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Re: Question re: Gaudapada Karikas.

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Krishna Kalale • September 11, 1996 


This is an interesting question.  I do not have a complete answer. I thought
I could share some thoughts regarding this.  In the Mandukya upanishad
bhasyas I had from "Ranga Ramanuja" and a gloss from "Uttamoor Veera
Raghavacharya", I found a statement in sanskrit which translates to:

"What Sankara school considers to be the work of Gaudapada (Gaudapada
Karika) is considered by Madhva school as Sruti.  Taking a similar view,
Kura Narayana one of the Visistadvaitic teachers also accept that the
portion (or whole) of karika as sruti.  
"

But the surprising fact is that in that "bhasya of Mandukya" by Ranga
Ramanuja, only the 4 chapters of Mandukya is explained without reference to
karikas.  This makes me think that even though some visistadvaita scholars
agreed with Madhva, probably the a majority of the rest do not agree that
those karikas are sruti. 

I am not sure about sribhasya. I have to check it.  when I get time......  I
know for sure that Ramanuja quotes from the Karikas in other portions of the
Sribhasya : the famous statement " anadi mayaya suptho yadaa jeevo
prabhudyate...." or some thing like that.  This, I have heard Dr. N.S
Anantha rangachar state in his lectures on Sribhasya.

Krishna

Krishna

At 11:02 PM 9/9/96 -0700, you wrote:
>
>I have a question regarding the gauDapAda kArikAs attached to the mANDUkya
>upanishad, that I hope some learned member of this list can clarify. 
>
>I have been told that in the SrI bhAshya, Sri Ramanuja cites kArikA 1.16,
>prefacing the quote with the words: "jIvasyaiva hi nirodha.h SrUyate."
>Does this mean that he is giving to this quotation the authority of
>Sruti? 
>
>To place the question in context, the advaita school considers all the
>kArikAs to be the composition of gauDapAda. Hence they are not included
>under the term Sruti. On the other hand, the dvaita school of Madhva
>considers the first 27 kArikAs to be Sruti, i.e. not composed by a human
>author. Is a definitive position on this taken by any of the leading
>authors of viSishTAdvaita texts? The seSvara mImAm.sA text of Sri Vedanta
>Desika perhaps? 
>
>Regards, 
>
>S. Vidyasankar
>
>
>
>
>
Krishna Kalale
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619-658-2115 (fax)