Suganya has focussed so far on the Vaiṣṇava devotional poetry written in Tamil by the Āḻvārs, the poet-saints who were active in South India approximately between the 6th and the 9th c. AD. She also worked on the medieval Śrīvaiṣṇava commentaries on these works, typically written in Maṇipravāḷam, a sanskritised form of Tamil. She also started researching bhakti literature in general, i.e., by reading Śaiva texts.

E.F.: Tell us about your early formation.
S.A.: Tamil is my mother tongue, but I did not have any classical Tamil at school. I went to a French school, where I took (contemporary) Tamil lessons for a few years only. However, I kept on studying Tamil also with my mother. I then studied English literature as a graduate and post-graduate student.

E.F.: What brought you back to Tamil?
S.A.: At that point I had moved to Paris and was teaching there in the public high school. I got interested in Telegu at the INALCO (http://www.campusfrance.org/en/resource/inalco-institut-national-des-langues-et-civilisations-orientales-paris) and this brought me back to Tamil, so that I took an MA in classical Tamil. Dr. Gérard Colas, a Vaiṣṇava scholar with whom I had started working, introduced me to Jean-Luc Chevillard and he introduced me to Eva Wilden. I did my PhD with her and I learnt a strong philological method through her and the Classical Tamil Summer Seminaries (http://www.efeo.fr/base.php?code=534) she conducts every year.

E.F.: You are clearly interested also in the literary aspect of your translation. Has this interested been fuelled by your studies in English literature?
S.A.: Yes, but not only. Eva too helped me with that, since she produced many translations. With each translation, there is a wish to create a basis for further studies, for the sake of which we produce glossaries in order to check how semantic uses and grammar have evolved. So, translating systematically goes with glossary-making and this enables us to check the evolution of language.
Personally, I make two translations, a first one which is only technical, and a further one that is reader-friendly, but never compromises with the meaning. If possible, I also try to make it beautiful.

E.F.: How did you manage to find enough time and money to make your Tamil studies possible?
S.A.: I was working as a school teacher in the Parisian region and thus I could manage to pay the French fees, which are very reasonable anyway.

E.F.: How did you manage to complete your PhD while working full time?
S.A.: This involved a lot of preparing and a lot of responsibility, since I could only work in the evenings and during the weekends. Still, I managed to complete my PhD in 5 years. In this connection, I have to say that in the previous ten years I had explored all possible aspects of teaching and I really wanted to get out of that, go and explore what is beyond that. My PhD became my hobby, I took the same pleasure in doing it as for a hobby. It would have been great to have had a scholarship for my PhD, but at the same time having a full time job was also highly motivating, although I was permanently tired and overworked. This way, you make the most of whatever little time you have and you become organised because you do not have any other choice.

E.F.: What came after your PhD? How did you start your academic career?
S.A.: I started working as a postdoctoral fellow for the NETamil project in Pondichéry in September 2014. The project will go on until February 2019.

E.F.: Which aspects of the academic life do you enjoy more? What bothers you more?
S.A.: I would like to keep on doing research, but I do not mind teaching, as long as this is related with my research.

As for the negative aspects, non-constructive criticism bothers me, but if you are passionate enough about research, you should use these criticisms as fuel to light your passion instead of taking them as water and allowing them to extinguish it. I learnt that you can feed your passion from such destructive remarks. In general, in order to do research you have to be passionate enough not to give up at the first sign of bad weather.

E.F.: Tell us more about the NETAMIL project as an example of a collaborative project.
S.A.: There can be possessiveness (about one’s field of research for example) and envy in this field like in any other, but my NetTamil colleagues are exempt from such non-constructive attitude and behaviour because of the following reasons: 1. each has his/her own field, so they could not really tread on another’s field. 2. even when there are people working on partly overlapping fields, they believe that working together is good for all parties, the results are better and the learning process which is initiated would not be imitable on one’s own. They in this way empower each other instead of taking each other down. And the field is so vast, that people just need to work together.

We have a shared goal: classical Tamil studies should get the right kind of attention and they should be grounded on a solid basis. The former goal depends on the latter: We are doing solid groundwork, upon which proper research on this field can be done.

