One of them said - “The elephant is like a big hose pipe!”. Actually, he had held the elephant’s trunk in his hands and felt how it looks like.
The second differed by saying – “No, no. It is like a huge pillar!”. Obviously, he must have touched the elephant’s legs!
The third one countered – “I think it is like a big wall”. He was referring to the elephant’s chest and the belly which he touched.
The fourth one said – “It is actually like a huge fan that keeps moving!”. This fellow somehow managed to reach the elephant’s ears!
The last one who was probably a bit too short could only touch the elephant’s tail. He said “In my view, the elephant is like a long rope with one end a bit unfurled”.
All of them were wrong and the same time all of them were right in their own way. The elephant was too big for them to know completely. Especially given the reason that they could not see. Albeit they did their best.
The Brahma that we are talking about, true to its name, is too big for anybody to completely comprehend. Human beings lack the vision to see it in its entirety. They can only know parts of it to the best of their capability.
So, when you read the debates that take place in the Brahma Sutra, you can’t help being reminded of this story of 5 blind men who were arguing about the elephant which was beyond their reach. But at the same time, it is admirable that they could comprehend as much they could in spite of their disability and impairment.
In the debate that we are talking about, there are two sides. One group who differed among themselves on details, but agreed on the authority of the Vedas. The other group completely rejected the authority of the Vedas and relied on their own scriptures and the words of their Guru.
How can a debate occur between such diverse opponents? We need a common ground.
The sage Badarayana takes the position that Upanishads can be a tie breaker. He tries to impress upon the rivaling parties that Upanishads are sound and true in themselves without needing any further authority.
First, he tries to sort out the difference between the rivals on the Vedic side by clarifying finer aspects of the Upanishads. He puts the authority of the Upanishads as the yard stick to sort out differences among the warring factions on the Vedic side. Anything that is not in consonance with the Upanishads cannot be valid since all of them accept Vedas as the authority and Upanishads are part of Veda.
But the Buddhists and the like don’t accept the Vedas as authority. Only way to debate with them is through reasoning and by punching holes in their way of thinking. Basically, by refuting their scriptures. But that is not enough. One needs to logically show how his views are right in absolute terms and in what way accepting those views is going to be beneficial.
That is what Badarayana tries to do in his Brahma sutra.
But Badarayana is quite frugal in his words. So, later Indian philosophers had to write elaborate commentaries on this text to convey what Badarayana probably would have intended to convey. There are over a dozen commentaries written on this small composition which had hardly over 500 pithy sentences. The most well known among these commentaries was the one by Advaita philosopher Sankara.
Though Badarayana did not explicitly say what exact view that he held – monistic or pluralistic, Sankara interpreted the entire composition as a support for his monistic or Advaita philosophy. He literally demolished his contemporary opponents by engaging them in intellectual debates centered around this small text of Badarayana.
His main opponents were the Samkhya in the Vedic group and the Buddhist in the non-Vedic group. But his main target was the Samkhya whom he referred to as Pradhana Malla – a pun which meant ‘the primary wrestler’ as well ‘the opponent who harped on the concept of Pradhana or the primordial substance. We will see more on this later.
But centuries later, Sakara’s opponents among the Vedic group poked holes in Sankara’s arguments and tried to show where he was wrong. There is a well-known composition namely ‘Shatadhooshini – hundred faults’ in Sankara’s arguments. The most notable among Sankara’s opponents in the Vedic group was Madhva who proposed his dualistic or Dwaita theory. Madhva used the very same Brahma Sutra to show that the monistic view put forth by Sankara was completely wrong. He pushed for a multifaceted world view with Vishnu as a personified God at the center. This was in complete contrast with Sankara’s unified world view with an abstract concept of Brahma at the center.
I will not go into the details of these later developments, but merely give a glimpse of how debates used to take place, without taking any side. Though my personal bias is towards a monistic view, I differ in many ways with Sankara’s views. I will try to put my view as well, as we go. Please join me in the next episode.
A series on ancient Indian composition Brahma Sutra. © Dr. King, Swami Satyapriya 2020-21
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