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Saha, Niranjan (2014) hilosophy of Advaita Vedānta according to Madhus dana Sarasvatī s G hārthadīpikā. PhD Thesis. SOAS, University of London. http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/20350 Copyright © and Moral Rights for this PhD Thesis are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non‐commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This PhD Thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder/s. The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. When referring to this PhD Thesis, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the PhD Thesis must be given e.g. AUTHOR (year of submission) "Full PhD Thesis title", name of the School or Department, PhD PhD Thesis, pagination. Philosophy of Advaita Vedānta according to Madhusūdana Sarasvatī’s Gūḍhārthadīpikā Niranjan Saha Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD in the Study of Religions 2014 Department of the Study of Religions SOAS, University of London 1 Declaration for PhD thesis I have read and understood regulation 17.9 of the Regulations for students of the SOAS, University of London concerning plagiarism. I undertake that all the material presented for examination is my own work and has not been written for me, in whole or in part, by any other person. I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished work of another person has been duly acknowledged in the work which I present for examination. Signed:__ ______________________Date 22.10.2014_______________ 2 Acknowledgements This undertaking has had a long gestation period. I first started thinking of the Gūḍhārthadīpikā for a PhD in 2005 at the University of Madras, under the supervision of Professor Godabarisha Mishra. The availability of a fellowship in 2007 for a PhD programme at the SOAS under the guidance of Professor Angelika Malinar made it possible for me to start working on it in earnest. I express my deep gratitude to both of them. However, my foremost gratitude goes to Dr L. K. Vimal with whom I recited the Gītā for the first time, and also read Madhusūdana Sarasvatī’s Siddhāntabindu and Gūḍhārthadīpikā , during my field-study in New Delhi for training in reading Sanskrit language and texts. I am indebted to Dr Ramnath Jha, Special Centre for Sanskrit Studies, JNU, who taught me a few chapters of the text and helped me draw an outline of the work; and to Professor Shashiprabha Kumar for her help. My sincere gratitude goes to Pandit Goda Venkateshwara Sastri, Chennai, who read the first two chapters of the text with me before I left Chennai for the UK. I pay my obeisance to Svāmī Paramātmānanda whose lectures on Śaṃkara’s Gītābhāṣya I used to attend in Chennai. I am indebted to Professors R. Balasubramanian, N. Veezhinathan, S. Padmanabhan, Mandakranta Bose, K. M. Nair, A. K. Mohanty, Fr. Francis X. Clooney, Lance E. Nelson, John Grimes, Arindam Chakrabarti, M. M. Agrawal, Dilip Kumar Mohanta, Nirmalya Narayan Chakrabarti, Tapan Kumar Chakrabarti, Binod Agarwala, Drs Lokenath Chakrabarty, Sanjit Sadhukhna, Nirmalya Guha and G. Gayethripeetha for their guidance and help at various points of time. I am sincerely thankful to Professor Sanjukta Gupta Gombrich whose work on Madhusūdana had prompted me first to study this philosopher, and for her constant guidance and help. My sincere thanks are also due to Bhānu Svāmī, Dr. Vidyasankar Sundaresan, and an anonymous friend for their scholarly comments and guidance; and the latter two’s help in editing the draft chapters. As always, I cherish the blessings of all my early days’ home tutors and the teachers of my Alma maters (Sripur Free Primary School; Habra High School; Barasat Govt. College, University of Calcutta; University of Madras). My thanks are due to the Felix Trust which availed me a 3 year fellowship to pursue my programme at SOAS. I am also thankful to the International Students Welfare Advisors, SOAS; Churches’ International Student Network, who granted me a financial help from their Hardship Fund to facilitate completion of the project in time when my original fellowship terminated in 2010. I am sincerely thankful to my supervisor Dr Theodore Proferes, but for whose adept guidance and friendly attitude it would not have been possible to submit the work for re-examination now, and who took charge of me midway after Professor Malinar left SOAS in 2009. My earnest gratitude goes to Dr Whitney Cox with whom we started reading texts initially. I also thank my friends, scholarship officer, library and other administrative staff for their co-operation I received at SOAS, and to Mr P. K. Chakrabarti, Mr and Mrs Boyce, Suchitra Dey in UK for their love and affection. M/s. Walter Newbury, the binder in London, deserves special thanks. I am indebted