Talk:Upanishad Brahmayogin

Factoids and URLs

Finding reliable sources for this gent will not be easy. He is soundly situated in the venerable Indian tradition of neglecting facts if obfuscation hasn't already taken care of them.

• He has various names/titles

1. Upanishad Brahmayogin (or Brahma Yogin, or even Brahma-Yogin, have fun googling)
2. Ramachandrendra Saraswati, of the Kanchi Mutt
3. Upanishad Brahmendra Saraswati
4. Shivarama.

More to follow.rudra (talk) 04:44, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

• Another post to the Advaita-L list, by a "reliable informant" (not a WP:RS obviously, but the poster, J. Vyas, has a very good rep.) Our gent's claim to fame is that reportedly he wrote commentaries on all 108 upanishads of the Muktika canon. rudra (talk) 04:49, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

• Heh, here I am trying to nuke him when in fact I researched him a while back under another name! See this and this. rudra (talk) 04:58, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

• On Google scholar, all references to him are citations to his stuff as published by the Adyar Library (titles of the form "[this or that] Upanishad(s) with commentary by U.B.Y"). IOW, not only is the Adyar Library the only source of his work, he is too late an author (late 18th-early 19th) to be really 'authoritative". rudra (talk) 05:04, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

• To clarify this point: he is not quoted, he is only cited, but that too is only because the title of the work includes his name. IOW, the purpose of a citation could have been to cite the version of the upanishad, and not his thoughts about it, since the Adyar Library in many cases is the only source for a manuscript of the upanishad itself! (The Adyar Library apparently does not publish just these Upanishads, UBY's commentary comes bundled as a package deal.) rudra (talk) 05:38, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

So what we have here is a prolific late medieval/ early modern author of commentaries on all 108 upanishads of the Muktika canon, where the Adyar Library is the only source of the manuscripts of his work. And that's it. rudra (talk) 05:07, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

There's more to this. The claimed hoary antiquity of the Kanchi mutt is a myth, it seems. See the Talk page, esp the row over another post to Advaita-L, by another reliable informant (a published, albeit "amateur", Indologist). Which makes this whole business of the Adyar Library being the only source of all these obscure upanishad manuscripts, thanks to the prodigious efforts of one Ramachandrendra Saraswati, not a little suspicious. (And, also, during his time, the mutt was at Kumbhakonam, so what was he doing in Kanchi? And, if the 1821 date is correct, he is too early for the mutt anyway!) rudra (talk) 13:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Found a blog that has already gathered the tidbits. How much of it is verifiable is another matter, of course. But it seems reasonably certain that our gent lived approx 1750-1835 or so, in Kanchipuram, and that the Adyar Library is the only source of his corpus, edited by A. Mahadeva Sastri (who died in the 1920s) rudra (talk) 16:31, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Our prolific gent, although mentioned here, does not figure in these two lists. rudra (talk) 20:06, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

From a quick survey, I can verify that Brahmayogin's primary claim to fame seems to be "the only person to have commented on all the 108 Upanishads", and his commentary having being translated and published by Adyar library. There are several reviews of those publications (such as [1], [2], [3] etc), with some pointing out his Advaita viewpoint e.g.,

The text of these as well as of most of the other Upanisads published in the Series are accomapanied by commentaries written by Upanisad Brahmayogin whose contribution to Sanskrit literature is quite unique in that he wrote commentaries to each of the 108 Upanisads. Professor Warrier's translation is, as he himself mentions, ' based mainly ' on Upaniad Brahmayogin's commentary. This in itself prejudges the tenor of the translation as the commentator is a devout Advaitin and strongly influenced by Sankara's interpretation of the Upanisads. ... Had they been translated as such, notwithstanding Upaniad Brahmayogin's commentary, a great service would have been rendered to the explorer of Indian culture. Unfortunately, restrained by the Advaita doctrine, Professor Warrier has followed the path paved first by Sankara, then followed by many others including Upanisad Brahmayogin, and has presented us with a translation that, though it bears a fair similarity to the Sakta Upanisads, lacks the authenticity required for an adequate appreciation of the Sakti cult reflected in the texts.^{Review of "The Śākta Upaniṣads by A. G. Krishna Warrier"}

Besides these mentions in the book reviews, the only biographical sources I could find are:

• Saintly Steerers of the Ship of Brahmadvaita of the Upanishads
• The power of the sacred name: V. Raghavan's studies in Nāmasiddhānta and Indian culture (which has a chapter on him, but is not viewable on Google Books)