Eva Wilden, who started the NETamil project, greatly encourages reading together regularly, as she believes in working together she even reads with people not even connected with the EFEO, so the idea is spreading out of its traditional boundaries.

The beginning of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as an independent school are usually connected to Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137), both in India and in Western scholarship (e.g., in the work of the eminent Viśiṣtādvaita Vedānta scholar and former director of the IKGA institute Gerhard Oberhammer). Rāmānuja was indeed the first one to write a new commentary on the Brahmasūtra, thus robustly collocating his school within Vedānta. Again both Indian and Western scholars agree also on the pivotal role of Veṅkaṭanātha (also known with the honorific title of Vedānta Deśika ‘teacher of Vedānta’, traditional dates 1269–1370). My research (see, e.g., Freschi’s Veṅkaṭanātha/Vedānta Deśika, forthcoming on IEPh) suggests that this role is even more important than it has been recognised so far. Veṅkaṭanātha’s systematising efforts have not just re-shaped Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta but, have in fact, shaped it into the school we are familiar with now. It was Veṅkaṭanātha, for instance, to include the heritage of the Tamil saint poets, the Āḻvārs, within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, and to recognise as authentic the works on devotion attributed to Rāmānuja. It is indeed true that traces of each of these tendencies can be detected also before Veṅkaṭanātha, but the very idea of looking for such faint traces testifies of how the concept of what should belong to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta has been influenced by Veṅkaṭanātha’s own philosophical synthesis. In other words, it is because of this synthesis, that both devotees and scholars agree about the importance of devotion, of the Āḷvārs’ sentimental expression of a self-oblivious love for God, of Pāñcarātra ritualism, of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā hermeneutical tools etc., within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta.

Thus, any appreciation of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta must focus on the impact of Veṅkaṭanātha, since it is only through such an analysis that one will be able to recognise innovations and continuities in “Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta” before and after him.

Veṅkaṭanātha was a very prolific author, to whom more than one hundred works in three different languages have been attributed (no reason for scepticism concerning this attribution is known to me). As for his philosophical works, Srinivasa Chari has started some decades ago a series of monographs dedicated to a paraphrase and analysis of many of them. More recently, a monograph on Veṅkaṭanātha’s concept of time by another researcher working at the IKGA, namely Marcus Schmücker, will soon be released. Nothing at all, by contrast, has been dedicated to Veṅkaṭanātha’s confrontation and eventual absorption of the much more ancient and influential school of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, although the link to Pūrva Mīmāṃsā can be read (see Freschi’s Śrī Vaiṣṇavism: The making of a theology) as the key factor distinguishing Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta from the other concurrent school within Vedānta, namely Advaita Vedānta. Against Advaita Vedānta, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and Pūrva Mīmāṃsā share key tenets, such as the belief in personal souls, in the relevance of following Vedic prescriptions even once one has surrendered to God, etc.

(this post is meant to be a general introduction to the topic, accessible to non-initiated readers. Should you find something in it not understandable, please let me know with a comment below.)

How did this change occur? Is it due to external stimuli (e.g., to the need to answer objections), so that everything was already there with Rāmānuja and only needed to be spelt out? Was it due to an inner and ”natural” development? Was it due to a precise strategy? The scarcity of data about Viśiṣṭādvaita between Rāmānuja and Veṅkaṭanātha allows for multiple interpretations.

More specifically, several distinct component are constitutive of what we now know to be Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and are not present at the time of Rāmānuja:

1. 1. The inclusion of the Āḻvār’s theology in Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
2. 2. The Pāñcarātra orientation of both subschools of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
3. 3. The two sub-schools
4. 4. The Vedāntisation of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
5. 5. The impact of other schools

The inclusion of the Āḻvārs’ theology
The first point to take into account is the fact that also the Āḻvārs do not represent a uniform theological perspective and that they differ also as far as the presence of Sanskrit terminology (e.g., in Nammāḻvār) is concerned.
Having granted this, some authors of the so-called Śrīraṅgam school such as Tirukkurukai Pirāṉ Piḷḷan (1060–1161) and Nañjīyar (1113–1208) wrote commentaries on Nammāḻvār in a style influenced by Rāmānuja’s choices. Does it mean that Rāmānuja (who was according to the tradition Pirāṉ Piḷḷai’s teacher) favoured this development? Or rather that the Śrīraṅgam community was —independently of its Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta faith— close to the Āḻvārs’ heritage?

