Error Condition Re: Re: Seeking reviewers and books for review...book

[vidya at cco.caltech.edu]

> How rare! How precious! How utterly lofty! How far beyond the everyday
> consciousness of humanity, yet how close to our most intimate
> yearnings! Thanks to the recent publication by the Society of Abidance
> in Truth, SAT, the Saivas now have their Gita, too--the Ribhu Gita, an
> apparently "ancient text" which, like the other Gita, is an extract
> from a much longer epic, in this case the Sivarahasya.


With all due respect, I must beg to differ with some of these statements. The
Ribhu Gita is indeed a very highly advanced work of advaita, but my
disagreements are over other issues. 

1. Saivas already had the Siva Gita, which is very highly valued in     
Veerasaiva circles. There are many commentaries to this Siva Gita, including
ones by Appayya Dikshita and Sri Narasimha Bharati. 

2. The Ribhu Gita is indeed an ancient dialogue. A dialogue between Ribhu
and his disciple, Nidagha, occurs in quite a few Puranas, including the 
Vishnu Purana. But the Siva Rahasya is not an "ancient" epic. It has references
to many "modern" personalities, including Sankaracharya, Haradattacharya
and Appayya Dikshita. 

I see no reason why the Ribhu Gita must be described as an extract from an
epic "Siva Rahasya". Obviously this is to parallel the Bhagavad Gita, an 
extract from the ancient epic, the Mahabharata. It would be perfectly 
fitting to describe the Ribhu Gita as from a purANa, thus aligning the text
with the "canonical"
itihAsa-purANa category. Unless, of course, the idea is to promote the 
Siva Rahasya as an epic that is equivalent to the Mahabharata. But then we
do have the Tamil Periapuranam, don't we, on which the Siva Rahasya is
obviously based? Just because the Siva Rahasya is in Sanskrit does not mean
that it is any more valuable than the Periapuranam. 

3. Finally, it is not as if the Bhagavad-Gita is so Vaishnava that Saivas
need a Gita of their own. Is it being forgotten that Abhinavagupta, that 
famous leader of Kashmir Saivism wrote the Gitarthasangraha on the 
Bhagavad Gita? 

I would appreciate more comments by the real Indologists here. 

Regards, 

S. Vidyasankar