Based on the above sources, I'd say that Brahmayogin is not really one of the really noteworthy commentators on the Upanishads, but perhaps is notable enough by wikipedia standards (relative to, say, American Idol participants, and Pokemon characters :-) ). The article is perhaps destined to stay a 5-6 sentence stub since the biographical information on him is highly fragmentary. On the other hand, that may still be of use to some readers, who come across his name(s). Merger would be another option; is there a suitable target ? Inclusion at Upanishads would be undue, while creating an article on the commentaries on the Upanishads would be quite an undertaking! Abecedare (talk) 13:16, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

My candidate for a merge would be Muktika (and that article probably needs to mention him, or the Adyar Library, anyway), but I think giving the 5-6 sentence stub a shot first is a good approach. My major concern was that he might be mythical, i.e. a creation of the Adyar Library and/or A. Mahadeva Sastri; and even though now it looks like he was a real person, I'm still doubting that he wrote all those commentaries the only copies of which were somehow magically discovered and preserved for posterity by the stalwarts at Adyar. Tirtha Maharaja's "discovery" of Vedic mathematics is an example of the "genre" I'm thinking of here. rudra (talk) 19:35, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I don't think UB is a deliberate hoax created by Sastri or someone at Addyar; more likely he is a composite figure, or a real person, credited with writings of a school (compare, Rubens or Nicolas Bourbaki). Of course, this goes beyond what I can actually verify. So our best option would be to simply state what we can, along the lines of UB being credited with writing commentaries on the 108 Upanishads etc, and let the readers make of it what they may - some will apply common sense and take the information with a pinch of salt, while others will frankly believe what they want, irrespective of what we can, or do, say (see the editing history of Vaimanika Shastra for example).

Not sure of Muktika is a natural target for UB though for, if I understand correctly, the only link would be their association with the "108" Upanishads. I'd recommend just writing up the 5-6 sentences that we can, which are then likely to remain in place for years, of interest to only a narrow audience. Abecedare (talk) 20:14, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. I have a trip to the library planned this week; I'll look up the Raghavan reference (thanks for finding it!) rudra (talk) 20:25, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Okay, mixed news. I found both Raghavan and Ramachandra Rao at the Library. Ragahavan has hardly any biographical detail at all in what is a rambling introduction to a work by UBY called Upeya-nāma-viveka, a work on Nāmasiddhānta (a form of bhakti based on nāmajapa: recitation of some deity's name bajillions of times.) Ramachandra Rao is better (and substantiates the post to the Advaita-L list mentioned above), but (there had to be a fly in the ointment, right?) he seems to have goten his dates wrong. Writing about Bhaskararaya (a more renowned commentator), Rao translates dates, presumably culled from manuscript colophons, from Saka or Samvat eras to AD. For UBY he gives AD dates only, but these seem much too early, e.g. UBY's most cited work, the Paramādvaita-siddhānta-paribhāṣā, is dated to "1709 A.D." (when that could be a Saka date => 1788 AD) and his commentary on the Muktikopanishad, the 108th of its canonical list, to "1759 A.D.". Rao also mentions "He was contemporary of saint Tyāgarājā (1767 - 1847 AD), with whom he was acquainted". This association with Tyagaraja -- although it could be pious myth, as is most of the bio-info on Tyagaraja -- while found elsewhere too, makes the other dates very unlikely, as they would make UBY on the order of 80 years older than Tyagaraja, and a (younger) contemporary of Bhaskararaya instead. So, at this point, I'm of a mind to leave dates out. rudra (talk) 13:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Didn't realize that Raghavan was writing about some UB work; I assumed he was writing about UB (the person), since that chapter was named that - sorry about sending you on this wild goose chase. Agree with you about the dates in Rao - "fl. 1800 CE" should be sufficient to give the readers an idea of the time period, without giving them false precision, or plain false information. Finally, should we add biographical details from the Saraswathy book ? What do you think of its credibility. Abecedare (talk) 13:25, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Saraswathy may not be entirely reliable. He was, after all, also an "Indra Saraswati" initiate, and so not free of hagiographic predisposition. I only added the parts that seemed to have a low contestability quotient (such as father's name and approx size of his corpus.) rudra (talk) 14:21, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Sounds sensible. My guess is that the article will now remain frozen in this state for years. Kudos for creating the single best online resource on UB. Abecedare (talk) 15:17, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, very well done. - Fayenatic (talk) 11:41, 6 February 2010 (UTC)