kArikAs to be Sruti, i.e. not composed by a human

author. Is a definitive position on this taken by any of the leading

authors of viSishTAdvaita texts? The seSvara mImAm.sA text of Sri Vedanta

Desika perhaps?

 

Regards,

 

S. Vidyasankar

[Guest guest]

This is an interesting question. I do not have a complete answer. I thought

I could share some thoughts regarding this. In the Mandukya upanishad

bhasyas I had from "Ranga Ramanuja" and a gloss from "Uttamoor Veera

Raghavacharya", I found a statement in sanskrit which translates to:

 

"What Sankara school considers to be the work of Gaudapada (Gaudapada

Karika) is considered by Madhva school as Sruti. Taking a similar view,

Kura Narayana one of the Visistadvaitic teachers also accept that the

portion (or whole) of karika as sruti.

"

 

But the surprising fact is that in that "bhasya of Mandukya" by Ranga

Ramanuja, only the 4 chapters of Mandukya is explained without reference to

karikas. This makes me think that even though some visistadvaita scholars

agreed with Madhva, probably the a majority of the rest do not agree that

those karikas are sruti.

 

I am not sure about sribhasya. I have to check it. when I get time...... I

know for sure that Ramanuja quotes from the Karikas in other portions of the

Sribhasya : the famous statement " anadi mayaya suptho yadaa jeevo

prabhudyate...." or some thing like that. This, I have heard Dr. N.S

Anantha rangachar state in his lectures on Sribhasya.

 

Krishna

 

Krishna

 

At 11:02 PM 9/9/96 -0700, you wrote:

>

>I have a question regarding the gauDapAda kArikAs attached to the mANDUkya

>upanishad, that I hope some learned member of this list can clarify.

>

>I have been told that in the SrI bhAshya, Sri Ramanuja cites kArikA 1.16,

>prefacing the quote with the words: "jIvasyaiva hi nirodha.h SrUyate."

>Does this mean that he is giving to this quotation the authority of

>Sruti?

>

>To place the question in context, the advaita school considers all the

>kArikAs to be the composition of gauDapAda. Hence they are not included

>under the term Sruti. On the other hand, the dvaita school of Madhva

>considers the first 27 kArikAs to be Sruti, i.e. not composed by a human

>author. Is a definitive position on this taken by any of the leading

>authors of viSishTAdvaita texts? The seSvara mImAm.sA text of Sri Vedanta

>Desika perhaps?

>

>Regards,

>

>S. Vidyasankar

>

>

>

>

>

Krishna Kalale

619-658-5612 (phone)

619-658-2115 (fax)

[Guest guest]

I am grateful for the responses from Drs. Krishna Kalale and Sadagopan,

on my query re: Mandukya upanishad. Just a few comments on the issue. I

apologize for the rather technical nature of what follows.

 

On 11 Sep 1996, Sri V. Sadagopan wrote:

> 1. Sesvaramimasa : Here Swami Desikan's

> focus has been described as the defense of

> Mimaamsa as "Ekasastra" , a single science

> made up of Purvamimaamsa of Jaimini and

> Uttaramimaamsa (Vedaantha), the elaboration

> of Brahma Sutras of Badarayana . The Acharya

> maintains that Purvamimaamsa is in harmony with the

> Bramasutras and not in opposition . Swami continues and

> states that Jaimini acccepted Isvara as the Universal Lord.

> It is not clear that we might find help on the

> question of Sri Vidyasankar from here.

 

I thought as much. The question about the Karikas is probably too

specific. However, let me clarify a little bit. As I understand Purva

Mimamsa, the classification of Vedic texts into categories like

vidhi, mantra, brahmana and arthavada is a prime concern of Jaimini's

Sutras. Under this classification, it is probably not very problematic to

club the Mandukya upanishad and the Karikas together, as arthavada. The

Purva Mimamsa school is generally willing to tolerate some non-Sruti

character in the arthavada portions. Only the mantra portions and some of

the brahmanas are strictly considered to be Sruti, hence non-authored.

