To Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137) are attributed, with more or less certainty, a series of Vedāntic works, namely the Śrī Bhāṣya (henceforth ŚrīBh) commentary on the Brahma Sūtra (henceforth UMS), which is his philosophical opus magnum, both in length and philosophical depth, the Gītabhāṣya on the Bhagavadgītā (henceforth BhG), a compendium of his philosophy, the Vedārthasaṅgraha, and two shorter commentaries on the UMS, namely the Vedāntadīpa and the Vedāntasāra.
Beside these works, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school, at least since the time of Sudarśana Sūri and Veṅkaṭanātha (also called Vedānta Deśika, traditional dates 1269–1370), recognised Rāmānuja as the author of also three extremely short works (about 3–4 pages each), namely the Śaraṇāgatigadya, the Śrīraṅgagadya and the Vaikuṇṭhagadya, and of a manual of daily worship called Nityagrantha.

The terms bhakti `devotional love’ and bhakta `devotee’ are not very frequent in the ŚrīBh, where they are mentioned slightly more than ten times, a portion of which in quotes (some of which from the BhG). By contrast, the Śaraṇāgatigadya mentions bhakti 19 times in its only 23 sentences, and adds further elements to it (such as Nārāyaṇa instead of Kṛṣṇa as the object of devotion, and the role of prapatti ‘self-surrender’, see immediately below). Does this mean that the Śaraṇāgatigadya is not by Rāmānuja and represents a further stage in the theological thought of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta? Alternatively, one might suggest that Rāmānuja addressed different audiences in his philosophical and in his religious works. In other words, the difference between the position of the ŚrīBh and that of the Śaraṇāgatigadya could be only due to the fact that the first develops a philosophical discourse about God, whereas the latter enacts the author’s relationship with Him.

In the ŚrīBh, bhakti is the (only) way to make sense of the previous obligations taught in the karma- and in the jñānamārga, which it therefore subsumes. For instance, the next two passages show how bhakti leads to the cessation of nescience and results in the attainment of brahman/God.

hṛdayaguhāyām upāsanaprakāram, upāsanasya ca parabhaktirūpatvam, upāsīnasya avidyā-vimokapūrvakaṃ brahmasamaṃ brahmānubhavaphalaṃ ca upadiśya upasaṃhṛtam | (ad 1.2.23)

I have taught and now sum up the modality of contemplation in the cave of one’s heart, the fact that veneration has the form of supreme bhakti, and the result, being the experience of brahman, which is tantamount to the brahman and is caused by the cessation of nescience in the one who venerates.

The word upāsana is even more clearly connected with the jñānamārga, insofar as Rāmānuja shows how the salvific knowledge which can defeat nescience must consist of upāsana, since a sheer cognition would not be enough (see Marlewicz 2010):

atrocyate – yad uktam – avidyānivṛttir eva mokṣaḥ, sā ca brahmavijñānād eva bhavati iti, tad abhyupagamyate. avidyānivṛttaye vedāntavākyair vidhitsitaṃ jñānaṃ kiṃrūpam iti vivecanīyam – kiṃ vākyād vākyārthajñānamātram, uta tanmūlam upāsanātmakaṃ jñānam iti. na tāvat vākyajanyaṃ jñānam […] ato vākyārthajñānād anyad eva dhyānopāsanādiśabdavācyaṃ jñānaṃ vedāntavākyair vidhitsatam (ŚrīBh ad 1.1.1)

In this regard we need to answer [to the Advaitins]: We accept what you said, namely that salvation consists just in the cessation of nescience and that this occurs due to the cognition of the brahman.
It is to be discussed what this knowledge intended to be enjoined by means of the statements of the Upaniṣads for the purpose of ceasing the nescience is like? Is it only the knowledge of the sentence-meaning [arising] from the sentence? Or else the knowledge which has the nature of the devout contemplation (upāsana), based on this (sentence-meaning)? Regarding the first alternative — this knowledge is not originating [merely] from the sentence [\dots] Therefore, the Upaniṣadic sentences enjoin something different than the knowledge of the sentence-meaning, namely a cognition expressed by words such as meditation and devout contemplation.

