The Mandukya Upanisad and the Agama Sastra: An Investigation into the Meaning of the Vedanta.

• Author: Brereton, Joel P.

In manuscripts, the Mandukya Upanisad (MaU) is normally embedded in a short text of 29 verses or karikas, which comprises its earliest commentary. Together the upanisad and the karikas form the Agamaprakarana (AP), the first of four sections of the Agamasastra (AS). This Al is traditionally attributed to Gaudapada (ca. 5th c.), and, in the Advaita tradition, it is read with the Agamasastravivarana (ASV), a commentary attributed to Sankara.

This monograph is a study of the interrelationship of all these texts, their origins, their intertextual network, and most of all, of one central exegetical and philosophic issue raised by the MaU. The upanisad outlines four states of awareness: waking, dreaming, dreamless sleep and a state in which the true nature of reality is encountered, a nameless state called only the "fourth." In vs. 6, it describes the "lord" (isvara) of all, which is the knower of all, the inner controller, the womb of all, and the origin and end of all beings (esa sarvesvara esa sarvajna eso 'ntaryamy esa yonih sarvasya prabhavapyayau hi bhutanam). The interpretive question that Wood addresses is whether this "lord" is associated with the penultimate state of dreamless sleep (vs. 5) or with the ultimate "fourth" state (vs. 7). The answer to this question, Wood argues, marks a critical divide in Vendantic thought. On one side is the Vedanta of Sankara, for whom the world is an illusion and the "lord" is part of this illusion (maya), an entity that vanishes in the experience of absolute reality. On the other side is a Vedanta in which the world is a real transformation effected by the "lord," who is absolutely real. Wood argues in favor of an interpretation in which the "lord" is associated with the ultimate state, a view that is supported, he says, by the earlier upanisadic sources of the MaU, by later upanisads that derive from the MaU, by the AP and by other medieval treatises. The Advaita Vedanta, especially in its development after Sankara, derives its mayavada not directly from the MaU or any of the upanisads, but from a mixture of Mahayana Buddhism and upanisadic sources.

This is an adventurous work, which challenges received scholarly and traditional views on a number of historical and interpretive fronts. Wood's argument is admirably clear, although both it and his exegesis are vulnerable. So,uilt as the logical unraveling of a mystery, and therefore it seems almost as wrong to reveal its conclusions as it would be to...