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Re: correct vs. apaurushEya

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Tom Head • March 31, 2000 


On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Kasturi Varadarajan wrote:

> I had the impression that visistAdvaita philisophy (and vedAnta in
> general) seem to rest, among other things, on two premises:
> 
> 1. The veda is apaurushEya (un-authored and beginningless), and
> 2. The veda is correct.
> 
> But it appears to me that the first premise is redundant. For is it
> not possible that there exists a similar body (say un-veda) which is
> also apaurushEya (un-authored and beginningless) but completely
> incorrect? So the fact that something is apaurushEya says nothing
> about its correctness.

This is a very thought-provoking post, and I thank you for it.  A few
thoughts (bearing in mind that a) I am more of a personally Maadhwa than a
Srivaishnavin and b) that my knowledge of Sri Ramanuja's philosophy is
very limited, being based almost entirely on secondhand works such as the
Yatindramatadipika of Srinivasadasa):

	* It would seem impossible for an apaurusheya text to be any
		less than flawless from the viewpoint of Vishishtadvaita,
		since nescience would be a result of the material universe
		(which would include the concept of time), and anything
		beginningless would be created outside of the nescient
		physical universe.
	* Newton's Laws are correct within a certain context, but
		incorrect in others (e.g., see Einstein's relativity
		theory).  It follows that to say that a text is flawless
		(which an apaurusheya text would have to be) would imply
		that it is not only correct within a limited context,
		but utterly inerrant in every sense.



Peace,

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|_   _| | | |   Tom C. Head
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