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WorkMadhva

Anuvyākhyāna

(lit.: The Supplementary Exposition)

Madhva's verse companion to his own Brahma Sūtra commentary, defending the reality of the world and of the soul's difference from God against the rival schools of his day.

by Madhva361 passages held

  • Sanskrit, the original language
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Overview

Madhva had already written a commentary, a bhāṣya, on the Brahma Sūtras when, the tradition says, his disciple Trivikrama Paṇḍita asked him for something sharper. This work is his answer: an independent exposition in verse that follows his commentary through the Sūtras' four books, refers to the aphorisms without quoting them line by line, and argues against everyone who read them otherwise. The Sūtras are terse aphorisms ascribed to Bādarāyaṇa, and every school of Vedānta, the philosophy built on the Upanishads, had to show that they taught its doctrine. Advaita, the non-dualism of the earlier teacher Śaṅkara, holds that the self is identical with Brahman, the ultimate reality, and that the world of many things is an appearance. Madhva's Dvaita, or dualism, holds that God, souls and matter are really and permanently different. The biographies written by Madhva's followers tell that Trivikrama, an Advaita scholar who had taught the king of Kasaragod, came over to Madhva after a debate of seven or eight days. Within its first pages the work takes up bondage, the soul's suffering through rebirth. Suffering is felt; if the proof that it is unreal is invalid, it proves nothing, and if it is valid, a real means of knowing exists beside Brahman and difference is real after all. Madhva turns the same test on the Advaita scheme of three grades of reality, and on an ignorance said to be neither real nor unreal. Where an Upanishad seems to say that the self is Brahman, he argues that such a sentence speaks of likeness: it draws its authority from the many passages that speak of difference and cannot overturn them. Buddhists, Jains and those who held God and the self to be at once one and different are answered in turn. In the later fourteenth century Jayatīrtha, the school's chief systematiser, wrote a commentary on the work, the Nyāyasudhā, which became the classic of Dvaita argument. B. N. K. Sharma, the school's modern historian, called the Anuvyākhyāna Madhva's masterpiece. Between 1957 and 1971 the French Indologist Suzanne Siauve published three studies of it in Pondicherry, one with a translation of a passage from its first book.

Key concepts

What is Dvaita, the dualism this book defends?

Dvaita holds that God, souls and matter are really and permanently different. The book counts five such differences: God from souls, God from matter, each soul from every other, souls from matter, and one material thing from another. None of them is an appearance that knowledge will dissolve, and none ends even in liberation. Difference, on this view, is part of what a thing is.

How do we know anything, according to the Anuvyākhyāna?

Through three means of knowing: perception, inference and the testimony of scripture, all checked by the witness, an inner awareness that knows the self, time and pleasure or pain directly. What the witness grasps is never later overturned. Memory counts as real knowledge, with the witness as its warrant. No means of knowing may be used to discredit the means it depends on.

What does it mean that only God is independent?

Only Vishnu exists, knows and acts by his own power. Everything else is dependent: matter, action, time, nature and every soul exist and work only because he sustains them. Dependence is not unreality. A dependent soul is fully real and fully distinct, and it never becomes the one it depends on, in bondage or in liberation.

What are bondage and liberation in this book?

Bondage is the soul's real captivity in rebirth, felt as suffering and known by perception. Because it is real, insight alone cannot dissolve it. Liberation is release from it by Vishnu's grace, sought through inquiry into scripture and devotion. The freed soul keeps its own identity and enjoys its own bliss in God's presence, without becoming God.

What is tāratamya, the gradation of souls?

Tāratamya means more-and-less: souls differ in rank by nature, in their gifts and in the bliss they can hold. The order runs from the gods downward, each lower being surpassed by those above it, with the goddess Lakshmi first among the dependent and Vishnu above all with no equal. The ranks hold in bondage and in liberation alike.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Suffering Is No Dream

If pain belongs only to a dream, who is it that suffers, and who could ever wake? Madhva stakes the whole book on the reality of what the soul undergoes.

Against those who call the world an appearance, Madhva turns their proof on itself: an invalid proof that bondage is unreal shows nothing, and a valid one is a real means of knowing beside Brahman, so difference stands. He asks how three grades of reality could ever be established, and finds an ignorance neither real nor unreal as baffling as what it explains. What survives are five real differences: God from souls, God from matter, soul from soul, souls from matter, and one material thing from another.

  • difference
  • nondualism
  • identity and difference
  • metaphysics
  • consciousness
  • soul
  • creation
  • causation
  • dependence
  • cosmology

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The Witness and the Word

What may overrule what: the eye, the argument or the verse? The answer decides how every sentence of the Upanishads is to be read.

Beneath the senses Madhva places the witness, an inner awareness that knows the self, time and space directly and is never later overturned. Scripture is not read against what it rests on: a sentence that seems to make the soul Brahman draws its authority from the many passages of difference, so it speaks of likeness. Words reach their object. Terms for qualities, for life and even for things name the Lord first, and a God called beyond words is too full of qualities to describe, never an empty blank.

  • epistemology
  • perception
  • inference
  • knowledge
  • scriptural authority
  • scriptural interpretation
  • hermeneutics
  • language
  • philosophy of language

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Freed, and Still Distinct

What is a soul freed into, if it never becomes God? Madhva keeps the one who is freed, and keeps the order of beings too.

Because bondage is real, it does not end by seeing that it never was; it ends by Vishnu's grace, which is why the Sūtras open with a call to inquire into Brahman. The freed enjoy their delights beside Brahman, as scripture says, and do not dissolve into him, and a release in which self and other, pleasure and pain all vanish would be nobody's gain. Even there souls stand in an order, the goddess Lakshmi above the rest and Vishnu without an equal.

  • liberation
  • bliss
  • devotion
  • divine grace
  • worship
  • divine attributes
  • divine hierarchy
  • spiritual hierarchy
  • brahman
  • theology
  • karma

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Within this work

passages held
361
distinct concepts
354
by passages held, corpus-wide
#209

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “liberation” and “scriptural authority”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 26 pairings. 83 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
liberationscriptural authority27
epistemologyscriptural authority22
epistemologyperception20
liberationscriptural interpretation20
divine attributesscriptural interpretation16
inferencescriptural authority13
epistemologyinference12
epistemologyliberation12
divine attributesscriptural authority11
inferenceliberation11
perceptionscriptural authority11
inferencescriptural interpretation8
divine attributesliberation7
inferenceperception6
epistemologyscriptural interpretation5
metaphysicsscriptural interpretation5
metaphysicsperception4
divine attributesepistemology3
liberationmetaphysics3
divine attributesmetaphysics2
metaphysicsscriptural authority2
divine attributesinference1
epistemologymetaphysics1
inferencemetaphysics1
liberationperception1
perceptionscriptural interpretation1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. Aṇubhāṣya

    It condenses Madhva's reading of the Brahma Sūtras into four short chapters of verse, written, the tradition says, so that his disciples need not read the whole commentary every day.

     SA
  2. Anuvyākhyāna you are here SA
  3. Kṛṣṇāmṛtamahārṇava

    Unlike his commentaries and polemics, it is a handbook rather than an argument: scriptural verses gathered into a guide to daily Vaiṣṇava practice.

     SA
  4. Mahābhārata-tātparya-nirṇaya

    A retelling in verse of two epics and the life of Krishna, it carries into narrative the theology that Madhva's commentaries argue line by line.

     SA
  5. Pramāṇalakṣaṇa

    One of Madhva's short monographs, it sets down in a few pages the theory of knowledge that his commentaries and polemics take for granted.

     SA
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