Classical commentary on Yogasūtra of Patañjali.

This article examines the question of the freedom that a commentator has while commenting on a philosophical sūtra text. The texts covered are Gautama's Nyāyasūtras, Is'varakṛṣṣa's Sāṁkhyakārikā, and Patañjali's Yogasūtras.It is well known that every commentator believes that s/he is the one who has understood the true intention of the original author and therefore employs some interpretative tools to bring out the meaning of the text s/he is commenting on. Generally there are three devices that are commonly employed. One is (...) to supply some additional points that the commentator believes are missing in the sūtra text so as logically to connect the main ideas contained in the original text for clarity of the concept... (shrink)

This review establishes Rukmani, Indian philosophy and Yoga as cornerstones of Indian Studies.

The concept of dharmamegha-samādhi that occurs in Patañjali's Yogasutras, in the path to kaivalya, has not been easy to comprehend. Scholars working in the field of Yoga have explained the concept in many different ways. This essay tries to reach an understanding of dharmamegha-samādhi based on a careful reading of the Yogastitras along with Vyāsa's commentary on it and the later well-known commentaries on Vyāsa's own commentary such as the Tattvavaisāradī, the Yogavārttika, and so on. Whether dharmamegha-samādhi is in any (...) way connected with the concept of jīvanmukti or liberation while embodied, and whether jīvanmukti can be reasonably understood as being part of Yoga philosophy also comes in for discussion toward the end of this essay. (shrink)

The Siddhāntaleśasaṅgraha written by Appayyadīkshitar in the seventeenth century is one of the rare texts where the author brings together the different views of Advaita present at his time. The book itself starts with the controversy surrounding whether the sentence “śrotavyaḥ…” is a vidhi-vākya or not. This paper attempts to summarize the various approaches to this question in the SLS and gives us a glimpse as to how the debate was conducted. Even though the SLS was translated by Suryanarayana Sastri (...) in 1933 the vocabulary and the style is so out-dated that it was not of much use. I then decided to do a fresh translation of the SLS and have succeeded only in translating the first uddeśa. I have condensed the arguments presented in the SLS under some broad headings and thus tried to recreate the arguments presented in the text. (shrink)

Contributed papers presented at a seminar organized by the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, in May 1987.

On the life of Śaṅkaracārya, a Hindu philosopher.

In this article are discussed some problems raised by T. S. Rukmani regarding the Yogasūtra. According to Rukmani, yoga is not a coherent logical system. After stating the general goals of the yoga system, interpretations of some passages of the Yogasūtra are formulated, and the defense is given that one must at least acknowledge the necessity of more exegetical investigation before judging the logical incoherence of the text. Finally, the problematic doctrine of living liberation in Yogasūtra is exposed.

Lisa Zunshine stayed at Hotel Laxmi Park at Bishnupur, I do not know whether that hotel exists now or not. I sparred with Rukmani Bhaya Nair at an international literary meet at Dehradun in 2017 and I have that video. In this hurriedly written essay for an FDP conducted by a Central University in India in collaboration with a College in New Delhi, I point out the need to distinguish between philosophy and darśana while accessing the corpus of Raja (...) Rao. Zunshine in her work on literature and cognitive studies and, Bhaya Nair in her mimetic mode disregards Eastern hermeneutics to read all Indian authors in English. This essay which is not proofread, nor intended for publication shows the sorry state of Indian letters in English today. Indian scholars of Indian literatures in English do not refer to Indian thinkers but rush into aping their Western dole-givers. Therefore, I turn to Arif Dirlik's work on Third world scholars in the First world and make a case for rethinking the methodologies in approaching Indian letters in English. This author hopes that others in the future will not simply quote Plato to understand Raja Rao. (And, he was awarded an A+ for this work.) Both Zunshine and Nair effect an elision of everything Indic from world and Indian letters respectively. (shrink)