S´ AM. KARA’S ADVAITA VEDANTA¯ S´am. kara (c. 700 ce) has been regarded by many as the most authoritative Hindu thinker of all time. A great Indian Ved¯antin brahmin, S´am. kara was primarily a commentator on the sacred texts of the Vedas and a teacher in the Advaitin teaching line. This book provides an introduction to S´am. kara’s thought which takes this as a central theme. The author develops an innovative approach based on S´am. kara’s ways of interpreting sacred texts and creatively examines the profound interrelationship between sacred text, content and method in S´am. kara’s thought. The main focus of the book is on S´am. kara’s teaching method. This method is, for S´am. kara, based on the Upanisads’. own; it is to be employed by Advaitin teachers to draw pupils skilfully towards that realization which is beyond all words. Consequently, this book will be of interest not only to students and scholars of Indian philosophy, but to all those interested in the relation between language and that which is held to transcend it. J. G. Suthren Hirst is Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester. Her interest in teaching and learning at all levels informs her research on the Ved¯anta school of Indian philosophy, on Hindu texts and on gender and religion in South Asia and the diaspora. ROUTLEDGECURZON HINDU STUDIES SERIES Series editor: Francis X. Clooney, SJ The RoutledgeCurzon Hindu Studies Series, in association with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, intends primarily the publication of constructive Hindu theological, philosophical and ethical projects aimed at bringing Hindu traditions into dialogue with contemporary trends in scholarship and contemporary society, and with the particular concerns of Hindus living in India and abroad today. The series also invites proposals for annotated translations of important primary sources and studies in the history of the Hindu religious traditions. EPISTEMOLOGIES AND THE LIMITATIONS OF PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY Doctrine in M¯adhva Ved¯anta Deepak Sarma A HINDU CRITIQUE OF BUDDHIST EPISTEMOLOGY Kum¯arila on perception The ‘Determination of Perception’ chapter of Kum¯arila Bhat.ta’s. S´lokav¯arttika Translation and commentary John Taber S´ AM. KARA’S ADVAITA VEDANTA¯ A way of teaching J. G. Suthren Hirst S´ AM. KARA’S ADVAITA VEDANTA¯ A way of teaching J. G. Suthren Hirst First published 2005 by RoutledgeCurzon 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2005 J. G. Suthren Hirst All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-00192-3 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-415-35549-4 TO ALL THOSE FROM WHOM I HAVE LEARNED CONTENTS Series editor’s preface x Preface xii Acknowledgement xiii Abbreviations xiv Introduction: studying the teacher 1 Identifying the teacher 1 Method in studying S´am. kara 4 The shape of the study 8 1 The teacher himself 11 The views of S´am. kara’s pupils 11 The traditional lives 13 The quest for S´am. kara the teacher 17 S´am. kara’s major works 19 Questions of authenticity 22 Dating S´am. kara’s life 25 S´am. kara’s historical background 26 The rise of devotion 26 The intellectual climate 29 2 The need for the teaching 32 The human condition 32 The commentator’s task 36 Knowledge and ritual action 37 The fit pupil 41 The one to be known 45 vii CONTENTS 3 The source of the teaching 49 Methods of acquiring knowledge 49 The nature of scripture 52 N¯ar¯ayana,. founder of the teaching tradition 57 Interpreting scripture 59 On reason and personal experience 64 4 The methods of the teaching 69 The Upanisadic. basis of S´am. kara’s teaching methods 69 Questioning 70 Renunciation 74 Examples 76 Story 80 Interiorization 83 The framework of superimposition and elimination 85 5 The context of the teaching: the world of name and form 89 Ultimate and conventional truth 90 Origination stories 95 Name and form (n¯amar¯upa) 97 The clay–pot example 103 The rope–snake 105 Magician and magical illusion 109 Complementarity and mutual restriction 113 6 The context of the teaching: the Lord 116 The debate about the Lord 116 The higher and lower brahman 118 The Lord and the cosmos 123 The place of Vis.nu. 129 The context of the Lord 135 7 The language of the teaching 138 The wider context 140 Tat tvam asi (‘You are that’) in BSBh 4.1.2 141 Neti neti (‘Not thus, not thus’) in Br. Up Bh 2.3.6 143 Satyam. jñ¯anam anantam. brahma (‘Brahman is reality, consciousness, infinite’) in Tait Up Bh 2.1.1 145 viii CONTENTS Tat tvam asi (‘You are that’) in Upade´sas¯ahasri¯ Metric Chapter 18 151 8 The end of the teaching 161 The methods at work: S´am. kara’s commentary on the Taittiriya¯ Upanis.ad 161 Remaining problems? 