 

However, the advaita school rejects the contention that the upanishads are

just arthavada. Some portions within an upanishad may be described as

arthavada in the commentaries, but the upanishads as a whole are

thought to be more than arthavada. This view upholds the Sruti

(non-authored) character of the upanishads. I am under the impression that

the Sruti nature of the upanishads is upheld by all schools of vedAnta.

 

In this context, the question whether part of the kArikAs are included

under Sruti or not, is just a particular instance of a broader issue. The

advaita school handles the Sruti nature of the upanishads by suggesting a

two-fold division between karma-kanda and jnana-kanda in the Vedic texts.

This also allows the application of Jaimini's Sutras primarily to the

karma-kanda oriented view, and Badarayana's Sutras to the jnana-kanda

oriented view. If both these sets of Sutras are viewed as parts of the

same whole, as in Visishtadvaita, it is not clear to me what the

implications are, with respect to the status of the upanishads as

arthavada (possibly authored by human beings) or as not arthavada

(non-authored). Unlike the more involved philosophical concepts, this is a

more basic issue of textual analysis. There has to be agreement among

Vedanta schools, as regards the basic character of the source texts,

because of the sUtras, "tat tu samanvayAt" and "SAstra-yoNitvAt". Hence my

question whether Sri Desika goes into this at all, and what his analysis

would mean for the Karikas of the Mandukya upanishad.

>

> 2.The Book by Sri S.S. Raghavachar (Sri Ramanuja on Upanishads)

> might be a good source to go over the author's

> view on the place of Mandukya Upanishad & Sri Bhashyam.

>

> The author starts off with a reference to the dubious nature of

> Mandukya Upanishad to begin with.He

> is referring to the genuine and ancient

> aspect of this Upanishad in comparison to

> the other Upanishads.He also mentions

 

I hesitate to take a "fundamentalist" view on the relative ancientness of

some upanishads over others, but it must be remembered that the

attribution of specific ages to the upanishads is quite foreign to the

vedAnta and mImAmsA traditions. At least with respect to the principal

upanishads that are quoted by the earliest commentators, the idea that

some are more ancient than the others is not entertained by any of the

Acharyas.

>From the point of view of critical scholarship, the question of age might

be of some interest. However, such scholarship presumes that all the

upanishads, as also all the samhitA portions of the vedas, were written

down specifically at some point of time by one or more human authors. Such

a view is completely rejected in both Vedanta and Mimamsa. The Sruti,

being unauthored, is strictly held to be beyond time. Now, if the Mandukya

upanishad is granted the status of Sruti, the question of its age, as

compared to say, that of the Brhadaranyaka upanishad should be

superfluous, at least to the vedAntins. Accepting relative age of

different portions of the vedas requires adjustments or reinterpretations

of other aspects of the philosophical school also. Again, the demarcation

between upanishad and kArikA becomes an issue, because it is definitely

known that gauDapAda is a historical personality, who lived during a

specific period in time.

 

> that Adi Sankara does not quote directly from it in any

> of his Bhashya granthas.

 

However, there is a commentary on the Mandukya upanishad itself by Adi

Sankara, where the upanishad proper and the kArikAs are identified as

distinct. Now, it may be doubted whether this bhAshya is genuinely

Sankara's or not, but quite a few scholars are inclined to say that it

is a genuine composition of Sankara's. Still, we also have to take into

account that post-Sankaran advaita writers, including Anandagiri,

specifically identify all the Karikas as having been written by Gaudapada,

and we may take it that they have just put in writing the traditional view

of the advaita school, that was passed on in oral teaching.

 

> He points out that Adi Sankara and Sureswara

> quote from the Karikas , an elaboration of

> the Upanishad.He refers to the one passage

> from Karika (I.16) being quoted by Sri Ramanuja.

> Adi Sankara's handling of Karikas and

> Upanishad as a whole is referred to.

