Apart from his voluminous, immensely learned, and spectacularly successful contributions to the fields of Hermeneutics, non-dualist Metaphysics, and poetics, the sixteenth century South Indian polymath Appayyadīkṣita is famed for reviving from obscurity the moribund Śaivite Vedānta tradition represented by the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya of Śrīkaṇṭha. Appayya’s voluminous commentary on this work, his Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, not only reconstitutes Śrīkaṇṭha’s system, but radically transforms it, making it into a springboard for Appayya’s own highly original critiques of standard views of Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta. Appayya addresses long (...) sections of his commentary to matters dealt with glancingly or not at all in the root text, drawing conclusions which Śrīkaṇṭha nowhere endorses. Furthermore, the distinctive positions Appayya develops in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā feed into Appayya’s other works in ways that have so far been largely ignored by modern scholars. For example, most or all the discussions Appayya’s Pūrvottaramīmāṃsāvādanakṣatramālā, twenty-seven essays on scattered topics in Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta, build on arguments first advanced in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā—most notably Appayya’s totally original theory of the signification of adjectives, first developed in the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā, the full elaboration and defense of which takes up fully sixteen of the twenty-seven essays that make up the Pūrvottaramīmāṃsāvādanakṣatramālā. (shrink)

This article examines Appaya Dīkṣita’s intellectual affiliation to Śivādvaita Vedānta in light of his well-known commitment to Advaita Vedānta. Attention will be given to his Śivādvaitanirṇaya, a short work expounding the nature of the Śivādvaita doctrine taught by Śrīkaṇṭha in his Śaiva-leaning commentary on the Brahmasūtra. It will be shown how Appaya strategically interprets Śrīkaṇṭha’s views on the relationship between Śiva, its power of consciousness and the individual self, along the lines of pure non-dualism. In this context, the hermeneutical role (...) of the daharavidyā doctrine will be considered with reference to Appaya’s Śivādvaita magnum opus, the Śivārkamaṇidīpikā. (shrink)