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Post by Nitaidas on Nov 8, 2011 12:09:51 GMT -6
Nitaidasji I ordered Caleb-Gita on 11 Oct on Amazon U.S. and my point is, it has not arrived yet. Good that the Beck’s book can be ordered via Amazon Oz, that would be a great savings cost on postage. Sorry. I hope it arrives soon. Better next time to order from the Aussie Amazon. All of our books are now printable in Australia. Too late for that now. I have already started massaging the files and getting them ready for typesetting. Don't worry about it. I have it under control. Not mean at all. Merely truthful. Mean would be lying to your friends about the authenticity of their initiations. He is a friend and knows my views. You yourself must agree with me. Otherwise why would you have gone to the trouble of getting re-initiated? And you know what I think of how you did it. I won't go into it again. But, it means that you think diksa is important. If we can't be truthful with our friends, in what sense are they friends? I am sure that they will be there soon, if they are not already. They are a business and know the advantages of having access to big markets. There might be restrictions on printers imposed by the Chinese government. I don't know.
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Post by vkaul1 on Nov 9, 2011 17:09:39 GMT -6
www.amazon.com/gp/product/8121507....WF7VXP6EXB02CAT Nimbarka; A Pre-Samkara Vedantin and His Philosophy" This guy Joseph Satyananad is not a Nimbarkin. In fact, by establishing that Nimbarka came before Sankara, he shows that the later works that reference Radha and Krsna are mis-attributed to nimbarka. The traditionalist nimbarkins will never agree to this conclusion. They just want to push the date of Nimbarka further back to show the greatness of their tradition. Anyway, I don't know much on this topic. The style of language used in Nimbarka's Vedanta Sutra commentary is more archaic according to the author. I am no Sanskrit expert to comment on it, so I will go with your view Nitai ji. Another thing, you said Rupa Goswami had only two new things to contribute to rasa theory and they were wrong. What were those things? Also are categories like manjaris and priyanarma sakhas (different types of friends and girlfriends) covered in secular rasa theory before Sri Rupa?
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Post by Nitaidas on Nov 9, 2011 23:18:29 GMT -6
www.amazon.com/gp/product/8121507....WF7VXP6EXB02CAT Nimbarka; A Pre-Samkara Vedantin and His Philosophy" This guy Joseph Satyananad is not a Nimbarkin. In fact, by establishing that Nimbarka came before Sankara, he shows that the later works that reference Radha and Krsna are mis-attributed to nimbarka. The traditionalist nimbarkins will never agree to this conclusion. They just want to push the date of Nimbarka further back to show the greatness of their tradition. Anyway, I don't know much on this topic. The style of language used in Nimbarka's Vedanta Sutra commentary is more archaic according to the author. I am no Sanskrit expert to comment on it, so I will go with your view Nitai ji. Hi Vivek. Thanks for your comment. You are right. Joseph Satyanand is not a Nimbarki as I suspected he might be. He is a Christian and a priest, in fact. You can find him referred to on the internet as Fr. Joseph Satyanand IMS. IMS refers to the Indian Missionary Society. He is or was the general secretary of that society. The place where he teaches, Visva Jyoti Gurukula, is a Christian school. Universal Light of course refers to Jesus. So his deep study of Nimbarka is no doubt commendable. I have not read his book. I have an edition of Nimbarka's Brahma-sutra commentary in Bengali script and with a Bengali introduction and translation by Vimalakanta Mukhopadhyaya. He was a famous teacher who specialized Shakespeare and literary criticism. He was also a Bengali Nimbarki. It is or was a strong movement in Bengal. Anyway, he makes arguments for the priority of Nimbarka to Sankara and my responses were mostly to his arguments. I assumed they were similar to those marshaled by Satyanand. I will have a look at his book. I don't think one has to go all the way back to Sankara to find a pre Radha-Krsna period in Vaisnavism. If he was around the time of Madhva, that would be enough. On the other hand, why would one mention Radha and Krsna in a commentary on the Bs? I wonder if Baladeva even does