The Pāñcarātra orientation of both subschools of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
Why did the two trends, later to be identified as two subschools of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta both agree on adopting the Pāñcarātra Sacred Texts? One might suggest that there is no (unitary) Pāñcarātra theology and that consequently the adoption of Pāñcarātra Sacred Texts only amounts to the adoption of their rituals. But, nonetheless: Why adopting them? The question is even more urgent if one reflects on the early history of the two subschools, which appears to be quite divergent, and on the probably Kaśmīrī origin of the rituals prescribed in the Pāñcarātra texts. Mumme suggests that the adoption of Pāñcarātra was due to the “more liberal Pāñcarātra method of worship” (Mumme 1988, p. 8) but does not elaborate on it. Could we imagine that the Śrīraṅgam school first adopted an Ekāyana-Veda orientation, thus somehow forcing other Vaiṣṇavas (the ones of the so-called Kañcī school) to try to steer Vaiṣṇavas towards a more pro-Vedic attitude by adopting themselves Pāñcarātra texts, but of a different orientation?

This post is a revised summary of the introduction I held at my panel at the World Sanskrit Conference. For a pdf of my presentation, see here. For a summary of the panel in general, see here.

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This seems to be one of the moot issues between the two currents within the form of Vaiṣṇavism later to be known as Śrīvaiṣṇavism, since Piḷḷai Lokācārya (13th c.) stresses that loving without reason is superior to loving with a reason, just like Sītā’s ungrounded love for Rāma is superior to that of Lakṣmaṇa, who loves Rāma for his good qualities (see Mumme 1988, p. 150).

Rāma between Lakṣmaṇa and Sītā (r.)

In fact, one might add, Lakṣmaṇa would stop loving Rāma if he were no longer good, or might even start loving someone else, if that other person had better qualities than Rāma. Thus, one who loves with reasons is like a mercenary who is ready to serve a new warlord. Similarly, one might further speculate, one who loves God for His qualities is in fact in love with the qualities, not with God as a person. By contrast, when one loves a person, even her defects seem attractive to one.

This all makes sense, perhaps even a lot of sense. Yet… this means that there is no intrinsic reason to say that loving God is better than loving a demonic being who demands from us that we kill and torture living beings. If we love the latter, we will encounter consequences among human beings, such as jail, and possibily also in the after-life, since God is more powerful than demonic beings and will punish the people whe are not His devotees. Yet, there is no reason whence loving God should in itself be a reason for distinguishing better people. In fact, theoretically there might even be people who love a saintly being who is even ‘better’ (more compassionate, for instance) than God. And yet, they would not be compensated for choosing the more morally perfect being, since God would only compensate His devotees…

What is then the alternative to mercenary love and indiscriminate love for whomsoever?

After my last post on the disappearance of Buddhism from South India, I received two emails of readers pointing to the fact that Buddhism must have been prosperous in Tamil Nadu, given that Dharmakīrti himself was born in Tamil Nadu and that the Maṇimēkalai (a Buddhist literary text in Tamil, datable perhaps to the 5th–7th c.) presupposes a Buddhist community and reuses materials from Śaṅkarasvāmin’s Nyāyapraveśa.

In fact, most of us learnt in their early years of study of Classical Indology (broadly construed, so that it should cover the intellectual production of South Asia, from Śrī Laṅkā to Tibet, from Pāli to Sanskrit, Classical Tamil, Classical Tibetan, etc.) that Buddhism had become influential in Tamil Nadu, at least from the time of Amaravati onwards. When one looks closer at the data, however, the findings are less clear.
Concerning the timeline of Buddhism in Tamil Nadu:

• First of all, the findings appear to indicate clearly a decline and then disappearance of Buddhism in the early second millennium AD (see this post).
• I could not find any information concerning clear evidences of an institutional presence of Buddhism before the 4th c. AD. This does not exclude that there might have been people who considered themselves Buddhists, but they did not leave trace of their belief.

