Abhidheya

[K. S. Arjunwadkar]

At 03:41 PM 2/13/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Venerable Indologists,
>
>Would any Vedantists out there be able to explain why the word _abhidheya_
is used as the second member of the tripartite division of Vedanta theology
(sambandha and prayojana being the other two). In my understanding,
abhidheya is equated with sAdhana, but the word abhidheya itself does not
immediately convey this sense.
>
>Thanking you in advance,
>
>Jan Brzezinski
>
Reply:
Abhidheya (also called viZaya), when mentioned along with sambandha and
prayojana, means subject/topic of a systematic work; and the three,
sometimes with the fourth one, the adhikarin, are together called
'anubandha-s' (qualifiers), and are considered to be binding on the author
of a work to be announced at the outset. I am not aware of any authentic
Vedanta work taking the word in question to mean sAdhana.
It is obvious that the concept of anubandha came into vogue to answer the
primary queries of an intelligent reader in behalf of a work: (1) for whom
is it intended; (2) what is its subject; (3) what is its
justification/inter-relation as a subject/topic; (4) what profit would a
reader derive from it. I have discussed these conventional anubandhas and
their traditional explanations in my article, 'A Rational Approach to
Vedanta', published in ABORI, 1996.
KSA