Talk:Gaudapada

The use of the word "Buddha"

I believe it is necessary to clarify in what sense the word "Buddha" has been used in the article at different places.Gaudapada did salute The Buddha in his karika but the word Buddha meant "the awakened one" and not Gautama buddha.This has been categorically clarified in The Mandukya Upanishad being published by The Advaita ashrama in which they have cited Gaudapada himself saying at the end of the karika that"This(his own view)is not the view of Buddha"Abheyendra 09:44, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Polemical style

There are many claims in this article about Gaudapada and Buddhism. These need to be cited. Buddhists have always denied the existence of a Self in the Upanishadic sense and so many claims in this article are dubious. Mitsube (talk) 23:13, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Please go ahead and replace unsourced with sourced material. The article has been waiting for someone who knows something about the subject. Itsmejudith (talk) 12:25, 22 July 2008 (UTC)

I don't know too much. I have some material on the Buddhist influence on Shankara but not much on Gaudapada himself. Mitsube (talk) 07:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the standard inaccuracies regarding the Buddha and the Upanishads, as well as novel ones regarding Vasubandhu and Nagarjuna. Mitsube (talk) 02:57, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

There is some material about Gaudapada and Buddhism in Kencho Tenzin;s thesis Shankara: A Hindu Revivalist or a Crypto Buddhist? Chris Fynn (talk) 20:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

hello, i was the one who put in the chunk of the text on gaudapaada. if something was considered 'dubious' in the article then such should be stated clearly and contrary proofs provided. without that how can the article be edited or sections of it deleted? Mitsube (talk) 02:57, 7 December 2008 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vpcnk (talk • contribs)

Sources?

I am wondering what the source is for the large [1882 words] piece of text that starts just after footnote number four and doesn't end until the end of the section entitled 'Asparsha Yoga' . . . ? I am not doubting the validity of anything necessarily, I would just like to see references. It seems like an awful lot of text with no citations or references to any source or text. For instance when the authors states, "Gaudapada says," ideally there should be a reference to the citation quoted. It would most likely come from the Karika on the Mandukyopanishad, so simply a chapter and verse reference would suffice for these quotations. Surely there must also be a wealth of secondary source material on Gaudapada, by both 'western' and south Asian scholars. Google Book search turned up over 100,000 results; Google Scholar search turned up 1200 results: so clearly there is no dearth of printed material in which to find sources, both primary and secondary, for citation purposes. I was about to begin reading my Nikhilananda translation of Mandukyopanishad with Gaudapadiya Karika; I believe this would be a good translation to cite for primary source references. I currently have no secondary material specifically relating to Gaudapada, but could easily acquire such sources through an interlibrary loan, if scholarly attention is still a desideratum for this entry on such an important figure. JBWQuinn (talk) 16:12, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Five parts

@Divye: I read your explanation, but your edit diff sources "5 parts" to the IEP-article, but the IEP-article does not say this. You may be right about Karmakar's 1953 translation including a prelude; I'll have another look at it later (mobile telephone has troubles downloading the text). Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 04:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
As far as I can see, Gaudapada's text (bold) is interspersed with another text; your prelude belongs to this other text. What is this text? Isn't it the text of the Mandukya Upanishad?... See also p.xxix. And see p. xxvii: "The two hundred and fiveteen Karikas comprising the four Prakaranas." Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 07:14, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Joshua Jonathan - The sourcing of the 5 parts to the IEP text is not my intention with the edit. That portion may be safely changed to 4 parts to comply with Wiki citation requirements, adjusted as you please or reverted entirely. My interest is in only adding the existence of the prelude as I consider the 6 verses there to be foundational to the meaning of the subsequent text. The edit simply added +6 to the previous number on that line without thought to the citation.

Re: your other comment - the Gaudapada text is in triples: the first 2 lines are a Sanskrit sutra and the 3rd line is an explanation in Hindi. The length of the Sanskrit line points to a number, the Hindi explanation points to the structure of the cycle (it has encoded sequences separated by commas) and the text indicates whether it’s a first cycle sequence or a second cycle sequence (the same line lengths will occur in pairs in the Mandukyo Upanishad verses in Chapter 1). Chapter 1 fully embeds the MU and then Chapters 2-4 go beyond.

