2. Analysis of the Svāminārāyaṇa Bhāṣya (Introduction)

The various systems of philosophy flourished and grew simultaneously in India. These teachings from the ṛṣis, ācāryas, and avatāras founded the base to emerge the branches of different dārśanīc tradition. In the eighteenth century, Parabrahman Puruṣottama Bhagavān Svāminārāyaṇa incarnated on earth. Through his revelation, he provided a unique, unprecedented contribution to Vedic knowledge. His teachings were compiled in his presence at that time. This compilation is called the Vacanāmṛta. The Vacanāmṛta is consisted of all principles of the Svāminārāyaṇa Darśana. When a particular teacher delivered a message, it was studied and teachings were put into practice by a group of people whom it suited. Thus, was formed a School of Philosophy. Each system continued to coexist because it provided a theoretical and practical philosophy to meet the students' intellectual and emotional needs at different levels of realization. In the Svāminārāyaṇa Sampradāya, production of canon in the text form has been prolific practically since the Sampradāya inception, with the bulk consisting devotional hymns, sacred biographies, and theological treatises composed in Gujarati.

Svāminārāyaṇa saw this textual production as essential to the growth of his Sampradāya, and encouraged his disciples to compose texts tirelessly, since:

“Only the scriptures of one’s own Sampradāya will foster the Sampradāya” (Vacanāmṛta Gadhadā II/58).

While scholarly attention on Svāminārāyaṇa texts has focused primarily on devotional hymns and sacred biographies^[1], the genre of Bhāṣya, or commentary on Hindū sacred text, especially that covers the philosophy of Svāminārāyaṇa and identified as an authentic text was unavailable for two hundred years. Since it became the tradition that without Prasthānatrayī Bhāṣya (commentary on the three basic scriptures of Hinduism-the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad-Gītā, and the Brahmasūtra) the Saṃpradāya is not considered as a Vedic Saṃpradāya. School of Vedanta, as Francis X. Clooney observes, are at once systems of philosophy-with attendant conceptualizations of metaphysics, epistemology, soteriology, and so on–as well as systems of commentary and exegesis, in that they attempt to read revealed texts faithfully and then to read reality out of the texts.

While there are freestanding treatises found within various schools articulating philosophical and theological positions, each school also takes seriously the imperative to develop these positions based on a careful verse by verse interpretations of the three canonical texts of the Prasthānatrayī mentioned above.^[2] Finally, after two hundred years of Svāminārāyaṇa’s time, Sādhu Bhadreśadāsa, the Bhāṣyakāra, an ascetic in the tradition, authored commentaries on ten principal Upaniṣads, the Brahmasūtra and the Gītā. The Prasthānatrayī Bhāṣyakāra claims that these commentaries are according to Svāminārāyaṇa’s original teachings and doctrines. However, the period of two hundred years is enough to change the phenomenon of social, religious, and moral aspects. So, in this chapter, we will examine the analysis of the Svāminārāyaṇa Bhāṣya in light of Svāminārāyaṇa’s Vacanāmṛta on the basis of epistemology.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

Munśī Kanhaiyālāl, Gujarat and its Literature from Early Times to 1852, Bhāratīya Vidyā Bhavana, Bombay, 1967 49

[2]:

‘Binding the text: Vedanta as philosophy and commentary’. In Texts in context: Traditional Hermeneutics in South Asia, Ed., Jeffrey R. Timm, State University of New York press.1999, pp.47-68.