Madhusdana Sarasvat - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Madhusdana Sarasvat
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(Redirected from Madhusudana Saraswati) Madhusdana Sarasvat (c.15401640) was an Indian philosopher in the Advaita Vednta tradition. He was the disciple of viSveSvara sarasvatI and mAdhava sarasvatI, and is the most celebrated name in the annals of the great dvaita-advaita debate. His Advaitasiddhi is a classic work, and most Advaita teachers maintain that all the logical issues raised by the dvaita school of AnandatIrtha have been sufciently answered by Madhusdana.

Madhusdana Sarasvat
Born Died Philosophy 1540 CE Bengal, India 1640 CE Bengal, India Advaita Vednta philosopher

Contents
1 Birth and Education 2 Journey from Dvaita to Advaita 3 Works 3.1 List of Works 3.2 Quotes on Madhusudana Saraswati 3.3 Follower of Bhakti Yoga 4 Relation with Akbar 5 Sources and further reading

Birth and Education

Madhusdana was born in Bengal, and originally called Kamalanayana. He was educated in the Navya-Nyya tradition, but became an Advaita sannysin, and moved to Varanasi in order to study Advaita.

Journey from Dvaita to Advaita

According to a story, MadhusUdana SarasvatI is said to have really gone to Navadvipa to meet Chaitanya, the great devotee of Krishna. But the MahAprabhu was no longer staying in NavadvIpa. So MadhusUdana turned his attention to studying Nyaya in the ourishing Navya Nyaya school. He studied works of Udayana such as the laxaNAvalI, the tattva-chintAmaNi of Gangesha and its commentaries. Soon MadhusUdana was recognized as a foremost scholar in Nyaya. He was also said to have been inuenced by the wave of bhakti sweeping across Bengal due to Chaitanya. One story mentions that MadhusUdana had, at that time, accepted the bheda-vAda, the doctrine of difference. The realism of Nyaya seemed to provide a logical basis to bheda. He soon became keen on "disproving" advaita using

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all his skills in logic. But at the time, since he had not done an in-depth study of Advaita with the intention of learning the details of Advaita Vedanta in order to disprove them, he proceeded to the sacred city of Varanasi. There, he studied Vedanta under RAma-tIrtha. But as MadhusUdana studied Advaita more and more, he became convinced of the veracity of Advaita. He later confessed to his Guru, Rama-tIrtha, that he had originally come to study Advaita in order to refute it and whether there was there any prAyashchitta for him. RAma tIrtha is said to have asked MadhusUdana to accept sannyAsa as the prAyashchitta. Regardless of whether these stories are true or not, it is true that a reading of the advaita-siddhi shows that MadhusUdana was enormously skilled in dealing with logic and dialectics. Note also that the naiyAyika, who is a realist to the core, is as much an opponent of the advaitin in debates as other realists such as the dvaitins. MadhusUdana was more interested in defending advaita and tackling the exegetical (interpretation of Vedanta) aspects.

Works
Madhusdana wrote a number of works, all involving the defence and exposition of Advaita Vednta, of which the largest and most respected is the Advaitasiddhi, which opposes the Dvaita Vednta positions and arguments in Vysatrtha's work Nyymta. Madhusdana also wrote at least nine other works, of which ve were commentaries (on the Bhagavadgta, part of the Bhgavatapura, and others). He wrote the ISvarapratipatti-prakASa, vedAntakalpalatikA, sArasangraha on sarvajnAtman's samkshepaSArIraka, and the justly famous siddhAntabindu on SankarAcArya's daSaSlokI. A total of twenty-one books have been ascribed to Madhusdana. Of them, nineteen books are undoubtedly his, but the authorship of the remaining two is doubtful. Twelve of his books are on philosophy, the rest are poems, plays and miscellaneous themes. The philosophical books include commentaries.