to numerous friends (Debasish, Puran, Santhosh, Talim, Saurabh Sharma, Raviprabhat, Drs Surjakamal Bora, Devendra Singh, Kuldeep Shukla, R. Chandrasekar) who made me feel at home during my stay in New Delhi (2008-09). My deep sense of gratitude goes to Badrinath Tiwari who supplied me books whenever I demanded. My thanks are due to the staff of the libraries both in India and London for their kind co-operation. I convey my deep gratitude to all those whose translations and material I have made use of while preparing the work. I have no word to express my gratitude to Professors P. K. Sen and Rina Sen for their parental concern, and moreover, for Professor Sen’s remarks on the draft chapters that I prepared during the extended period for resubmitting this work. It is my fortune to have association with such a person who is a rare combination of scholarship and humanness. I express my gratitude to my Philosophy teacher at school Mr Durga Sankar Sen who not only introduced to me this subject, but also provided me his accommodation in Kolkata to stay during my research. Last but not least, I am grateful to all my siblings, friends, cousin Subhasish, school-mates Subrata, Karuna etc. for their constant love and affection, and my beloved parents, late Shambhu Nath Saha and late Shobha Rani Saha, whose demise might have prompted me to undertake the study of the Bhagavadgītā . My life and education are my mother’s gift. I dedicate this work to the memory of my late parents, the late Jugal Kishore Podder, my respected uncle; and the late professors in my college Saroj Nath Sanyal and Papri Bhadra, who would have been happy to see this work. 3 Abstract Madhusūdana Sarasvatī (ca. 16 th century CE), one of the seminal figures in post- Śaṃkara Advaita Vedānta, authored various works, including the Advaitasiddhi , a polemic of the highest kind against theistic dualism. It is considered to be one of the influential works of the Advaita Vedānta (i.e. non-dualism) school of Śaṃkara. In addition, his Bhaktirasāyana is the only extant independent exposition on the nature of devotion written by a staunch exponent of Advaita. In his work, we see a remarkable attempt to accommodate two apparently incompatible concepts, viz. non-dualism and devotion. Building on the Bhaktirasāyana , Madhusūdana has given a running commentary on the Bhagavadgītā , viz. the Gūḍhārthadīpikā , in which the doctrine of Advaita is expounded with a special emphasis on bhakti . In this work he occasionally disagrees with Śaṃkara’s interpretation of the Bhagavadgītā . He also treats some rival views that developed in post-Śaṃkara Vedānta (e.g. concerning whether the individual self is one or many) as viable alternatives within Advaita Vedānta. While the Gūḍhārthadīpikā is considered to be an original and independent commentary on the Bhagavadgītā written from the Advaita point of view, some of the later commentators belonging to the same school did not accept it in toto. They even expressed the view that as compared to the Gūḍhārthadīpikā , Śaṃkara’s commentary exhibits better the true import of the Bhagavadgītā . Ironically, a few later commentators belonging to the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava school (who are generally opposed to Advaita) have found the Gūḍhārthadīpikā impressive. This dissertation attempts to establish that the Gūḍhārthadīpikā succeeds to a considerable extent in 4 accommodating devotion as an aid to the means of attaining liberation, a fact that has been overlooked in some contemporary works on Madhusūdana. 5 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 333 Abstract 444 Outline of Chapters 999 1. Introduction 11121222 1.1. Scope and methodology of the study 12 1.2. The author and his works 15 1.3. Ved ānta with special reference to Advaita and its post-Śa ṃkara development 24 1.4. The influence of post-Śa ṃkara Advaita on Madhusūdana’s thought 33 1.5. The Bhagavadgītā and its commentarial tradition 38 1.6. A bird’s eye-view of the Gūḍhārthadīpikā 44 1.7. Distinctiveness of the Gūḍhārthadīpikā as a commentary on the Bhagavadgītā 49 1.8. Note on translation 55 2. Available Modern Scholarship on Madhusūdana Sarasvatī 565656 2.1. General overview 56 2.2. Early works of Madhusūdana 63 2.2.1. Saṃkṣepaśārīrakasārasaṃgraha 63 2.2.2. Vedāntakalpalatikā 63 2.2.3. Siddhāntabindu 64 2.3. Dialectical works against Nyāya and Dvaita Vedānta 66 2.3.1 Advaitaratnarakṣaṇa 66 2.3.2 Advaitasiddhi 66 2.4. Devotional works of Madhusūdana 70 2.4.1. Kṛṣṇakutūhalanāṭaka 70 2.4.2. Mahimnastotraṭīkā including Prasthānabheda 71 2.4.3. Bhaktirasāyana 72 2.4.4. Gūḍhārthadīpikā 76 2.5. Room for further research on the Gūḍhārthadīpikā 83 3. Madhusūdana Sarasvatī’s Introduction ( upodghāta ) to the Gūḍhārthadīpikā asasas Summary of the Bhagavadgītā 858585 3.1.