B
Bādarāyana
˙ cluster of lotuses that constitute the summit of
Aleksandar Uskokov
Department of South Asian Languages and
Civilizations, University of Chicago, Chicago, Il,
USA
Historical Details
Bādarāyaṇa was a Vedic theologian who is com-
monly credited with the authorship of the canon-
ical Vedānta text, the Śārī raka- or Brahma-Sūtra.
Nothing is known about his life and personality,
and he can only provisionally be dated to the first
several centuries of the common era. Even his
name is just a patronym, meaning “the son of
Bādari” and “the grandson of Badara.” His signif-
icance for Indian philosophy and theology, on the
other hand, is massive, not only through the
Brahma-Sūtra, but also because of the doctrine
of the impersonal origin of the Veda, with which
he is credited in the Mī māṁsā-Sūtra.
Although it is common for commenters on the
Brahma-Sūtra to refer to its author as the
sūtrakāra, “author of the aphorisms,” Śaṅkara
himself at the end of his commentary (4.4.22)
identifies this sūrakāra with “the venerable
Bādarāyaṇa.” This identification is echoed by
Śaṅkara’s student Padmapāda in the second intro-
ductory verse to his Pañca-pādikā: “Homage to
the sage by the name of Bādarāyaṇa, an abode of
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tranquility and an embodiment of the sun for the
scripture.”
Furthermore, from the time of the other great
commentator on Śaṅkara’s Śārī raka-Bhāṣya, the
ninth century Vācaspati Miśra, Bādarāyaṇa
becomes identified with the author of the
Mahābhārata, Vedavyāsa, who is also commonly
considered the editor of the Vedas and an incarna-
tion of Kṛṣṇa. The fifth introductory verse to
Vācaspati’s Bhāmati runs: “Homage to Vyāsa,
the author of the aphorisms on Brahman, a rival
creator [to Brahmā] and an incarnation of Lord
Hari’s power of knowledge” ([5, 8], p. 96). The
later commentators on Śaṅkara’s Bhāṣya, such as
Ānandagiri and Govindānanda, as well as other
Vedāntins including Rāmānuja, Madhva,
Vallabha, Śrīnivāsa, and Baladeva, all follow this
tradition of identifying Bādarāyaṇa with
Vyāsa [3].
This identification is common in the Purāṇic
tradition, including the Bhāgavata. It is conve-
niently summarized by Madhva and Baladeva in
the introduction to their Brahma-Sūtra commen-
taries. At the end of the age of Dvāpara, the Vedas
are forgotten, and the gods pray to Nārāyaṇa for
their restoration. Nārāyaṇa is born as Kṛṣṇa-
Dvaipāyana Vyāsa, restores the Veda, divides it
into four – Ṛg, Yajur, Sāma, and Atharvā – and
begins the various branches of their transmission
(śākhā). Many dimwits, however, misunderstand
the Vedas and promote erroneous teachings in
2 Bādarāyana
their name, and so Vyāsa writes the Brahma-Sūtra
to present the correct conclusions and dispose of
these wrong ideas by treating them as prima facie
views [6, 8].
One reason for this Bādarāyaṇa-Vyāsa identi-
fication may be the fact that Bādarāyaṇa is
approvingly quoted five times in the
Mī māṁsā-Sūtra, traditionally attributed to
Jaimini, whereas Jaimini is quoted 11 times in
the Brahma-Sūtra and often refuted. The Purāṇic
tradition says that Vyāsa entrusted the four Vedas
and the Itihāsa-Purāṇa to five of his students and
that Jaimini was made the teacher of the Sāma
Veda. It might have been natural for Vedāntins to
follow the Purāṇic tradition and identify the
respected Bādarāyaṇa of the Mī māṁsā-Sūtra
with Vyāsa the teacher of Jaimini.
The attribution of the integral Brahma-Sūtra to
a single author, Bādarāyaṇa, is not without prob-
lems either. The core of the Brahma-Sūtra was a
systematization of the Chāndogya Upaniṣad of
the Sāma Veda tradition, to which Bādarāyaṇa
himself likely belonged, and it must have been
quite an early text. However, the final redaction in
which competing philosophies are refuted could
not have been finished before the fifth century
A.D. Furthermore, Bādarāyaṇa himself is quoted
in the text as one of several Vedāntins. While his
views can generally be identified with the correct
conclusion or siddhānta in each of these cases,
this is an indication enough that the final text was
put together after him. Finally, the great Advaitin
Sureśvara claimed that an integral Sūtra text com-
prising both the Mī māṁsā- and the Brahma-
Sūtras was written by Jaimini [3].
The Impersonal Origin of the Veda
As I mentioned before, Bādarāyaṇa is referred to
five times in the Mī māṁsā-Sūtra. By far the most
important of these references is 1.1.5: “The rela-
tion of the word to its meaning is innate
(autpattika). Knowledge of such meaning is had
through instruction, which is infallible regarding
imperceptible things. It is a reliable warrant,
according to Bādarāyaṇa, because it is indepen-
dent.” This statement is known as the autpattika-
˙
sūtra, after the first word, and forms the core
doctrine that unifies Mīmāṁsā and Vedānta in a
single field of Vedic theology.
