VaikhAnasa saMhitAs

[Guest guest]

Dear T.S. Sundara Rajan,

 

thank you very much for your posting.

 

Actually, as already was correctly mentioned in a posting to this list, the

VaikAnasas do in fact have a much more ritual outlook than the PAncarAtrins.

This might have to do with the - to my opinion - basic difference between

these two groups: the VaikhAnasa are a Vedic zAkhA and a caste at the same

time. The second feature means that they are temple priests by birth (the term

garbhavaiSNava is relevant here) and do not have a initiation (dIkSA). The

PAncarAtrins - at least according to their SaMhitAs (I do not know much about

the

present day practice) - become temple priests by undergoing several

initiations.

 

This basic difference MIGHT (one must be very careful with suppositions like

that, they easily can turn out to be wrong) be one of the reasons why the

VaikhAnasas did not lay so much stress on the development of theological,

soterioligical and philosophical texts, but are more concerned with ritual

texts.

 

The MokSopAyapradIpikA is one exception - the other (more "classic") is the

text LakSmIviziSTAdvaitabhASya by ZrInivAsa DIkSita, the most important

VaikAnasa philosopher, who lived in Tirupati somewhen after the 14th and before

the 18th century A.D.

 

Therefore, I totally agree with you that the MokSopAya PradIpikA is an

extremely important text. This is also evident since it was edited and printed

already several times - in Telugu, Grantha and Devanagari characters. Thank you

very much for your reference ti this recent edition, I did not know it so

far.

 

As you say, the etymology of praNava is in full accordance with

vi-khana (digging in the heart/mind; and as VizeSakhana: digging into

"differences" , digging out the particularity [of the VaikhAnasa system])

vi-nakha (without nails = without harshness = sweet)

 

or

 

paZyaka = he who observes

kaZyapa = proper name of one of Vikahnas' pupils

 

Your reference to Sankara's bhAshyam and Sri parASara-bhaTTa's

bhaGavad-GuNa-darpaNa bhAshyam is very instructive, I will have to look into it

in more

detail, thanks a lot for this hint!

 

Usually, the VaikhAnasasUtra together with the SaMhitAs are collectively

called VaikhAnasabhagavacchAstra. MarIci, as one of Vikhanas' pupils, wrote down

some of the SaMhitAs (and thus counts as their "author"), however, only

three of his works evidently have survived (or, to be more correct, are

available

in print today):

- AdisaMhitA (only 18th chapter of it)

- AnandasaMhitA (extremely interesting text)

- VimAnArcanakalpa

 

The last text is very popular among VaihAnasas and therefore is frequently

referred to as "MarIcisaMhitA". It is a prose text - contrary to most of the

other surviving SaMhitAs, which are metrical texts. This VimAnArcanakalpa is

in fact the text dealt with by Gerard Colas in some of his publications.

 

To my knowledge there is nothing like a descriptive catalogue of the

vaikhAnasa samhitA-s. However, Prof. Varadachari in his excellent book on South

Indian Agamas summarizes the content of most of the Agamas. The best I myself

can

offer is a list of VaikhAnasa printed texts, which includes the (printed)

SaMhitAs, but also other (later) texts. Most of these texts have been printed

between 1920 and 1930 in a small village in Southern AP, Igavaripalam (also

called Eguvaripalayam etc), in a series called ZrIvaikhAnasagranthamAlA. Since

they are not available nowadays (and, if so, the paper is very brittle) the

TTD together with the SriVaikhAnasa Divya SiddhAnta Vivardhini SabhA

(Tirumalai) took care to reprint or even re-edit many of these

VaikhAnasasaMhitAs.

 

If you are interested, I can send the list of printed VaikAnasa books to

you, hoping to inspire future research on this topic. Please just send me a

note, due to work load it might take some days to convert the file.

 

Best regards

Ute

 

 

--

Dr. Ute Huesken

Lehmkuhle 31

37130 Gleichen

Germany

 

phone: 0049-5508-923686

 

e-mail:

ute_huesken

ute.huesken

 

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