It gives me immense pleasure to present this book, in two parts on the Vivarana Prasthana of Kevaladvaita. Kevaladvaita is one of the most influential and widespread schools of philosophical thought in this subcontinent, the subsequent growth and development of which is found with two hefty and widespread branches of it. First, the Vivarana Prasthana pioneered by Padrnapada and further developed more vigorously by Prakasatman, Second, the Bhamati Prasthana pioneered by Vanaspati. Both these trends have a prolonged tradition and with each of them, we find a fundamental sort of conceptual change. Such a vast and varied development cannot be treated adequately in a brief work like this. Therefore, the present work is restricted only to the two prominent or eminent figures in the Advaita Vedanta in general and the Vivarana Prasthana in particular viz. Padrnapada and Prakasatman, although it is interesting to look into the further conceptual growth and development of the same beyond Prakasatman. To put it more precisely, the first part of the present work is devoted to Padmapada while in the second part, I have concentrated on Prakasatman's conceptual framework of Kevaladvaita. My main objective in this work has been to give though not a comprehensive but clear and critical account of Padmapada and Prakasatman's conceptual framework of Kevaladvaita. I am interested in finding out the nature, function, catalytic value, place, and relevance of Padrnapada's Pancapadika and Prakasatman's Paficapadika-Vivarana That is, I wish to study the texts under consideration in their proper philosophical context and thereby the conceptual change, growth and development of Kevaladvaita thought in general. Thus, my inquiry into the conceptual framework of Padmapada and Prakasatman's brand of Kevaladvaita is neither merely historical nor descriptive but analytic, critical, and evaluative.
Along with this, Kevaladvaita engaged my attention quite seriously and overwhelmingly at least for two following reasons. First, it uncompromisingly accepts and advocates the conception of unity both on microcosmic as well as macrocosmic levels, which is significant and very much useful in the modern era of globalization. Second, the Ignorance of Indian philosophy in general and Kevaladvaita of Sankara, in particular, is profound. Some of its doctrines although wrongly attributed to Sankara are seen to be deeply rooted even today, in our day-to-day life. That is, Kevaladvaita of Sankara, over time, came to be highly misinterpreted and gave rise to many misnomers, and uninformed and ill-informed accounts, thereby misleading criticism. A few of them can be mentioned here. (a) Sankara's Advaita came to be branded as Mayavada and because of this; it usually comes to be summarized in oft-quoted verse, which runs as follows: "Brahman is the only reality; the world is ultimately false; and the individual soul is non-different from Brahman," although Sankara has never subscribed such a view.
(b) The metaphysics of Brahman at the hands of Sankara came to be substituted by the metaphysics of Avidya.
(c) The world (Jagat) came to be held as completely condemnable and worthless (Lucca) in the tradition of Advaita.
(d) Jivanmukti came to be overshadowed by Videhamukti.
(e) A Samnyasin came to be held to be a paradigmatic Advaitin.
This book is an attempt to find out whether and to what extent, if at all could these views have been anticipated by Sankara or some kind of extension of his thought and brand of Kevaladvaita together with its conceptual framework. Moreover, it is attempted to inquire where the seeds and roots of these views lie and how and why over time came to exercise impact upon the minds of subsequent scholars and came to be wrongly attributed to Sankara's Advaita. I shall feel amply rewarded if at all at least to a certain extent I succeed in removing such misconceptions and arouse a genuine interest in Kevaladvaita, in the mind of interested readers, which has been one of my objectives.
The present work is based on my study of the sources. Therefore, I have either quoted from the original texts or referred to them on almost all fundamental points to enable interested readers to compare.
Before concluding, it would be a matter of ungratefulness on my part, if I do not acknowledge my indebtedness to all those, who helped me on various counts during the entire course of this work.
First, I express my deep and sincere feeling of gratitude to Late Prof. Marathe formerly the head of the Department of Philosophy, University of Pune, although any word of acknowledgment, I feel is simply inadequate to express the said feeling. I have been privileged to receive his unfailing and inspiring encouragement and cooperation. Moreover, his sustained and valuable suggestions during repeated and pool need discussions I had with him, right from the beginning of the present work, not only enabled me to free myself from the various above-said misunderstandings and misconceptions but also developed my interest and gave me a proper direction and perspective to work on this area of investigation.
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