SHARADHA PEETH

Entry in the Springer Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Tribal Religions

Entry in the Springer Encyclopedia of Hinduism and Tribal Religions

DRAFT ONLY, criticisms and comments are welcome! Thie article examines the Buddhist opponents found in the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin Veṅkaṭanātha (also known as Vedānta Deśika, 1269--1370) and adds some conclusions about what texts where available in the 13th c. South India and on Veṅkaṭanātha's motivations. This article has been discussed in an online session, and I would like to express my gratitude to its participants, whose suggestions led to several improvements and to further ideas. These are: Jean-Luc Chevillard, Eugen Ciurtin, Whitney Cox, Alastair Gornall, Petra Kieffer-Pülz, Shaji George Kochuthara, Marco Lauri, Dan Lusthaus, Elena Mucciarelli and Péter Dániel Szántó. Comments are still welcome!

Published in Open Pages in South Asian Studies, edited by Joe Pellegrino, SASA Books 2014, pp. 27--62. Unfortunately, the published version has several added mistakes (e.g., confusion between quotes and main text) and even the author's name has been misspelt. Therefore I would be grateful if you could quote from this version, by referring to sections' numbers instead of page numbers.

Journal of Indian Philosophy, 2014

Madhusūdana Sarasvatī wrote several treatises on Advaita philosophy. His magnum opus is the Advaitasiddhi, written in order to reply to the keen objections moved by the Dvaitin Vyāsatīrtha's Nyāyāmṛta. Advaitasiddhi is verily a turning point into the galaxy of Vedānta, not only as far as its replies are concerned, but also for the reutilization of earlier vedāntic material and its reformulation by means of the highly sophisticated language of the new school of logic. This article is an attempt to contextualize Madhusūdana's works in a broader context through three looking glasses: (1) the analysis of how Madhusūdana refers to his own works, in order to reconstruct a relative chronology among them; (2) Madhusūdana's adherence to the tenets of the previous Advaita tradition, how much he is indebted to Vyāsatīrtha, how he quotes him and how he replies to him; (3) Madhusūdana's acquaintance with other textual traditions, mainly Vyākaraṅa, Pūrva Mīmāṁ sā and Nyāya.

My argument proceeds in three layers, which move from the more particular to the more general and from the concrete to the speculative. In a first, preliminary discussion, I briefly survey recent developments in Christian missiology that have significantly complicated our understanding of “mission” as an interpretive category, suggesting that history reveals no singular understanding of Christian “mission,” but diverse—even incommensurable—missionary paradigms, models or types. In the second section, I attempt to apply this insight to the historical development of Advaita Vedānta by highlighting what I judge to be three major “paradigms” of Advaita mission: the compassionate teacher depicted in Ādi Śaṅkarācārya’s eighth-century, independent treatise Upadeśasāhasrī, the image of Śaṅkara himself as a conquering avatāra of Śiva in the late medieval hagiographical tradition (dig-vijaya) and the image of the Buddha as the first “Hindu missionary” in the speeches of Vivekānanda. Without claiming to be comprehensive, I argue that these three idealized paradigms reveal both significant historical continuity and substantive diversity in advancing Advaita as a missionary movement. Finally, in a more speculative vein, I suggest that the distinctive profiles of the four disciples depicted in the most prominent hagiography, Mādhava’s Śaṅkaradigvijaya, might serve to rationalize different forms or styles that Advaita mission has taken, and can take, in the modern and contemporary periods. Throughout, my interest in the essay is both historical and constructive. That is, I hope to add clarity to what it might mean to refer to Advaita as a distinctive missionary movement in the history of South Asia, as well as to bring to light fruitful interpretive tools for more fully understanding the diverse missionary activities of Advaita traditions in the present day.

Vṛṣabhadeva’s Sphuṭākṣarā, a commentary on the first chapter of Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya and its Vṛtti, offers a peculiar interpretation of the monistic ideas exposed at the beginning of the mūla text. The reflection on the status of ordinary reality and its relation with the unitary metaphysical principle is particularly interesting. Although according to Bhartṛhari’s perspective the entities of the world are real, the Sphuṭākṣarā offers a more intricate picture in which different degrees of reality seem involved. Furthermore, the author adopts hermeneutical tools that are unusual in Bhartṛhari’s texts, and comparable to those of Advaita Vedānta. In particular, the article will deal with Vṛṣabhadeva’s use of the notion of ‘inexpressibility’ (anirvacanīyatva), as well as with other concepts which are typical of the scholastic phase of Advaita. In discussing these affinities the paper will also touch upon the problem of Vṛṣabhadeva’s historical collocation.

published in M. Dasti and E. Bryant (eds.), Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy, OUP 2014, pp. 137--163. UNCORRECTED DRAFT