168 Corrective readings 169 The culmination of the teaching 173 The supersession of the teaching 175 What remains? 176 Summarizing the argument 177 Is duality overcome? 180 The study of S´am. kara the teacher 182 Glossary 188 Notes 193 Bibliography 225 Index 236 ix SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE The RoutledgeCurzon Hindu Studies Series, published in collaboration with the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, intends primarily the publication of constructive Hindu theological, philosophical and ethical projects. The focus is on issues and concerns of relevance to readers interested in Hindu traditions in particular, yet also in the context of a wider range of related religious concerns that matter in today’s world. The Series seeks to promote excellent scholarship and, in relation to it, an open and critical conversation among scholars and the wider audience of interested readers. Though contemporary in its purpose, the Series recognizes the importance of retrieving the classic texts and ideas, beliefs and practices of Hindu traditions, so that the great intellectuals of these traditions may as it were become partners in the conversations of today. Deepak Sarma’s Epistemologies and the Limitations of Philosophical Inquiry, and John Taber’s A Hindu Critique of Buddhist Epistemology: Kumarila on Perception were fitting first volumes in this new Series. It is equally appropriate that Jacqueline Suthren Hirst’s S´am. kara’s Advaita Vedanta: ¯ A Way of Teaching is now published as a third volume. This book is about a key figure in a Hindu – Brahmanical, Advaita – tradition, the great seventh–eighth-century thinker named S´am. kara. Although he is often described as a philosopher or theologian, Hirst is right in describing S´am. kara’s unique contribution in appropriate apophatic language near the end of her study: ‘not untextual’, ‘not unphilosophical’, ‘not socially and politically ungrounded’, and ‘not ungrounded in experience’. Or to put it positively and in other words: S´am. kara is a teacher for whom texts, ideas, social context, and experience matter, all in relation to the dynamics of the teacher–student relationship. There is an enormous bibliography related to the work of S´am. kara, and anyone venturing to add to it today must manage both to appropriate the mass of prior interpretation and yet also to speak freshly. Hirst’s exceptionally integral appreciation of S´am. kara leads us on a tour of his major writings, his key insights, and also what has been said about him in India and in the West. All of this is fruitfully focused on the notion of S´am. kara as a teacher, an x SERIES EDITOR’S PREFACE identification that rings true in terms of the project evidenced in his writings and of the traditional appellation of him as S´am. kar¯ac¯arya, ‘S´am. kara the revered teacher’. To use pedagogical issues as the lens through which to see S´am. kara offers us a vivid sense of his whole project in terms of what it all is for. By a plan that will be accessible to the student not deeply familiar with S´am. kara’s works, yet sure also to hold the attention of scholars deeply familiar with S´am. kara and the key writings attributed to him, Hirst explores the key dimensions of the teaching dynamic: the need for teaching (Chapter 2), its source (Chapter 3), methods (Chapter 4), contexts (Chapter 5, name and form; Chapter 6, the Lord), its language (Chapter 7), and its culmination or end (Chapter 8). Hirst is consciously aware that her own book – along with her related articles and lectures – is itself a work of teaching, a reading of texts and a clarification of ideas that is also aimed at drawing the reader into the work of thinking through the Ved¯anta project of S´am. kara. S´am. kara’s Advaita Vedanta ¯ is an appropriately rich, reflective and fresh addition to the S´am.