Need a book recommendation. What is the best book in English to understand Visishtadvaita philosophy, especially its ontology & epistemology vis-à-vis Advaita and other Hindu schools. Maybe @KeshavSrinivasan could help.
The pretext of this question is Sati(from Swayambhuva Manvantra) is mentioned in the Vedas, but Parvati(of the current Vaivasvata Manvantra) is not. Correlating the absence of characters who come in the later Manvantra(after Swayambhuva manvantra) with the perceived time of compilation the Vedas(...
My assumption was Vedas contain only Srutis or eternal truths(an enshrined in the Mantras) and that stories and Dharma bhodhanas are a subject of Vedanta and Puranas. But the following verse(if not a later interpolation) casts doubts on that assumption. Are there any other stories of a similar na...
@Bharat You can read the works of Ramanujacharya, for instance the Sri Bhashya (his commentary on the Brahma Sutras) and the Vedartha Sangraha (his exposition and defense of Visistadvaita. I can give you links to English translations of both of those..
@Bharat Are you also looking for modern English works on Visistadvaita? If so, what comes to mind off the top of my head is the various books of S.M. Srinivasa Chari. There are also some books on Visistadvaita philosophy written by Westerners, from an academic perspective, but I don't recall them right now.
In regards to many questions here like this
Why did Lord Hanuman forget that he has special powers?
and this
How does Lord Hanuman recalls his special powers?
I cannot comment any scripture here, but I think Lord hanuman had his powers but he actually forgot up to what extent his powers can go,
...
@KeshavSrinivasan Thank you, I'll check out Srinivasa Chari's books. I wanted something which would help me understand the philosophy first then I could go into deeper studies like reading Ramanujacharya's Sri Bhashya.
Please pardon me for creating this duplicate topic,
as I am confused with the answer already given on this topic
Did the Mahabharata and the Ramayana happen in the current Yuga cycle in the current Manvantra?
Please help me out in understanding this, If you believe I am breaking the forum ru...
@Bharat I just downloaded two books from the Digital Library of India relating to Visistadvaita. (See my answer here for instructions on how to download from the Digital Library of India.)
@Bharat The first is S.M Srinivasa Chari's book "Advaita and Visistadvaita", which is a polemical work summarizing various arguments against Advaita and in support of the Visistadvaita position: gdurl.com/d5k7/download
@Bharat The second is P.N. Srinivasachari's "The Philosophy of Visistadvaita", which will probably be more useful for you: gdurl.com/ko0y/download Note that I haven't read books like this since I was in 9th grade (I'm nerd like that :)), so I don't remember how good they are.
@KeshavSrinivasan Thanks a lot!! I downloaded those 2 books. I am a Sri Vaishnava by birth but I don't know much about the philosophy. Having been brought up in urban India in 'modernity', many of us live in ignorance about our own tradition. Only few years ago I started (re)discovering HIndu Dharma..
@Bharat Oh, I'm born and raised in America, so you can just imagine how much disconnect with Hinduism there is here! Throughout my life I've had to take great efforts to learn all about Hinduism.
@Bharat By the way, are you thenkalai or Vadakalai?
@Bharat You might be interested in watching Velukkudi Krishnan's lecture on Visistadvaita; it's a good overview of things:
@Bharat I should add that Visistadvaita on its own is not enough to fully understand Sri Vaishnavism; in addition to that analytical aspect, there is also the devotional aspect, embodied in the poems of the Alwars. That's why Sri Vaishnavism is also called Ubhaya Vedanta: it's a combination of the Sanskrit Veda and the Dravida Veda. So you may also want to learn about the Alwars and their works at some point.
@KeshavSrinivasan I now live in the US. Only when I was disconnected from India here did I actually started thinking of what it means to be a Hindu. In India there is an hatred & ridicule for anything Hindu especially in urban areas. Though the country is free, the minds are still colonized with so much of self-hatred. :(
@KeshavSrinivasan I feel caste-cow-curry stretypes of Hindus are worse in India than in America from what I've seen(Irony!).
@KeshavSrinivasan, my (re)into into Hinduism was actually though Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. I think those would provide context for me to understand the analytical aspects of Vishtaadvaita. As for the Bakti part, I am familar with Alwars & Divyaprabandam(i.e I know they exist but don't know what they say).
@Bharat Oh, my dad is Thenkalai and my mom is Vadakalai, but my beliefs lean more to the Vadakalai side.
@Bharat Oh, where in the US are you? I'm in New Jersey.
@Bharat Yeah, I'm not very knowledgable about the Alwars' poems either, which is why I've posted so many questions about them: hinduism.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/alwar But the emotions expressed in the ones I have read are just awe-inspiring. You can read the full Naalayira Divya Prabandham in English here: 4000divyaprabandam.blogspot.com
@Bharat And you can read just Nammalwar's Thiruvaimozhi here: ibiblio.org/sripedia/ebooks/tvm That is the part of the Naalayira Divya Prabandham that is actually called the "Dravida Veda".
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