Some authors tend to think that once upon a time there was one Yoga and that later this has been “altered” or has at least “evolved” into many forms. According to their own stand, they might look at this developments as meaningful adaptations or as soulless metamorphoseis.
Category Archives: Veṅkaṭanātha/Vedānta Deśika
Philosophy’s crudity and Narrative’s epistemological value
A recent post by Elisabeth Barnes raised a discussion in several blogs about philosophy’s “casual cruelty”. Philosophers, it is said, argue about basic human rights in an abstract way, with thought experiments daring to ask whether it would be ethical to let die disabled children/abort disabled foetuses/prohibit disabled people to have children/… . Philosophers do not even stop speculating about the suppression of disabled people, Barnes continues, when they have a real disabled person in front of them.
How to know God?
Basically, we can either claim that God can be known through reason alone (Samuel Clarke, Anthony Collins, Voltaire, Kant, Nyāya, Śaivasiddhānta…) or that S/He can be known through personal insight and/or Sacred Texts (Śrī Vaiṣṇavas after Yāmuna, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas…).
Arne Niklas Jansson
The making of Śrīvaiṣṇavism: A tentative hypothesis about its reconstruction
It is difficult to disentangle the different roots of what is now known as Śrīvaiṣṇavism, since this term is usually the label attributed to the religious counterpart of the philosophical-theological school of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. However, Vaiṣṇavism was apparently an important presence in South India well before the beginning of the philosophical enterprise
Going beyond knowledge
The 13th–14th c. Vaiṣṇava theologian Veṅkaṭanātha (also known as Vedānta Deśika) opened various chapters (called vāda) of his Śatadūṣaṇī with a different praise of Hayagrīva. Interestingly, they focus on different aspects of this complex God. The first one focuses on His being connected with the Veda and speech, the second on the latter connection only, the last two on Him as the supreme deity, while the middle one is a sort of threshold between Hayagrīva’s connection to knowledge and Hayagrīva as supreme deity. Accordingly, the translation of this maṅgala is particularly tricky.
viditam anuvadanto viśvam etad yathāvad vidadhati nigamāntāḥ kevalaṃ yanmayatvam |
aviditabahubhūmā nityam antarvidhattāṃ hayavaravadano ‘sau sannidhis sannidhiṃ naḥ ||)
The second part of the verse is relatively clear, although I am sure I am missing something in the equation of Hayagrīva with sannidhi:
Let He, as proximity*, with the face of a horse, whose opulence is not understood, take perpetually place close to us ||
The first part is less clear and the following translation is only tentative (comments are welcome):
The Upaniṣads, by repeating what has been understood, properly distribute this all [knowledge], which consists purely of Him |
Now, the tricky part is the echo between vidita/avidita and vidadhati/antarvidhattām. Given that the the first part of the verse refers to the Upaniṣads and the second part refers directly to Hayagrīva, the gist of the passage appears to lie in the idea that the Upaniṣads are an excellent device for gathering knowledge, but Hayagarīva surpasses all possible human knowledge.
*I would now read it as “Let he, the depository of good things” (the puṇya for this translation accrues to H.I.’s comment below).
For Hayagrīva in other Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta texts, see this post. For Hayagrīva in Vaiṣṇava temples, see here.
Hayagrīva in South Indian temples
After the 17th c. and as a consequence of the Vaṭakalai-Teṅkalai split and of the resultant decision of the Vaṭakalai devotees to adopt Veṅkaṭanātha’s theology, the icons of Hayagrīva start to rapidly grow in number and importance in Tamil Nadu–Karṇāṭaka.
Two types of Hayagrīva are reproduced:
Ontology is a moot point if you are a theist
A philosopher might end up having a double affiliation, to the philosophical standpoints shared by one’s fellow philosophers, and to the religious program of one’s faith.
This can lead to difficult reinterpretations (such as that of Christ with the Neoplatonic Nous, or that of God with the Aristotelic primum movens immobile), or just to juxtapositions (the addition of angels to the list of possible living beings).
A Vaiṣṇava who starts doing philosophy after centuries of religious texts speaking of Viṣṇu’s manifestations (vibhūti), of His qualities and His spouse Lakṣmī (or Śrī or other names), is in a similar difficult situation.
A new project on Veṅkaṭanātha’s aikaśāstrya
I just received the unofficial (but wonderful) news that the Elise Richter project I submitted to the FWF has been accepted!
You can read the general abstract below:
Updates concerning the 3quarksdaily philosophical blog prize
What is a body? Veṅkaṭanātha on plants, rocks, and deities
In general, classical Indian philosophers tend to define śarīra ‘body’ as a tool for experience (bhogasādhana). Thus, many philosophers state that plants only seem to have bodies because of our anthropomorphic tendencies, which make us believe that they function like us, whereas in fact plants cannot experience. By contrast, Veṅkaṭanātha in the Nyāyasiddhāñjana defines śarīra in the following way: