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VaikhAnasa saMhitAs

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Ute Huesken • November 2, 2002 


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@hotmail.com
ute.huesken@gmx.de

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