In the Gītābhāṣya, prapatti is introduced as a preliminary step before bhakti, but so powerful that it can substitute karma- and jñānamārga completely. This move could be due at least also to the second person perspective of the Arjuna-Kṛṣṇa dialogue, which could have oriented Rāmānuja’s understanding of bhakti and prapatti as soteriological means: Arjuna’s desperation makes Kṛṣṇa soothe him by suggesting him an immediate path.

The role of bhakti in the Śaraṇāgatigadya is in harmony with its role in the Gītābhāṣya, namely a preliminary step before undertaking bhaktiyoga. However, the Śaraṇāgatigadya has been traditionally interpreted as a narrative about Rāmānuja’s own act of śaraṇāgati and as enjoining primarily śaraṇāgati. Why?

In fact, the Śaraṇāgatigadya presents an interesting conundrum: It contains most of the themes which will later become standard in the later treatments of bhakti and prapatti, but in a poetic form.
The elements which are deemed to influence for a long time the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school, in particular, are:

• The presence of different ways of addressing God, as attested by the endless series of attributes in vv. 1, 5 etc. and explicitly thematised in v. 7 (as against the Northern Indian way to venerate God under one aspect, e.g., as child or as spouse)
• The role of Śrī as mediator: the author does not address directly Nārāyaṇa, but first her and only once her intermediation has taken place does he address Nārāyaṇa.
• The localisation of God, in this case in Śrīraṅga (see v. 19).
• The connection of kaiṅkarya `servitude’ and rati `love’ as opposed to a pure ritualistic servitude or to a differently flavoured love (vātsalya `tender love towards one’s child’, etc.).
• The reuse (non literal in the case of the Śaraṇāgatigadya, literal in later texts) of BhG 18.66 (later known as the caramaśloka `the final verse’) in the context of taking refuge.
• The reuse of other verses of the BhG (see vv. 13–15).
• Prapatti that appears to be performed as a speech act (performed in vv. 1–2 in regard to Śrī and then in v. 5 in regard to Nārāyaṇa) which is not repeatable (v. 6 in fact speaks of it in the past and v. 16 displays what was wished for in v. 1 as already accomplished).
• The author’s feeling the need to ask God to be forgiven for his endless shortcomings (in a way which reminds one of Yāmuna’s Stotraratna and of the Āḻvārs.
• The seeming predominance of prapatti over bhakti (partly against Rāmānuja’s other works, see above and below).
• The fact that nothing is needed to perform prapatti apart from the awareness of not having any other way left. One must feel desperate and derelict, with no other possible way left. In the terminology of the Śaraṇāgatigadya one needs to be ananyaśaraṇa `with no other refuge’.

The last element, namely the awareness of one’s wreckedness, was already present in the Āḻvārs’ poems and, more interestingly, also in Yāmuna’s Stotraratna. This brings one back to the complex relation between Rāmānuja and Yāmuna. The latter is addressed with respect twice (once in the maṅgala) in the former’s Vedārthasaṅgraha, but is not mentioned at all in Rāmānuja’s opus magnum, his ŚrīBh, which seems to focus only on inner-Vedānta issues (more on the “isolation” of the ŚrīBh below).

The most significant element to be discussed in regard to the role of the Śaraṇāgatigadya within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta is the second to last one. Prapatti is clearly omnipresent in the Śaraṇāgatigadya, but nowhere is it said that it is a different path as bhakti (in fact, the sequence from v. 6 to vv. 13 to 15 appears to imply that bhakti must be accomplished once one has done prapatti). Thus, prapatti remains a preliminary element providing an easy entrance into bhakti, which remains the only salvific path. The later and typically Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta idea of prapatti as an independent path and as the only feasible one, alternative to the unrealistic path of bhakti, appears not to be there yet.

