Sankara's commentary on Chandogya Upanishad

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

The question of authenticity of texts attributed to Sankara has been quite a
vexed one. His commentary on the Brahmasutra is defined to be authentic, and
other texts are studied accordingly.

In his 1953 paper in PEW (titled "Sankara's arguments against the
Buddhists"), Ingalls compares Sankara's Brahmasutra commentary with that of
Bhaskara, and comes to the conclusion that both of them closely follow the
pre-Sankaran Vrttikara (Bodhayana?/Upavarsha?) in many passages. He also
remarks that Sankara's commentary on the Brhadaranyaka is a much more
original text than that on the Brahmasutra. This would indicate that one
should perhaps view the Brhadaranyaka commentary as the standard against
which other texts need to be measured. It is also my impression that almost
every unique Advaita position can be traced back to how Sankara interprets
passages from the Brhadaranyaka, indicating that this is his favorite text.

However, the highest frequency of Upanishad references in the Brahmasutra
commentary is from the Chandogya, followed by Brhadaranyaka. The
predominance of Chandogya references in the Brahmasutra commentary is also
perhaps a result of sticking to the earlier Vrttikara's interpretations as
much as possible, or it is perhaps a legacy of the Sutrakara himself. There
is also a commentary by Sankara on the Chandogya. I am unaware of critical
studies of this text, and would very much appreciate some references.
Specifically, I am looking for

1. whether the authenticity of Sankara's Chandogya commentary has been
discussed by anyone, using the methodology developed by Hacker and Mayeda
(or using other criteria); and

2. whether any comparative studies have been done, re: Sankara's and
Bhaskara's interpretations of Chandogya passages, either from the former's
Brahmasutra commentary or from his Chandogya commentary.

Vidyasanka
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