Concerning the type of Buddhism,

• Petra Kieffer-Pülz (see her comment here) showed us evidence of the presence of Theravāda Buddhists using Pali as medium in Tamil Nadu from an earlier (perhaps already 3rd c.) until a late age (13th c.). Further evidences about their presence can be found also in Schalk’s work (see the same post).
• Schalk (see the same post) gathered informations regarding syncretic Buddhism.
• The Maṇimēkalai (see above) reuses materials from the early Pramāṇavāda school.

Thus, it lies beyond question that there were Theravāda and Mahāyāna Buddhists in Tamil Nadu, at least from the 4th c. until their decline in the 12th–13th c.

But what do the Maṇimēkalai and the place of birth of Dharmakīrti (or of Bodhidharma) tell us about the fortune of Pramāṇavāda in Tamil Nadu? Not so much, I think. In fact, even if Dharmakīrti were really born in Tamil Nadu (in order to assert this with safety we should be able to determine that Tibetan historians clearly meant Tamil Nadu when they spoke of, e.g., yul lho phyogs), he left his place of origin very early in his life and does not seem to have left anything comparable to Nalanda in Tamil Nadu.

As for the Maṇimēkalai, the fact that it reuses a relatively easy manual on Buddhist logic does not seem to me to mean anything more than that the Nyāyapraveśa was easy enough to be used by a wide number of readers (and it was in fact used by Jaina and even “Hindu” authors, see Tachikawa 1971).

Once again, I am sorry to admit that I do not read Tamil. Thus, on the Manimekalai I rely entirely on secondary literature (especially Anne Monius, Paula Richman and the contributions in the volume edited by Peter Schalk, A Buddhist woman’s path to enlightenment).

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/10/buddhism-in-tamil-nadu-until-the-end-of-the-first-millennium-ad/feed/ 2 1106 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/06/the-end-of-buddhism-in-precolonial-south-india/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/06/the-end-of-buddhism-in-precolonial-south-india/#comments Mon, 06 Oct 2014 14:35:20 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=1077 When did Buddhism finally disappear from Tamil Nadu? And which kind of Buddhism was active in Tamil Nadu until its disappearance?


I am not an expert on this topic, thus, here I only would like to discuss with readers about what I found out in secondary literature and the seeming problems the secondary literature entails.

• The most comprehensive resource I could locate are the books and articles edited or authored by Peter Schalk, who appears to be the major expert on Buddhism in Tamil Nadu and claims to have examined all possible primary sources on Buddhism in that country. Through a cross-examination of coins, inscriptions, artefacts, texts on Buddhists and texts of Buddhists, Schalk could conclude that “none is before the 4th and none after the 14th century” (Schalk in Deeg et al., 2011, section 8). More in detail, the last Tamiḷ Buddhist document (an inscription displaying a syncretic form of Buddhism and Śaivism, see Āḷvāppiḷḷai Vēluppiḷḷai 2002, section 5.7) is dated to the 13th c.
• Buddhism, was, moreover, never supported by royal patronage in Tamil Nadu, unlike Vaiṣṇavism, Śaivism and in part also Jainism. Thus, it lacked the protection it could enjoy in other parts of South Asia and in Śrī Laṅkā (Schalk 2011, section 10). This, together with the pressure from Śaivism and Vaiṣṇavism are probably the causes of the Buddhist decline described as early as in 600 AD (in the Mattavilāsa prahasana, see Schalk, 2013, p. 30).
• The lack of importance of Buddhism in the intellectual arena of Tamil Nadu is also testified by the fact that Jainas are much more frequently attacked and criticised by Śaiva and Buddhist authors (see Schalk 2013, p. 33).
• In fact, even before the 14th c., Buddhism in Tamil Nadu had evolved into a form of Buddhism-Śaiva syncretism, so that:
  

  This “freedom’s” strenght was also its weakness: without an authoritative textual base it was soon assimilated with Caivam [=Śaivism] and finally eliminated in the 14th century” (2011, section 1).

  This open and syncretic nature of Tamil Buddhism is also evident in the fact that, as shown again by Schalk (2011), it did not possess a proper canon.

