Vidya SAnkar's mail on appayya diksita

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At 01:58 AM 9/10/97 -0700, Vidyasankar Sundaresan wrote:

>

>The quotations setting forth that SrI nArAyaNa is parabrahman cannot be

>disputed. However, I would like to point out that similar vedic quotations

>can be found about rudra, indra, varuNa and other deities. Jan Gonda's

>text, "Visnuism and Sivaism" (Athlone Press, London) gives a very large

>list of references that one can look up. SrIkaNTha's sUtrabhAshya and

>appayya dIkshita's SivArkamaNidIpikA give a large number of such vedic

>quotations which say that Siva is the greatest parabrahman.

 

 

Before writing a reply to this email I did consult a number of pundits in

India where I spent a good 5 weeks regarding similar issues. Mani recently

has written a good email regarding this which was, I think posted by Sri

Vidya Sundaresan himself.

 

I heard the following regarding Appayya Diksita:

 

He was an admirer of Sri Vedanta Desika and did write a gloss on one of his

works. He was an Advaiti and also a saivite even though he did have a lot

of vishnu bhakti also. His grand ma was a srivaisnavite!!. It seems once

he was upset by a statement from one othe vaisnava acharyas which made

him sort of vishnu-hater (temporarily) OR at the behest of his

followers or friends he wanted to re-interpret all vedic statements in

support of siva (parvati pati). He goes on arguing that all words such as

vishnu, siva, rudra, isvara etc. can be interepreted as applicable to siva

(parvati pati) since they are general words which just indicate an

attribute. for example: vishnu means all pervading. but does not

specify who it is and hence it can be understood that parvati-pati siva

could be the all pervading one. similarly, siva meand auspiscious any

one auspiscious can be called siva. rudra- means ruk dravayati it rudrah -

one who melts away all diseases including the calamity of samsara. any one

can fit this description since it is general in sense.

 

a panini sutra in ashtadhyayi ( purva-padat samjnyayam agah ) which means

in short ( since my grammar teacher N.T srinivasaiengar of bangalore,

supposed to be acclaimed as a master in vyakarana by all matadhipatis of

all the three schools - gave me a big lecture on this sutra recently), if

a samjna is intended, na-kara gets a Na-kara (adesha). ie. when a specific

person is intended by a word the na- will be replaced by Na.

 

example : ramayana is a story of any person whose name is rama

 

but ramayaNa is the story of only that rama who is intended by adikavi

valmiki!!

 

similarly narayana is any person who is explained by the term: naranam

ayanam ie. the goal and the support for naras ie. imperishables which are

jivas and prakriti. But if by this term narayana, a specific person is

intended then the language uses narayaNa. Since Vedas use the term

narayaNa and not narayana, the intention of this term narayaNa can be

used only for a specific person. who is this specific person?

 

Note the verses:

 

sat eva soumya idam aseet ekam eva advitiyam : Oh somya, sat alone

existed in the beginning without a second (chandogya upanisad)

 

atma va idam ekam eva aseet ( aitereya) Only atma existed in t he beginning

 

etc. only give a general term which can apply to any individual ie. atma,

sat, etc are general terms which indicate adi-karanatva or cause of all

causes.

 

But the verse of mahopanisad :

 

Eko ha vai narayaNa aseet. Na brahma, Na isano, Ne me vidyuto.....

 

Only NarayaNa existed in the beginning, Not Brahma (4 faced) Not Isa or

three eyed siva (note sanach pratyaya in isana indicates siva) and not the

lightning or stars etc.

 

gives the meaning that : sat, atma etc. apply only to a specific person

NarayaNa. who again is the purusa (primal cause as explained there) in

the purusa-sukta whose wives are Hri and Lakshmi.

 

NarayaNa param brahma tatvam NarayaNah parah of (taittiriya 4th

acceptable to all schools) also support this idea. The other famous verse

: NarayaNaya vidmahe vasudevaya dhimahi tanno vishnuh prachodayat -

equates NarayaNa with Vishnu and Vasudeva.

 

This being the case our Appayya Dikshita HIMSELF agrees in one of his works :

 

"I would have made all the words to refer to Siva (parvati pati) but

unfortunately this pain ful Na-kara in NarayaNa is bothering me and my

hands are tied since big boss panini is involved- who cannot be ignored by

any respectable pundit of sanskrit"

 

for the very same reason : our Alavandar says in his sloka :

 

Narayanah tvayi na mrishyati vaidikah kah : which true vaidika (one who

respects vedas) can afford to not accept narayaNa as the para tattva?

 

By the way one of the students of parakala mutt jeers, Kottamangalam

Varadacharya, has written a book called :

 

Sri Kanta samalochana in sanskrit which analyses the authorship, date etc

of Srikanta bhasya. He decides that Srikanta bhasya is not ancient and

recent. I brought a copy of that book from parakala mutt. Srikanta bhasya

is a siva-visisitadvaita work and apparently has borrowed the

visistadvaitic thought from Ramanuja and replaced narayaNa by siva. I am

sure Vidyaranya and others do not agree with this but this author has

argued with valid comments as to why he is right.

 

JUST TO SET THE RECORD STRAIGHT ON APPAYYA DIKSITA :

 

He is a great poet and also a bhakta of narayana!!

 

He has written a varadaraja -stava , his own in addition to the one by

parasarabhattar. In his work he writes:

 

See how foolish this Sun is : it seems the sun amazed by the brilliant

redness of the lotus feet of Lord Varadaraja, every night heats up his rays

by immersing it into agni ( this is supported by a vedic statement that

in the night the sun enters agni- figuratively) so that it can be similar

in color to the lotus feet of lord varadaraja, succeeds for a short time

to be red at sun-rise and a few minutes after that, but soon realizes that

the redness is lost and in the afternoon becomes very angry and thus the

afternoons are hotter!!; but soon again he wants to be like the red

lotus-like feet of varadaraja - what a dullard (father of sani-graha -

manda-tatah) is this Sun?

 

 

Yes, coming to Advaitic view, philosophically, Advaita does not

differentiate between NarayaNa and parmasiva, since both are ultimately

unreal as per their philosophy. One thing that is strange is that Sri

Samkaracharya in his prastana traya only refers to visnu or narayaNa as the

parama purusa, even when he had opportunity not to do so. This has given

some people a view that he was a Vaisnava by faith.

 

 

Adiyen Krishna kalale