The first person perspective in the Śaraṇāgatigadya
Yāmuna’s Stotraratna is a hymn to God written from the first-person perspective and including the literary persona of its author as a deeply troubled devout, who needs help from God. Probably elaborating on this motif, the Śaraṇāgatigadya presents itself as an invocation to God by a similar kind of believer. The interesting innovation in this case is the fact that the author speaks first to Śrī and then to Nārāyaṇa and, more importantly, that both answer him. Śrī is addressed with many attributes, elaborating on her various aspects (v. 1). The author asks her to let him take refuge (v.2). Śrī accords that with only a few words (vv. 3–4). Next come long invocations (vv. 5–17, especially v. 5) to Nārāyaṇa, containing the request to take refuge in God and then to become a bhakta. In v. 5, God is addressed with a seemingly endless series of attributes, covering approximately 20 lines of Sanskrit, before the crisp request of taking refuge. Similarly, the author describes at length his inadequateness (v. 16). Are all these words just ornamental? Probably not. The long process of uttering God’s attributes and one’s shortcomings might be itself part of the salvific process of becoming aware of His greatness and of one’s inadequacy. In other words, by painfully listing one’s shortcomings the author (and, perhaps, his ideal audience) becomes aware of their all-pervasive nature, and of the fact that they are not emendable. The author says, in fact, that he will continue performing evil acts even in the future (v. 10) and that he therefore absolutely needs God’s help. Nārāyaṇa, unlike Śrī, answers at length (vv. 17–24). The answer is ultimately positive: the author’s desire will be fulfilled (v. 21). He should not doubt it (v. 22–23). Still, Nārāyaṇa comes to this positive result after having Himself enumerated the author’s shortcomings (in a list longer than the author’s one). That is, the wish is ultimately fulfilled, but not automatically and as the result of a compassion that Nārāyaṇa shows to be even more necessary than the author had thought. The narrative and dialogical structure of the text appear, therefore, to have a profound impact on the doctrine propounded, namely, prapatti. Without this structure, the text would occupy only a few lines, stating that once one has obtained prapatti through God’s mercy, one can become a bhakta. Within the structure, however, the same content gets a different connotation, insofar as both the request(s) and the response are delayed enough to show the difficulty of what has just been requested and the wondrous nature of God’s compassion.

Conclusions
Bhakti plays in the ŚrīBh an exclusive role and śaraṇāgati is not even mentioned. Apart from this fundamental difference, many elements in the Śaraṇāgatigadya are altogether absent in the ŚrīBh. These differences have been until now interpreted (see Lester and, for a different and more cautious opinion, Raman) as evidences against Rāmānuja’s authorship of the Śaraṇāgatigadya. At the same time, the Śaraṇāgatigadya is perfectly integrated in the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta thought, both insofar as it summarises the key elements in its doctrine of prapatti and insofar as it contains several elements already evoked in the Āḻvārs’ hymns and even in Yāmuna’s ones. It is, in this sense, not surprising that Sudarśana Sūri and even more Veṅkaṭanātha saw in the Śaraṇāgatigadya a key text within their tradition (Veṅkaṭanātha’s commentary on the Śaraṇāgatigadya covers 50 pages, whereas the ones on the other gadyas only a few pages each). The case of the Śaraṇāgatigadya, in the sense, rather shows the relative isolation of the ŚrīBh from Śrī Vaiṣṇavism. This text lays the metaphysical foundations of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school, but remained distant from its devotional aspects (for instance, unlike the Gītābhāṣya and the Vedārthasaṅgraha, it does not salute Yāmuna in the initial maṅgala and rather evokes previous Vedānta teachers). Bhakti is discussed within the ŚrīBh as the only way to reach God, but from a detached, third-person perspective. The existential dimension of the difficulties hidden in this ideal picture start coming to the foreground in the Gītabhāṣya (still written from a third person perspective, but incorporating also the second-person perspective of Arjuna’s and Kṛṣṇa’s dialogue) and then more incisively so in the first person perspective of the Śaraṇāgatigadya.

Opponents coming from the Advaita field figure often in Yāmuna’s Ātmasiddhi, which shows that even before Rāmānuja Vaiṣṇava authors were taking seriously the challenge of Advaita. Even more interesting is the way Yāmuna answers to them. Let us see some examples concerning the concept of self (ātman):

[Obj.:] But the fact of being a cogniser is the fact of performing the action of cognising and this implies modifications and is (typical of) insentient things and belongs to the sense of Ego. The self is the enjoyer of the result of this (cognition), it does not act, it does not undergo modifications, it is a witness, pure light (with no content). […] And in the same way it is correct to say that the self is a witness and that it is different from the knower and the entity meant by the word ”I”.