• A further interesting resource is Anne Monius’ 2001 book, which focuses on the problems entailed in the study of the Buddhist community in South India through texts which only imagine it, such as the poem Maṇimēkalai. I will not focus on her text here, since my main concern is with a later period (1000-1500).

What else can we say about what Buddhists in Tamil Nadu read or listened to, and believed?

1. The Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (ca. 602–664) speaks of a large community and that it belonged to the Great Vehicle. However, Schalk convincingly shows that Xuanzang was speaking from hearsay and is not fully reliable (2011, section 11).
2. There is a widespread tradition (of which I could not locate the primary source and I ask for help from learned readers) saying that in 1236 a group of bhikkus from Kañci left for Śrī Laṅkā to re-establish there a Theravāda ordination line.
3. The Jaina Tamil text Nīlakēci seems to target a Abhidharma-like kind of Buddhism (see Āḷvāppiḷḷai Vēluppiḷḷai 2002, section 5.4, especially 5.4.8; for the identification of the Nīlakēci‘s polemical target with Mahāyāna, see Kandaswamy 1999, to which Shalk 2002, section 1.4.2, polemically replies).
4. The vīracōḷiyam treatise (written during the reign of Vīrarājēndracōḷa, 1063–1070, and commented upon in the 12th c.) is a Buddhist text on Grammar. I wonder whether it could be connected to the flourishing of Buddhist Grammars in Pāli countries (see Ruiz-Falqués’ studies thereon, here) or rather only to the Cāndravyākraṇa.

Point No. 2 might seem to slightly clash with the evidence of the Theravāda ordination line in Śrī Laṅkā being re-established by monks from Pagan (Burma). Nonetheless, it is not impossible that the ordination line was interrupted again and one needed again bhikkus from abroad. These bhikkus most probably did not belong to the syncretic Buddhism described above. In fact, Schalk explicitly acknowledges the presence of Pāli ācariyas (ācārya) in Tamil Nadu, although he adds that

We know that they were also endured in Nākapaṭṭiṇam during the Cōḷa period, but they were evidently secluded, because they left no traces in the documents produced by the Cōḷa establishment (Schalk, 2002, section 5.1.1).

Now, a last question: Do you know whether Buddhist texts were preserved in Jaina institutions in Tamil Nadu, as it happened in North India? This could account for the presence of Buddhist texts even when an institutionalised Buddhist community was absent…

If you are wondering why I am interested in the topic, you can read this post of mine on Veṅkaṭanātha’s (Tamil Nadu, 1269–1370) Buddhist quotes.

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/10/06/the-end-of-buddhism-in-precolonial-south-india/feed/ 9 1077 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/03/21/will-the-journey-ever-come-to-its-goal-on-clooney-2013/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/03/21/will-the-journey-ever-come-to-its-goal-on-clooney-2013/#comments Fri, 21 Mar 2014 09:22:00 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=601 Several years ago I had some pain in convincing a friend working on Husserl that the “phenomenologist” J. Mohanty which he knew too well was the same as the scholar of Sanskrit Philosophy J.N. Mohanty (I had similar problems in convincing the same person that avatar is a Sanskrit word). Just like there are two Mohantys, with two different target audiences, so there are two F.X. Clooneys. Scholars of Indian Philosophy will know mostly the author of Thinking Ritually and of further essays on Mīmāṃsā and Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta (1986, 1988), whereas Catholic and other Christian theologians and believers will know mostly his works dedicated to comparative theology (1996, 2005, 2008, 2010, 2014).

In the former works, Clooney conforms to the common rules of academic writing (disembodied, impersonal, “scholar”), although an attentive reader might detect also in them a hue of the latter Clooney (for instance, in his insistence on listening to Jaimini’s voice and detecting it within the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra). The “theological” Clooney is passionate, engaged in what he writes and sensitive to the transformative enterprise of writing. One even gets the feeling that he might think that writing is a performance on something yet-to-be-estbalished (sādhya, to go back to the Mīmāṃsā terminology), rather than a description of already settled (siddha) conclusions.