List of Works
Advaita-siddhi [1] (http://www.archive.org/details/Advaita.Siddhi.by.Madhusudana.Sarasvati) [2] (http://www.advaitasiddhi.org) Advaita-manjari Advaita-ratna-raksana Atma-bodha-tika Ananda-madakini Prasthanabheda [3] (http://www.archive.org/details/Prasthanabheda.by.Madhusudana.Sarasvati) Bhagavad-gita-gudhartha-dipika[4] (http://www.archive.org/details /SrimadBhagavadGita.With.the.Commentaries) Vedanta-kalpa-latika [5] (http://www.archive.org/details /Vedanta.Kalpalatika.by.Madhusudhana.Sarasvati) [6] (http://www.lalitaalaalitah.com/search/label /!$'*) Sastra-siddhanta-lesa-tika Samksepa-sariraka-sara-samgraha Siddhanta-tatva-bindu[7] (http://www.archive.org/details

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/Siddhantabindu.of.Madhusudana.Sarasvati.with.Commentaries) Pramahamsa-priya [8] (http://www.lalitaalaalitah.com/search/label/.*0) Veda-stuti-tika Asta-vikriti-vivarana Rajanam-prtibodha Isvara-pratipatti-prakasa[9] (http://www.lalitaalaalitah.com/search/label/30*50) Bhagavata-bhakti-rasayana Bhagavata-purana-prathamasloka-vakhya Krishna-kutuhala-nataka Bhakti-samanya-nirupana Sandilya-sutra-tika Hari-lila-vakhya

Quotes on Madhusudana Saraswati

Madhusdana was so accomplished in Navya Nyaya (New logic) techniques that the following verse is quoted about him when he visited Navadvipa, the center for learning in Nyaya Shastra,

#% * ,-/ 5% 6 ->

Meaning: When MadhusUdana, the master of speech, came to navadvIpa, MathurAnAtha tarkavAgIsha (who was the foremost navya naiyAyika during those times) trembled (with fear) and GadAdhara (another logician of great repute) became afraid. A few words about the authors. MadhusUdana sarasvatI is a towering giant among advaitins. An oft quoted verse regarding him is,

,-?@ A BD ? A BD ?@ ,-?

Meaning: (Only) the Goddess of Learning, Sarasvati knows the limits of (knowledge of) Madhusdana Sarasvati. And Madhusdana Sarasvati knows the limits of (knowledge of) Goddess Sarasvati.

Follower of Bhakti Yoga

Madhusdana sarasvatI was a great devotee of Lord krishna. Just like Appayya Dikshita, who integrated Sivadvaita into advaita vedanta, madhusdana bridged the sAtvata school of Pancaratra Vaishnavism

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and Advaita Vedanta philosophy. It is also interesting to note that madhusUdana boldly differs from Adi Sankara in some of his interpretations of the Brahma Sutras and the gItA, although he salutes Adi Sankara and Suresvara in the most reverential terms. Tradition also recounts that viTThaleSa, the son of vallabhacharya of the Suddhadvaita school, studied under madhusdana sarasvatI, who thus forms a crucial link between Advaita Vedanta and many vaishNava sects in the north.

Relation with Akbar

Madhusdana Sarasvat gained as a patron the Emperor Akbar, and was a friend of the poet Tulsds. He led many symposia attended by both Hindu sdhus and Muslim mullhs. It is said that on Akbar's suggestion, madhusUdana initiated large numbers of sannyasins from kshatriya and vaishya communities to the dasanami orders, in order to form a group of martially trained ascetics to protect the people. This most probably reects historical fact. Armed nAga sannyAsin warriors, tracing their origins to madhusdana sarasvatI, and afliated with the daSanAmI akhADas, were a component of almost every Rajput army in Northern India, till fairly recent times.

Sources and further reading

Karl H. Potter, "Madhusdana Sarasvat" (in Robert L. Arrington [ed.]. A Companion to the Philosophers. Oxford: Blackwell, 2001. ISBN 0-631-22967-1) Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, et al. [edd], History of Philosophy Eastern and Western: Volume One (George Allen & Unwin, 1952) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Madhusdana_Sarasvat&oldid=485005712" Categories: Hindu philosophy stubs Advaitin philosophers Bengali people This page was last modied on 1 April 2012 at 15:24. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-prot organization.

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