The pattern of triples is repeated throughout. There is no doubt that the 4 chapters have the structure that they do (215vx4c) (that is not at all the point of the discussion), the point is that the prelude isn’t counted either by convention or otherwise. If you’d like to qualify the change saying 215 verses, 4 chapters, 1 prelude, I am not opposed.

Re: your comment on “other text” - I’m finding that hard to follow. The Gaudapada K. explains the MU and then goes beyond by further explaining the structure and numerics. Written about 1000 years after MU, the explanatory language has changed from Sanskrit to Hindi. Every portion of the text except the English on the page is the original verse from the manuscript. It’s always in 2xtriples as the structure it is describing is a triality that uplevels to unity (see the explanation of the first verse triality). No portion of the text bolded or otherwise that is in Devanagari script is anything but the original text of the GK. The English commentary is a literal line by line translation by Shri Karmarkar that captures barely the surface structure and point of the text (fundamentally it’s a mathematical proof that shows how a duality can be upleveled to a triality and then finally unified and that dualities and triality are an observational artifact that is remedied from the POV of the Karika). I’ll leave all this for another day, the text linked is the original Mss, please review accordingly and make an appropriate change to the article. If help is needed with the Hindi or Sanskrit, please LMK, otherwise, please trust that the edit is in good faith and that we may finesse it for style and citations, however, we avoid a continuous round of reverts, explanations when the primary source Mss is being cited. I wish you the best. Divye (talk) 04:53, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

One correction to the above - all lines are in Sanskrit (it’s not Hindi). That’s my error in reading the text and code switching languages. Divye (talk) 04:58, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Divye: and, can you read Sanskrit (I can't)? What do the first six lines say? Why are they untranslated? And is there any other source which includes, or even mentions, your prelude? It's put in square brackets [], why? Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. I can read Sanskrit - it was taught to me in school, however I have the Sanskrit vocabulary of a 6th Grader - fruits, milk, basic grammar (gender). I am happy to translate what I can of the prelude for your benefit, largely from a Hindi analogy of the closest word. I will have to do that as time and my ability permits. To a very brief extent, this is what it says (I have eaten up 3/4th of the words, for the words that I understand, I’m including the “sense” of the sentence as I am able to understand it):

1. Speaks to the unity of the 1 and the names of 3 ages (first sentence) and (second sentence) the restoration of unity will happen only after 3 ages.

2. There are 4 parts/paths/directions/cycles (chatushpat).

3. (Words beyond my vocab) + pratham pad (= first chapter/cycle)

4. (…) dwitiya pad (= second chapter / cycle).

5. (…) sta-tritiye pad (= third chapter / cycle using a “made up word” for a female gender version of 3rd cycle, indicating some sort of conjugated behavior). The standard word should have been tritiye-pad.

6. (…) “in between/inversion/exclusion of the entire set of actions done in the past”. The last word being “bhuth” indicating past and intermediate words being “sarvagya” (entire) and others that produce the sense above. Some sort of exclusionary behavior that acts as an inversion to the actions.

a deeper meaning extraction requires sitting with a Sanskrit dictionary and breaking and piecing together words. The words are intentionally made to run together or are invented from parts to achieve a specific goal of the author. The word structure, spacing and grammar is not formal correct Sanskrit. Divye (talk) 06:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I took another look; as far as I can see, the text in square brackets is the trxt of the Mandukya Upanishad. See also p. 57 (p.116 of the plain text). This is why we don't accept WP:OR, what your interpretation of the first six lines of the Mandukya Upanishad as a "prelude" is. Regards, Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 05:34, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

That’s fair. I’ll take an OR revert. Not a problem. I also agree that the prelude is the first 6 verses of the MU. Divye (talk) 06:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Pages 10-14 translate the MU better than I can -

https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/mand/Mandukya_Upanishad.pdf

this agrees with your assessment. I withdraw. Divye (talk) 06:31, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

A last point - the count of verses is still wrong. As the first 6 are MU verses, then the total verses are 221 (a prime number). They can’t be 215 (6+29+38+48+100 = 221). I don’t know if you’d still consider this OR - however, this one, you can check by yourself in the PDF with the English translations.

since I’ve eaten so much of your time, I’ll pause the warfare by text. Either way, the section is wrong or incomplete and overly reliant on secondary sources, however, I’ll leave you with the burden of deciding how to fix it. Divye (talk) 06:50, 9 May 2024 (UTC)