Consequently, as a reader of His hiding place is darkness one is split by two different feelings. On the one hand the positive feeling on being on a journey with someone who is also on the same path, on the other the frustrating feeling not to be able to come to a scholarly sound conclusion. The book is, in fact, programmatically unsettled and unsettling. Nor could it be differently, since it puts side by side the Old Testament’s Song of Songs and the Tamil Tiruvāymoḻi (“The holy word of mouth”), song 1.4 and 1.5, without having previously established any essential similarity between the two. Rather, Clooney just chose them out of inspiration, in a way which could be compared to J. Derrida’s approach to texts in themselves, without the safeguard of their historicisation, without a safety net and in fact Clooney starts the book with two long juxtaposed excerpts of the two texts. And similarly ungrounded is also the juxtaposition of Jorie Graham’s poetry in the first chapter (tellingly called “Act One”). The Tamil text comes from the Tiruvāymoḻi, which is part of the Divya Prabandham, the collection of songs of the Āḻvārs, poet-saints who composed their mystical poems in South India, in the first millennium of the CE (the date is very controversial, also due to the desire of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava community to directly link the Āḻvārs to Nāthamuni, traditionally recognised as the compiler of the Divya Prabandham and whose date of death seems to have been 923).

Although the Aḻvārs were considered by the later tradition as inspired mystics, and revered as founders of the Śrī Vaiṣṇava religion, the songs chosen by Clooney are written from the perspective of a young girl who burns for love for God, Viṣṇu, but cannot find Him. She is desperate and in her desperation she blames herself for her sins, due to which she cannot come closer to Him, the people who do not pity her, and last even God Himself who, notwithstanding His merciful nature does not come to her. Clooney noticed the similarity in the religious application of the motif of a young girl’s passionate love and of her desolation once the lover has disappeared and put the text side by side with the portions of the Song of Songs in which the girl is left alone and laments her solitude.

Clooney offers helps and guidances, such as his translations of the Tamil text, his frequent reference to contemporary exegesis of the Song of Songs and, more importantly according to me, quotations and interpretations from religious commentaries of the one and the other text. Nonetheless, Clooney programmatically avoids to settle the issues he opens. There is no solution to why the girl in the Song of Songs at once sends her lover away at night, only to repent soon thereafter, nor to why the daughters of Jerusalem laugh at her. Even more disturbing is that there is no solution of the problem of the co-existence of two exclusivist religions which both see themselves as the only one but share striking similarities and coexist in a contemporary world in which exclusivist faith seems no longer possible —and probably not even desirable.

Notwithstanding the above, also an academic audience can profit of His hiding place is darkness. I have, for instance, appreciated Clooney’s ability to detect from the classical commentary on The holy word all elements which enabled one to see the purpose and meaning of seemingly merely decorative poetical elements. For instance, the reader discovers in this way that Viṣṇu is not by chance said to lie on his snake-bed. His lying on it means that He is not far, He is close to the world because He cares for it. Thus, His failing to soothe the loving girl appears even more cruel. Similarly, the girl’s pausing on the plumage of the cranes she chooses as the messengers of her love to Viṣṇu is a sign of her pausing on their capacity to reach Him fast.

More in general, Clooney’s way of seeing poetry as theology throws indirectly light on why so many Indian theologians decided to write poems and not (or not only) treatises. Theology enabled them different perspectives. If Clooney is right, at least one of the reasons for choosing the poetical medium is its theopoetic ability. The term comes from the theologian Urs von Balthasar and indicates a poem’s ability to dynamically enliven rather than represent.

This might also be the reason why, I believe, Veṅkaṭanātha chose to write also poems. What about other Indian authors?

