Book Title: World of Philosophy
Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan
View full book text
________________
ADHYĀSA IN BHĀMATĪ (EPISTEMOLOGICAL POINT OF VIEW) AND KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON
Dr. V.N. Sheshagiri Rao Adhyāsa is a a very significant concept for the study and interpretation of Adavita Philosophy, the finest flower of Indian thought. It owes a great deal to the architectonic genious of the great Sankara. Adhyāsa is at the basis of endless difference. It explains the subtleties of Advaita metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics and its theology. If one fails to focus attention on the essential identity of the jivātman and the supreme, Brahman, and if one mistakes a shell for silver and if one is the agent of action, it is because of Adhyāsa. However Advaita is of the view that once this Adhyāsa is removed by true knowledge, the Jiva, shines in its pristine purity and realises that it is none other than Brahman.
This paper is written in defence of Adhyāsa. A comparative study of the concept of Adhyāsa and the Kantian thought in the Western world is an interesting and philosophically rewarding exercise. It also helps to provoke Universal curiosity. More over such comparisons throw additional light on both.
III
Vācaspati Misra the author of Bhāmati was a versatile genious, with encylopaedic learning. He had a wonderful expositional skill and presentation of whatever subject or system he chose to handle. He had a lifelong passion for truth. It appears, Vācaspati's search for truth culminated only in the metaphysics of Advaita Philosophy. He was the celebrated commentator on the Brahma-sūtra-Śāṁkara bhāsya lovingly named as Bhāmatī. The Bhāmati, like the Brahman-sūtra - Sāmkara-bhāsya, is known for its profoundity of spirit, vigour, of style, subtlety of thought and clarity of presentation. It represents one of the main streams of Samkarite interpretation. It expounds uncompromising non-dualism, setting forth its basic principles in cogent terms.
IV
Vācaspati's introduction to Adhyāsa bhāsya of Śāmkara is a model of its kind. He endorses Samakara's definition of Adhyāsa viz.; "the apparent presentation to consciousness by way of remembrance of something previously observed in someother thing" Adhyāsa is an apparent presentation in the sense that such knowledge is contradicted later. It belongs to lower order of reality. Superimposition takes palce when a lower order of reality is predi
720