(nanu jñātṛtvaṃ jñānakriyākartṛtvaṃ vikriyātmakaṃ jaḍam ahaṅkāragranthistham. tatphalabhug akartāvikriyaḥ sākṣī prakāśamātra ātmā. […] tathehāpi pramātur ahamarthād vilakṣaṇaḥ sākṣī pratyagātmeti yuktam)

The connection of this objection with the ontology of substances is made immediately evident in another statement by the objector:

For, the fact of being a doer, etc., since they are commonly experienced like colour and other (qualities), are not qualities of the self. (ĀS 1942 p. 38)

(kartṛtvādir hi dṛśyatvād rūpādivan nātmadharmaḥ)

In other words, this Advaitin imagines a self which is pure, i.e. contentless, consciousness. In order to preserve this purity, everything is precluded to it, even knowledge.

Yāmuna, by contrast, answers that the self is the entity denoted by the word “I” and that this is also the knower, as proved by expressions such as “I know” (p. 39). Why is it so important for him that the self can know? An answer can be found a few pages below:

And cognition makes nescience disappear only as far as its specific content is concerned. (ĀS 1942 p. 42)

(jñānaṃ ca svaviṣaya evājñānaṃ nivartayati)

This is a precise attack against the Advaita soteriology. In fact, even in order to defeat nescience, which is the soteriological goal of Advaitins, one needs not a void consciousness, but an intentional knowledge. In fact, nescience is always nescience of something, and it can be defeated only by the cognition of the corresponding thing.

On the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta concept of qualities and substances see this post.

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 two sub-schools
The discussion on Pāñcarātra (which you can find in the first part of this post, here) suggests a more general problem regarding the origin of the two “subschools” of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta. Western scholars initially described them by projecting retrospectively the split into Vaṭakalai and Teṅkalai to more ancient times (Lester attributes it already to ”less than 150 years after Rāmānuja’s death”, 1976, p. 150) and even called the split a ”schism” (Kirchentrennung, Otto 1917, p. 6), thus betraying a tendency to re-read it through the lenses of the history of Christian theology. Raman, among others, has shown how the split occurred only much later (around the 17th c., see Raman 2007). Mumme (1988) suggested that the two sub-schools have a distinct prehistory, linked to the two centers of Śrīraṅgam (for the later Teṅkalai) and Kañcī (for the later Vaṭakalai), both originating from Rāmānuja’s teaching. The hypothesis could be led further until the consequence that there was never a unity which then split into two and that the two distinct currents, rather, were brought together by the converging efforts of some theologians (see this post) and by the fact of sharing a religious background.

The Vedāntisation of the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta
Who is responsible for the Vedāntisation of the school? Rāmānuja is a clearly Vedāntic author, whereas Yāmuna is not, but was the turn determined only by the former?

The impact of other schools

Rāmānuja is first and foremost a Vedāntic author, but his position towards Pūrva Mīmāṃsā is much more inclusive than Śaṅkara’s one, something which could be due to his choice or to Śaṅkara’s peculiar choice to exclude Pūrva Mīmāṃsā (a question which is difficult to solve, given that no other early Vedāntic commentary is preserved).
Apart from Vedānta, the most obvious candidate would be Nyāya, which in fact did influence Nāthamuni (judging from the title of one of his lost texts) and certainly Yāmuna’s first adherence to the idea of inferring God’s existence and his life-long adherence to the idea of inferring the validity of the Pāñcarātra Sacred Texts from the fact that they have a reliable author, namely God. The confrontation with Nyāya changed by the time of Veṅkaṭanātha, who authored a Purification of Nyāya (Nyāyapariśuddhi).

How and why did Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta develop the way it did?

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

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.

Yāmuna’s efforts to incorporate Pāñcarātra doctrine into the Vedānta involve some recognition of the Bhedābheda view permeating Pāñcarātra. In order to avoid Śaṅkara’s criticism of the Bhedābheda, however, Yāmuna has to develp his own distinction between brahman in the pure state and brahman as the creative power behind and within the universe. For him, this distinction is between God as the possessor of qualities and the divine qualities thus possessed, out of which the universe evolves. He admits* that his view can be described as “difference and non-difference”. […] Rāmānuja appears to be more precise than Yāmuna and more consistent in avoiding expressions that sound either like Bhāskara’s Bhedābheda or Śaṅkara’s Advaita. Perhaps this was an additional reason for Rāmānuja […] to avoid turning to Pāñcarātra texts.

