A Vaisnava Interpretation of the Brahmasutras: Vedanta and Theism.

• Author: Clooney, Francis X.

The truly magnum opus of Rampada Chattopadhyay (1872-1956) is the 2,200-page Brahmasutra-o-Srimad Bhagavata, in Bengali (published posthumously in 1978). There he argued most importantly the unusual thesis (which he traces to Mahaprabhu Sri Caitanya, the 15th-century Vaisnava saint) that the Bhagavata Purana is really a commentary on the Brahmasutras, intended to correct earlier intellectualist misinterpretations. The volume under review here is a translation by the author's son of the Bengali Vedanta Pravesa (1940), intended as a useful introduction and guide to the larger work which, though reprinted in 1978, has not been translated. Given the close connections between the two works - the Pravesa repeatedly refers to the larger work for the elaboration and validation of contested and complex points - it is difficult to assess the Pravesa adequately by itself; nevertheless, a number of salient points can be noted.

The Pravesa is comprised mostly of reflections on selected sutras and themes from the Brahmasutras: brahmatattva, srstitattva, mayatattva, desakalatattva, jivatattva, karmatattva, upasanatattva and avataratattva. Each chapter is a lengthy meditation - with examples from ordinary experience, appeals for the reader's special attention, etc - on the announced theme, weaving together a few references from the Brahmasutras with others from various older and newer upanisads, the Bhagavad Gita, and of course the Bhagavata Purana itself. Special attention is given to the distinctive thesis on the relation between the Brahmasatras and the Bhavagata Purana, supported in various ways: citations from the Caitanya Caritamrta which expound Caitanya's view of the correlation among the pranava (om), the gayatri mantra, the first four sutras of the Brahmasatras (the Catuhsloki) and the Bhagavata Purana; an elaborate correlation between the phrases of the first verse of the Purana and six sutras (1.1.1, 2, 4, 5, 17 and 2.1.1). In support of all this, we are given a lengthy argument in favor of a much earlier date for the Purana (c. 500 B.C.E.) than has been conceded by Western scholars, along with the general thesis that all the puranas "were composed by a board of editors under the leadership of Vyasadeva at the end of the Dvapara yuga and before the advent of the Kali yuga, and that all the Puranas were more or less contemporaneous" (p. 251).

Underlying this uncommon scholarship are three major points. First, there is a strictly intellectual...