 

I presume Sri Raghavachar says this on the basis of statements made by

Paul Deussen. This idea, that Adi Sankara treats the Upanishad and Karika

as a whole, has since been discredited. In the Brahma Sutra Bhashya, only

the Karikas are quoted, not the upanishad itself. Whenever the Karika is

quoted, both Sankara and Suresvara refer to "Sampradaya-vit" or to the

name Gauda in one form or the other. And in Sankara's commentary on the

Upanishad and Karikas, the respective portions are clearly separated from

each other. So it is quite mistaken to say that the Upanishad and Karikas

are treated as a whole by Sankara.

 

> Further,

> Kuranarayana Muni's acceptance of part of the

> Karikas as inclusions in the text of the Upanishad

> is close to the position of Madhva-commentator on

> this Upanishad-where he takes some of the Karikas

> as part of the Upanishad. In summary , the boundaries betwen

> the Upanishad and the Karikas are uncertain.

>

 

Yes, it certainly is intriguing that the first book of the Karikas is

always found closely associated with the text of the upanishad. There is

no confusion about the other three books, as they are accepted on all

hands to be Gaudapada's work. However, note that the very name "Karika"

implies that it is an exposition on some pre-existing thing. That is what

makes this question so interesting.

 

The dvaita school's inclusion of 27 verses as Sruti seems quite arbitrary

to me. There are 29 verses in the first book of the Karikas, and sure

enough, the last two verses mention the absence of all duality. Separating

the first 27 verses from the last two verses of the same section of the

Karikas does not appear to be justified.

 

 

Namo Narayanaya,

 

S. Vidyasankar

[Guest guest]

> translation of the Sribhashya. Thibaut has misidentified

> some quotations as being from the Karikas. Specifically,

> there is a quote, ``ajAyamAno bahudhA ...'' which can be

> either from GK or from the TaittirIya AraNyaka, i.e.,

> second anuvAka of the purusha sUkta.

 

I don't have the GK text handy, but if this quote is the one said to

be Karika I.16 quoted as Sruti, that puts a completely different light on

the question.

 

I hope I didn't offend anybody with my comments about the age of the

upanishads, and the Mimamsa & Vedanta Sutras. I did not pay much attention

to this in the past, but recently I have come to think that the Vedanta

traditions cannot be true to both the Mimamsasutras and Brahmasutras if

they accept that the texts were written at different points of time.

Unless they rationalize things by saying that mantra-drashtas lived at

different periods of time, but Sruti is not affected thereby. Still, the

upanishads don't have the luxury of having mantra-drashtas, because they

are not mantra.

 

Vidya

[Guest guest]

On Tue, 17 Sep 1996, Mani Varadarajan wrote:

> I researched a little more on the Karika quotation.

> Abhinava Ranganatha Parakala Mahadesikan wrote a commentary

> called "gUDhArthasangraha" on the jijnAsAadhikaraNa of the

> Sribhashya. Without any hesitation, he says that Ramanuja's

> quotation in the Advaitic pUrvapaksha is from the Gaudapada

> Karika (i.16, I believe -- speaking about the self waking up

> from deep slumber).

 

This raises one question. Given that GK I.16 is quoted in the advaitic

pUrvapaksha, is Ramanuja quoting GK I.16 as Sruti, or is he saying that

the advaitin quotes GK I.16 as Sruti? It all depends on how the whole

sentence is structured, I suppose. If the former, that raises the

question whether the word "SrUyate" means that he takes GK (at least part

of it) to be Sruti. If the latter, that could mean he is using the word

"SrUyate" in a less technical sense. It may say nothing about whether he

considers GK to be Sruti or not. In fact, the non-quotation of GK anywhere

else could mean that he does not think it to be Sruti.

 

Are you still on the Indology list? If so, you might like to post a note

to it in this regard. Howard Resnick from Harvard (Hrid) asked

this question originally on Indology, to which I responded briefly. I

believe the question came up while you were away in India.

 

 

Vidya