it. I will have to ask my teacher which he had in mind. Most of the names and categories found in Rupa come from the earlier works on Rasa-sastra and Dramaturgy. One of the main sources for Rupa was called the Rasarnava-sudhakara by Simhabhupala (who may have been an ancestor) of the 14th century. This is not to say that Sri Rupa did not rearrange some things and add some others. The most dramatic reordering involved what he did to the nine classical rasas. He separated out rati which is the bhava of srngara in classical rasa theory and divided it into five: santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya and madhura. This is more or less new. I say more or less new because Sri Rupa may have gotten some of his ideas from Bhojaraja. Bhojaraja's view of rasa is very different from the classical views of the Kashmiris like Abhinavagupta and so forth. I think he mentions rasas like sakhya and vatsalya and possibly dasya. It may be that is this one of the "innovations" of Sri Rupa that my Sanskrit teacher considered wrong. And operating from within mainstream rasa aesthetics, he is surely right. The other thing that may have been on his mind is the idea that the nayaka and the nayika, in this case Krsna and Radha respectively, can be said to experience rasa. In classical mainstream rasa aesthetics only the sahrdayas in the audience can have the rasa experience. Neither the original characters that the play or poem is about nor the actors or reciters are able to experience rasa. Here again, the idea that the original characters experienced rasa probably came from Bhoja. Manjaris are not a defined category in either the Brs or the Un. Rupa seems to refer to them obliquely in the Brs when he mentions in passing bhavollasa rati. The idea of the manjari may have grown out of interpretation of these few stray references in Rupa's works.
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Post by vkaul1 on Nov 10, 2011 17:29:37 GMT -6
The most dramatic reordering involved what he did to the nine classical rasas. He separated out rati which is the bhava of srngara in classical rasa theory and divided it into five: santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya and madhura. This is more or less new. I say more or less new because Sri Rupa may have gotten some of his ideas from Bhojaraja. Bhojaraja's view of rasa is very different from the classical views of the Kashmiris like Abhinavagupta and so forth. I think he mentions rasas like sakhya and vatsalya and possibly dasya. It may be that is this one of the "innovations" of Sri Rupa that my Sanskrit teacher considered wrong. And operating from within mainstream rasa aesthetics, he is surely right. The other thing that may have been on his mind is the idea that the nayaka and the nayika, in this case Krsna and Radha respectively, can be said to experience rasa. In classical mainstream rasa aesthetics only the sahrdayas in the audience can have the rasa experience. Neither the original characters that the play or poem is about nor the actors or reciters are able to experience rasa. Here again, the idea that the original characters experienced rasa probably came from Bhoja.
Manjaris are not a defined category in either the Brs or the Un. Rupa seems to refer to them obliquely in the Brs when he mentions in passing bhavollasa rati. The idea of the manjari may have grown out of interpretation of these few stray references in Rupa's works. [/quote]
Thanks Nitai ji. So are categories like priyanarma sakhas (sakhas who are involved in love life of Krsna or the hero) and other kinds of friends are established by Sri Rupa and his followers or even those are already there in existing Rasa theory?
The most dramatic reordering involved what he did to the nine classical rasas. He separated out rati which is the bhava of srngara in classical rasa theory and divided it into five: santa, dasya, sakhya, vatsalya and madhura. This is more or less new. I say more or less new because Sri Rupa may have gotten some of his ideas from Bhojaraja. Bhojaraja's view of rasa is very different from the classical views of the Kashmiris like Abhinavagupta and so forth. I think he mentions rasas like sakhya and vatsalya and possibly dasya. It may be that is this one of the "innovations" of Sri Rupa that my Sanskrit teacher considered wrong. And operating from within mainstream rasa aesthetics, he is surely right.
So why does your teacher consider it wrong?
