SamnyAsin names

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>Most VedAnta samnyAsins of late seem to be having names ending with
>"ananda"
>- VivekAnanda, BrahmAnanda etc But earlier VedAntins seem to have used
>their
>original names even after taking up samnyAsam - Shankara, GaudapAda,
>PadmapAda. But again Madhva seems to have taken up the monastic name of
>"VidhyAranya" and Mandana Mishra as SureshvarAchArya (or are they two
>different persons?).

You mean Madhava? In both cases, it is not clear that Madhava = Vidyaranya,
or Mandana Misra = Suresvara. The latter case has been discussed in great
detail by many different scholars, and the general conclusion is that the
equation should not be done, especially if by Mandana Misra, one means the
author of Brahmasiddhi, Vibhramaviveka and other works. Suresvara is often
referred to as Visvarupa also, especially when later authors quote from his
works. As for Padmapada, the tradition is that his original name was
Sanandana. He got his name as a result of walking over lotuses across a
river. There was a recent discussion of walking over lotuses as one of the
achievements listed in Jaina texts too. And Gaudapada seems to be a generic
name, not the first name of a person. It is not clear when the practice of
giving a Sannyasa name became a fixed pattern in Vedanta tradition.
Jnanaghana, the author of Tattvasuddhi, is probably one of the earliest
examples. It certainly sounds like a name chosen by a Guru for a disciple,
rather than by parents for their child.

Ananda has become very common among the newer Vedanta orders in recent
times, but it is not a substitute for or an extension of the traditional
Dasanami suffixes. One of the standard Sannyasa Paddhati manuals says that
the practice of using -Ananda or -Indra in the given names arose out of
individual preferences (sva-SIlAnusAreNa). The Ramakrishna order is
technically Puri, lineages from Sivananda are Sarasvatis and that of
Yogananda is Giri. That covers most of the well known modern orders. But
Ananda was also not unknown in early times. The author of Kalpataru, a
commentary on the Bhamati, was called Amalananda, and we know fairly
certainly that he lived in the 13th century. There was a Sankarananda,
contemporary of Vidyaranya (14th c.), who wrote commentaries on many
Upanishads ascribed to the Atharva Veda. The name Brahmananda is also fairly
old in its usage.

More than the use of Ananda, I find the actual names used in the modern
orders more remarkable. The older traditions stick to the uncomplicated
Narasimha or Candrasekhara or Jnana or Vidya etc. At the most, you might
find Saccidananda or Brahmananda. Contemporary names like Swahananda,
Viditatmananda, Smaranananda, Tapasyananda or Sarvatmananda seem to have no
precedents.

On the other hand, not everybody named xyz-Ananda is a Sannyasin. In the
householder Srividya lineages, people add AnandanAtha to their dIkshA names.
There is a fairly well known Srividya teacher in Rochester, NY, who has even
added a Sarasvati to his name, but he is not a Sannyasin. And it is an
innovation for the Srividya tradition too. Add to that the complication that
Sarasvati and Bharati have been used as titles, simply as an acknowledgement
of one's learning. Subramania Bharati, the Tamil poet, comes to mind. His
descendants are using the name Bharati as a family name. So one has to be
careful about identifying someone as a Sannyasin.

Monastic lineages affiliated purely with Samkhya or Yoga have either
vanished or have been subsumed under the Dasanami system. Hariharananda
Aranya is well known among the modern interpreters of Yoga. There is a Bihar
school of Yoga being run by monks of the Sarasvati order. Samkhya-Tirtha,
Yogacharya and Samkhya-Yogacharya are common titles used among leaders of
the Dasanami institutions.

Vidyasankar
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