For more on the probem of why Indian authors write in verses, have a look at the comments to this post.
(cross-posted on The Indian Philosophy blog)

]]> https://elisafreschi.com/2014/03/21/will-the-journey-ever-come-to-its-goal-on-clooney-2013/feed/ 4 601 https://elisafreschi.com/2014/03/17/ve%e1%b9%85ka%e1%b9%adanathas-contribution-to-visi%e1%b9%a3%e1%b9%adadvaita-vedanta/ https://elisafreschi.com/2014/03/17/ve%e1%b9%85ka%e1%b9%adanathas-contribution-to-visi%e1%b9%a3%e1%b9%adadvaita-vedanta/#comments Mon, 17 Mar 2014 15:07:40 +0000 elisa freschi http://elisafreschi.com/?p=580 Veṅkaṭanātha (traditional dates 1269–1370 (see Neevel 1977 for a convincing explanation of these too long life spans) is a complex figure who can be interpreted in different ways according to the facet one is focusing on. What is sure is that what we refer to as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta has been largely influenced by the shape he gave to it. For instance, the traditional lineage of teachers of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta groups together teachers who bear some vague family resemblance among each other, but who are all directly linkable to Veṅkaṭanātha’s view of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta.
The main philosophical outlines of Veṅkaṭanātha’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta are:
1. the Vedāntic viewpoint
2. the emphasis on Pūrva Mīmāṃsā
3. the incorporation of Pāñcarātra
4. the incorporation of the Āḻvārs’ theology

The development of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as a vedāntic school is clear as one looks back at Veṅkaṭanātha’s predecessors, but it is important to notice that what seems a posteriori like a clear Vedāntic school would not probably have appeared as such to its contemporaries. In fact, Yāmuna’s relation to Vedānta is complex. He quotes from the Upaniṣads in the Ātmasiddhi, and he starts it listing the Vedānta teachers he wants to refute (including Bhartṛhari and Śaṅkara), so that one might think that he is keener to “purify” Vedānta than he cares about “purifying” Nyāya. At the same time, at least in the Ātmasiddhi (see Mesquita 1971, pp. 4–13) Yāmuna accepts an anti-Vedāntic proof for the existence of God, namely the inference (whereas Pūrva and Uttara Mīmāṃsā agree that God can only be known through the Sacred Texts) and the Āgamaprāmāṇya seems to have a completely different focus. Rāmānuja is more straightforwardly part of a Vedāntic approach (this is, in my opinion, also the reason why he has been often considered the “founder” of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta —a term which he and Yāmuna still ignore). As for Nāthamuni, his relation to Vedānta can only be presupposed out of what we know of him through his successors, given that his works have been lost. Their titles focus, however, on Nyāya and Yoga (and not on Vedānta).

As for No. 2, we know nothing about Nāthamuni’s relation to Mīmāṃsā, but we know that at least one trend within Vedānta (as testified by Śaṅkara’s commentary on the Brahmasūtra) claimed that the study of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā was not necessary. Yāmuna’s relation to Pūrva Mīmāṃsā is double-faced, but Pūrva Mīmāṃsā authors seem to be his targeted objectors in the sense that he wants to convince them of the legitimacy of the Pāñcarātra transmission (although often recurring to their same arguments) and he by and large adopts Nyāya strategies (such as the reference to God as the authoritative source of the epistemologic validity of the Pāñcarātra, or the use of inference to establish God’s existence). The situation changes, perhaps during Yāmuna’s own life, certainly with Rāmānuja, who steers in direction Vedānta and, thus, comes closer to the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā. So close that he programmatically states at the beginning of his commentary on the Brahmasūtra that not only the Brāhmaṇa part of the Veda needs to be studied, but that its study is part of the same teaching with the Vedānta. Veṅkaṭanātha takes advantage of this (perhaps causal) remark and understands its deep implications: he can thus state that the whole of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā and the whole of Uttara Mīmāṃsā constitute a single teaching (ekaśāstra).

No. 3 and 4: Furthermore, Veṅkaṭanātha used the same model, I think, to incorporate into the system further elements. He reaches back to the Pāñcarātra, which had been defended by Yāmuna but rather neglected by Rāmānuja and, more strikingly, to the hymns of the Āḻvārs. It is in this sense more than telling that Veṅkaṭanātha (as first among the first teachers of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta) decided to write also in Tamil and to write theology also in poetical form, as the Āḻvārs had done.

Did you ever try to reconstruct what had happened in a single school within some generations of teachers and pupils? What did you find out?

On Yāmuna’s role in what came to be known as Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, check this post, on Pāñcarātra and Vedānta, see this post. For more on Veṅkaṭanātha, check this tag.

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