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Post by Nitaidas on Nov 11, 2011 17:09:37 GMT -6
Thanks Nitai ji. So are categories like priyanarma sakhas (sakhas who are involved in love life of Krsna or the hero) and other kinds of friends are established by Sri Rupa and his followers or even those are already there in existing Rasa theory? Of course. Priyanarma sakhas may be Rupa's invention, I am not sure. But the other sakhas: pitamarda, vita, ceta, vidusaka are all found in the previous alankara texts. Here is what Simhabhupala says in the Rasarnava-sudhakara about the vita for instance: kAma-tantra-kalAvedI viTa ityabhIdhIyate (Ras 1.91) Here is what Sri Rupa says in the Ujjvala-nilamani: veSopacArakuzalo dhUrto goSThIvizAradaH| kAma-tantra-kalAvedI viTa ityabhidhIyate|| (Un 2.5) Check out the second line. Sri Rupa has just copied it verbatim from the Ras. He does that a lot in his Brs and Un. He does the same for the ceTa and the vidUSaka. Today we would call this plagiarism, but it is probably anachronistic to apply that to Rupa's work or the work of any of the other traditional Indian literati. Rupa was writing for a learned audience not a bunch of illiterate buffoons like you and me. His expectation was that any properly educated person would immediately recognize where he got that definition from. No one but a complete fool would think it was his formulation. It isn't obvious? Well, you are a good Kashmiri brahmana. Your ancestors brought Sanskrit aesthetics to the high level it reached. So maybe instead of just telling you I should give you some homework and have you read some of the texts that are fundamental to that great tradition. That will be the most useful to you as a modern member of that tradition. I would start with Abhinavagupta's brilliant commentary on the rasa-sutra of Bharata Muni. Raniero Gnoli has done a fine translation and edition of the that part of the commentary of Abhinavagupta and called it The Aesthetic Experience according to Abhinavagupta. It is still available in libraries or at Amazon. My teacher is an Abhinavagupta purist and it is on that basis that he objects to what Rupa has done with the sthayi-bhava rati.
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Post by vkaul1 on Nov 18, 2011 10:22:20 GMT -6
Thanks Nitai ji. Unfortunately people in my own tradition hardly have studied Abhinavgupta. In fact, you must have studied him more than 99.9% of our community. It would be nice to explore his writings more given that I can also connect them to the Caitanya Vaisnavism community.
Another thing even learned people like Jagat in our tradition I feel do credit Rupa for a lot of rasa theory that was already existent what to speak of someone like me who is just a beginner. So certainly, a lot of people in our own tradition are mistaken.
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Post by Nitaidas on Dec 2, 2011 17:20:34 GMT -6
Thanks Nitai ji. Unfortunately people in my own tradition hardly have studied Abhinavgupta. In fact, you must have studied him more than 99.9% of our community. It would be nice to explore his writings more given that I can also connect them to the Caitanya Vaisnavism community. Another thing even learned people like Jagat in our tradition I feel do credit Rupa for a lot of rasa theory that was already existent what to speak of someone like me who is just a beginner. So certainly, a lot of people in our own tradition are mistaken. Yes. Jagat and most of the other CV writers that I have seen are largely ignorant of alankara-sastra. Therefore, they have no idea what Rupa invented and what he borrowed. Alankara-sastra is a large body of works beginning with Bharata (4th cent.) and going up to Jagannatha Panditaraja in the 16th century. There are a few later works, but they are mostly modeled on or repetitions of earlier works (ie the works of Baladeva). The two greatest geniuses were Abhinavagupta and Jagannatha. I would argue that Bhojaraja also deserves some credit for thinking for himself in creative ways in his Srngara-prakasa and his Sarasvati-kanthabharana. But others, especially those who have mostly focused on the mainstream tradition would probably disagree with me. Next to these luminaries Sri Rupa was a rather dim light. But, his aim was different. His aim was to adapt the rasa aesthetics to bhakti experience, not push alankara-sastra forward. And he was well trained in the classic works of the tradition, particularly as it developed in South India (Karnataka).
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