Vācaspatimiśra I lived later than the eighth century. He can be dated to around 950 CE (see Diwakar Acharya, Vācaspatimiśra’s Tattvasamīkṣā, the Earliest Commentary on Maṇḍanamiśra’s Brahmasiddhi, Critically Edited with an Introduction and Critical Notes, Stuttgart: Steiner, 2006 (Nepal Research Centre Publications 25), p. xxviii).

 

The Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad is by no means one of the earliest Upaniṣads. Thomas Oberlies dated it to a period between the beginning of the common era and 200 CE, and, in any case, after the Bhagavadgītā. (Oberlies, Thomas. “Die Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad: Einleitung – Edition und Übersetzung von Adhyāya I.” Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Südasiens 39 (1995): 61‒102, p. 66‒67. See also Cohen, Signe. Text and authority in the older Upaniṣads. Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2008 (Brill’s Indological Library 30, p. 213–246.)

 

Kālidāsa, who can be approximately dated to 400-450 CE according to Ingalls (see Ingalls,Daniel H. H. “Kālidāsa and the Attitudes of the Golden Age”. Journal of theAmerican Oriental Society 96.1 (1976): 15–26, p. 15, n. 1), is clearly later than the Bhagavadgītā and the Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad. He is also slightly later than the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, i.e. the Yoga Sutra together with the so-called Yogabhāṣya which can be dated to the end of the fifth c. (see Maas, Philipp André. Samādhipāda. Das erste Kapitel des Pātañjalayogaśāstra zum ersten Mal kritisch ediert, = The First Chapter of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra for the First Time Critically Edited. Aachen: Shaker, 2006. (Studia Indologica Universitatis Halensis Geisteskultur Indiens. Texte und Studien 9), p. xix. For a general survey of scholarship on yoga philosophy and for arguments concerning the unitary nature of the Pātañjalayogaśāstra, you may find also my article “A Concise Historiographyof Classical Yoga Philosophy”. Periodization and Historiography of IndianPhilosophy. Eli Franco (ed.). Vienna: Institut für Südasien-, Tibet- undBuddhismuskunde, 2013. (Publications of the de Nobili Research Library 37) 53–90 relavant.

 

The question of the religious orientation of Patañjali is difficult to answer. It appears to me that Patañjali consciously created a work on spiritual liberation in a Brahmanical religious setting that avoided any obvious sectarian commitment in order to make his work widely acceptable. However, the reference to Kapila as the first teacher of yoga in PYŚ 1.25 (to which Eliot Stern referred in his mail to the present discussion) may actually indicate that Patañjali had a Vaiṣṇava background. An additional indication for the same may be the fact that Patañjali quoted Viṣṇupurāṇa 6.6.2 in order to support his exposition of Mantrameditation leading to an awareness of īśvara in PYŚ 1.28. 

Best,

Philipp

2016-04-28 7:45 GMT+02:00 Dr. T. Ganesan <ganesan@ifpindia.org>:

Samkara, Vachaspatimisra, etc. all belong to 8th century; whereas my point is Patanjali, Kalidasa are all much earlier to them. As mentioned in the earlier post, beginning from Svetasvataropanishad (which is indisputably one of the earliest Upanishad-s), Kaivalyopanishad, Atharvasikhaa, Atharvasiras, (where the words ISAna, ISa are also used) and in the Amarakosa, also one of the earliest Kosa-s, Ishvara denotes only Siva.

Note the Amarakosa passage:
       

                śambhurīśaḥ paśupatiḥ śivaḥ śūlī mahēśvaraḥ .

                īśvaraḥ śarva īśānaḥ śaṃkaraścandraśēkharaḥ.

The period of BhagavadgItA as we have it now, cannot be so earlier or contemporaneous with Patanjali or Kalidasa. And, definitely BG has been inspired by the Svetasvataropanishad for its stress on Bhakti.

Samkara appears to be mostly leaning towards VishNubhakti; it is is very much evident in many of his interpretations and comments in the BhagavadgiitA: at BG II.51, VI.31, Samkara states the liberated state as “ the supreme state of Vishnu” (padam paramam vishnoH); in BG XIII.18, he clearly identifies paramAtmA with VAsudeva.


Ganesan






On 28-04-2016 05:40, Elliot Stern wrote:

Vācaspatimiśra, generally understood to favor Śiva, acknowledges that adherents of the Pātañjalayogaśāstram consider Viṣṇu to be their īśvara. He says, in concluding his comment on ādividvānnirmāṇacittamadhiṣṭhāya kāruṇyādbhagavānparamarṣirāsurāya jijñāsamānāya tantraṃ provāca (yogabhāṣyam to yogasūtram 1.25):

 sa eveśvara ādividvānkapilo viṣṇurna<:> svayambhūriti bhāvaḥ~| svāyambhuvānāṃ tvīśvara iti bhāvaḥ~|

James Haughton Woods translates this as: [The reply would be that] this same Īśvara, the First Knower, the Self-existent Vishnu [is] Kapila. "But [He is] the Īśvara of those descended from the Self-existent." This is the point.

  

Note that Vācaspati frequently refers to adherents of the Pātañjalayogaśāstram as svāyambhuvaḥ (for example, in nyāyakaṇikā).

Elliot M. Stern
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