Authorship of Sarvadarzanasamgraha

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

aklujkar at UNIXG.UBC.CA wrote -

> Also, in the editions I have access to, the SDS concludes with a
fairly
> long section on ;Saa:nkara-dar;sana.

Yes, I thought so too. The quotation from sarvajnavishNu's .rjuvivaraNa
is in the section on advaita.

> As for the earlier post by Vidyasankar Sundaresan, it should be noted
that
> his observations do not rule out the possibility that
Canni-bha.t.ta/Cennu-bha.t.ta was the real author (of the entire SDS
> main text or a substantial
> part of it) and Saaya.na-maadhava was the editor or presenter of the
final
> version (probably as the head of a committee of  pa.n.ditas or as an
> appontee of the ruler).

Possibly. I'm unaware of any other works of mAdhava where he salutes
sarvajnavishNu. Incidentally, I remember having read that the salutation
verse pAraM gataM .... is also found in a commentary to another work of
cennubhaTTa's.

In any case, it is clear that sAyaNa, mAdhava and cennubhaTTa were
contemporaries, and that sAyaNa/mAdhava acted as editors of other texts
too, so cennubhaTTa's contribution cannot be ruled out. May be, a good
way to look at the SDS is as an anthology, bringing together important
extracts from different works. But it is odd that cennubhaTTa's name is
nowhere mentioned in the SDS.

>The Nyaayaala:nkaara Introduction is written by Prof. Anantlal Thakur,
a
> scholar unlikely to write without careful thinking.

I don't mean to doubt Prof. Thakur's scholarship, but just want to point
out that the traditional attribution of SDS to a mAdhava is not without
its merits. The identity of this mAdhava is another question. Perhaps,
mAdhava's authorship of the works attributed to him is like vyAsa's
authorship of the purANas. But this raises the question, which works
*did* sAyaNa and/or mAdhava compose? There is still a lot that remains
to be sorted out.

> His words are: "I have
> consulted a manuscript of a commentary on it [= Varada-raaja's
> Taarkika-rak.saa] by Cannibha.t.ta and Rame;svara of the Vijayanagara
> court. It shows that the Sarvadar;sanasa.mgraha, so far attributed to
> Maadhavaacaarya, is really the contribution of Cannibha.t.ta himself.
This
> has been confirmed by a comparison of the Sarvadar;sanasa.mgraha with
the
> commentary in question as well as with his Tarkabhaa.saaprakaa;sikaa."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

This answers Dmitry Olenev's question regarding the name
cannibhaTTa/cennubhaTTa. Obviously, both names refer to the same person,
the author of the tarkabhAshAprakASikA. In the BORI editions of this
work (1931 and 1979), his name is given as cinnaMbhaTTa.

Re: Rama Balasubramanian's and Dmitry Olenev's remarks concerning
naiyAyikas and vedAntins -

I'm not convinced that one can classify all Indian authors into
water-tight labels, like intellectual, spiritual, realist, idealist etc.
Was somebody like vAcaspati miSra a realist naiyAyika or an
idealist/illusionist/non-dualist vedAntin? He may have been one of the
"four pillars" of nyAya, but what about his bhAmatI, which is the basis
of an entire sub-school of advaita vedAnta? Somehow, the widely
different isms of nyAya and vedAnta co-exist in the same person, not to
forget other isms from his texts on mImAMsA, yoga and sAMkhya. Focussing
on one aspect/text does not do justice to the rest of his work. And if
the tradition were not strong that he composed works in diverse fields,
it may well be doubted if all the works attributed to vAcaspati miSra
come from the same hand. appayya dIkshita is a similar personality from
later times. It should also be remembered that advaitins like
madhusUdana sarasvatI count udayana, a naiyAyika, as an AcArya in their
own tradition. Besides, one finds naiyAyika sons of advaitin fathers (as
in the case of cennubhaTTa and sarvajnavishNu), and other permutations
with the six so-called Astika darSanas. Surely, generalizations are
misleading.

Vidyasankar

______________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com