Friday, June 12, 2009

Advaita and Vedanta before Shankara

Who were the Advaitins before Adi Shankara? gauDapAda's kArika is a commentary on mAnDUkya. What about other Upanishads? Kena is said to have two commentaries by Adi Shankara, one of which is said to have referred to an earlier commentary. What was it?

What about the authors of ashTAvakra-gIta, avadhUta-gIta and yoga-vAsishhTa?

Why does Swami Madhavananda says that "Kumarila Bhatta did his best to do an GYAna-interpretation of the brahmaNAs?

In general, what was the Vedantic tradition (as in Upanishadic) before gauDapAda, govindapAda and shankara?



2 comments:

Unknown said...

Your question on the Pre-Gaudapada Advaita tradition:

From Shankara's bhashyas we get the idea that there was one Bhartruprapancha whose opinions Shankara refutes often. This person was an advaitin no doubt but it had some elements that were opposed to the ultimate purport of the Veda as Shankara saw it.

Also there is said to be a 'vRttikAra' who had written a vRtti, gloss, to the Brahmasutra(?) whose (advaitic) system too Shankara criticised.

Also the Brahma sutras themselves name a few persons like: bAdari, AuDulomi, kAshkRtsnaH, etc. Maybe we can approach eminent scholars to clarify on the status of these persons.

subbu

ramakrishna u said...

Namaste Shri Subbu-ji,

Welcome again to my blog and sincere thanks for the comments.

Also, please let me know your opinion on the other forms of Gitas and Yoga-Vasistha.

Namaste again
Ramakrishna