To sum up, according to Carman (1974 and 2007) and Neevel (1977), Yāmuna already initiated a Vedāntisation. The main differences between his Vedāntisation and Rāmānuja’s one would be the fact that the former focused on the Vedāntisation of Pāñcarātra and was closer to Bhedābheda.
Rāmānuja, I might further suggest, was creating a Vedāntic school much more than he was vedāntising anything else. Furthermore, he appears to have been the inventor of the Viśiṣṭādvaita ontology.

*Unfortunately, Carman does not say where. Since he refers to Neevel 1977 in this paragraph, one might try to look there.

from assayofficebirmingham.com

The debate is very much present in Sanskrit sources because it is contiguous to the possibility of intellectual perception. In fact, if sense-perception can be constantly improved by practice, it seems plausible to assume that it could be improved until the point in which the intellect can perceive in its own right. And this opens the door to super-sensuous perception.
But let me come back to the case of expert knowledge. The standard example is that of an expert of gems, who can recognise a genuine gem through sense perception. There are interesting debates about what exactly can be perceived through sense-perception in this case. For instance, Veṅkaṭanātha in his Seśvaramīmāṃsā ad PMS 1.1.4 (English translation under preparation by me) says that an expert can recognise the different hues of colours of a gem, which are concealed to lay people due to their similarity. However, even an expert cannot sense-perceive the preciousness of a gem —he instead only infers it, although the inference is not verbally formulated. By the way, Michel X, while commenting on the the post which triggered the present one* expresses some skepticism concerning the experts’ perception in the case of works of art. He might be right, and I can easily imagine Veṅkaṭanātha claiming that judging about the authenticity of a work of art implies implicit inferences rather than sense-perception alone.

To sum up, authors like Yāmuna (in his Ātmasiddhi, the relevant passage is translated towards the end of this article) maintain that perception can undergo an indefinite progress, basically until everything can be directly perceived —so that this argument leads to an evidence for the existence of God. Veṅkaṭanātha, by contrast, claims that perception can be improved through exercise, but that such improvement has precise limitations. Just like different people can jump more and more, but no one can jump until the moon, so visual perception will never grasp what is intrinsically outside the precinct of application of sight, e.g., smell.

Another instance of the argument of the continuous improvement I could find is located in Śaṅkara’s Yogaśāstravivaraṇa (the attribution is doubted, and sense perception does not help, thus I am here following the opinion of an expert, Kengo Harimoto), which has been recently critically edited and translated by Kengo Harimoto (see here). The argument is found in the commentary ad Yogabhāṣya 1.25 and leads to the establishment of an omniscient God through the fact that knowledge can always be improved and that it needs to achieve a peak somewhere. Maṇḍana Miśra, who is believed to have been a senior contemporary of Śaṅkara, rejected the theological part of the argument (see Harimoto, p. 11). Harimoto does not say where, but I imagine that this might be in his Vidhiviveka, around 1.14, where the discussion on omniscience takes place.

UPDATE: A further instance of this argument is discussed here.
*This post has been stimulated by Helen De Cruz’ discussion of the topic, here, and by two comments I received about it (many thanks for them, by the way!).

Arne Niklas Jansson

The first attitude could lead to a rational theology, or even to deism, as it happened during the Enlightenment, since it presupposes that all human beings could equally reach an adequate knowledge of God, if only they were to apply properly their instruments of knowledge. The second attitude suggests that there is no way to prove the existence of God apart from one’s own experience and the (one of others as recorded in) Sacred Texts. Historically, religions tend to explain that one should be suspicious of one’s insight alone, since it might be due to one’s projections of what one would like to see as the ultimate reality, so that the second way is usually at least a mixture of personal experience and its validation through the Sacred Texts. In other words, if you “saw” the Virgin Mary as she is described by other reliable sources, yours could have been a genuine religious experience, whereas if you “saw” a Flying spaghetti monster, you should reconsider your evening meals.
Now, the first attitude may seem appealing to our contemporary and secularised world (csw), since it does not recur to the external authority of Sacred Texts, which is usually hard to accept to members of csw. However, it presupposes a totalitaristic move, since if the existence of God can be rationally proved, then your failure to comply amounts to a cognitive fault. It is the same argument which enabled Soviet Union (etc.) leaders to claim that the ones who were not agreeing with the rationality of Communism needed to be reeducated.