The doctrine says, first, that words of the San-
skrit language in which the Vedas are written have
an innate relation with the things that they stand
for, and most directly they stand for universals or
categories of things (ākṛti, shape or configura-
tion). That this relationship is innate means that
it is based neither on human convention nor on
divine will. There never happened in history an
event when someone said, “let this thing be called
‘a ball,’ that thing ‘a cow’ and that yonder thing
‘dharma.’” The basic, nontechnical meanings of
words (in the Sanskrit language), which impose
upon our understanding on hearing, are meanings
which words have always had, since the (non)-
beginning of time. This is meant to remove inten-
tionality (vivakṣā) from the sphere of language,
such that it is not that speakers refer to things
arbitrarily by means of words, but words refer to
objects directly.
Second, there was no point in time where an
author, human or divine, composed the Vedas, but
they have existed as they are now for all eternity.
Because of these two reasons, the Vedas are a
reliable warrant, pramāṇa, for all matters that are
not liable to perception: they reveal their objects
directly just as percepts do. In effect, this removes
the testimonial character of knowledge from lin-
guistic utterances of the Vedic kind.
This is the seed of veda-apauruṣeyatva or the
doctrine that the Veda has no author, human or
divine. The term apauruṣeya appears for the first
time as a gloss of Bādarāyaṇa’s autpattika in the
excerpt of the commentary of Vṛttikāra that is
included by Śabara in his Bhāṣya on the
Mī māṁsā-Sūtra 1.1.5.
Bādarāyaṇa’s doctrine of nonintentionality of
Vedic words and no author of the Veda is shared
by Mīmāṁsakas and Vedāntins, but not by other
orthodox Hindu schools, such as Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika
and Sāṅkhya-Yoga. Even Advaita Vedāntins, who
were alone in claiming that the study of the
Upaniṣads and Brahman did not require the prior
study of the Brāhmaṇas and dharma, accepted this
doctrine as a shared commitment. Pādmapāda, for
instance, says in his Pañca-pādikā: “The two
Bādarāyana
˙
factors established in the autpattika-sūtra, the
independence of the Upaniṣads on the account of
the eternal word-meaning relationship, and their
validity on the account of their non-personal ori-
gin, apply here [in the study of Brahman] as well,
because they are required” ([9], pp. 205–206).
The development of this doctrine, however, took
diverging roads in the two schools.
The great Mīmāṁsaka Kumārila Bhaṭṭa
(seventh century A.D.), for instance, argued
based on this principle that: (1) there is no such
thing as omniscience at all: since both the Buddha
and the Upaniṣadic Iśvara are persons, they could
not possibly be omniscient, because persons are
generally prone to cheat; (2) not only is there no
divine agent that related words to their meanings,
but the world itself was never created, and is now
the same it has always been; (3) the Vedas have
been transmitted through the schools for all eter-
nity. Mīmāṁsakas also argued that personal
names that appear in the Veda as historical figures
are not really names, but properly formed general
nouns that just sound identical to such personal
names. They also claimed that the names of the
Vedic schools, such as Kāṭhaka, are just tradition-
ally associated with famous expounders of parts
of the Veda and are not properly Vedic [2, 4].
Vedāntins, on the other hand, committed to the
doctrine of periodic destructions and recreations
of the world, argued that the Veda, though logi-
cally coexistent with Brahman, eternally ema-
nates from the omniscient Brahman. This
emanation, says Śaṅkara, is natural to Brahman
and effortless like breathing and is not an inten-
tional act. The Veda is eternal and constitutes
something like a collection of (Platonic) ideas or
forms on which the demiurge Brahmā contem-
plates at the beginning of creation to propagate
the world with beings and objects in their likeness.
The word that is the Veda, therefore, is a creative
principle participating in the origin of the world.
Brahmā also creates the Vedic sages who intuit the
Vedic hymns that are eternally associated with
their names and appear in every cycle anew.
Thus, the personal names in the Veda related to
hymns and the schools, such as Viśvāmitra and
3
Kāṭhaka, are simultaneously ahistorical and his-
torical: they refer to ideal divine beings or posts,
but these posts are occupied in every creation
cycle by individual souls who intuit and proclaim
the same Vedic texts. These arguments are devel-
oped under BS 1.1.3, śāstra-yonitvāt, which in
Śaṅkara’s reading means: “Brahman is omni-
scient, because of being the source of scripture,”
and in the devatādhikaraṇam (BS 1.3.26–30)
[1, 7].
For Bādarāyaṇa as a Vedānta theologian, see
the entry on the Brahma-Sūtra.
Cross-References
▶ Brahma-Sūtras
▶ Brahmā
▶ Kṛṣṇa
▶ Mahābhārata
▶ Meaning
▶ The Vedas, Overview
▶ Vācaspati Miśra
▶ Vyāsa
References
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and Vedānta-Kaustubha of Śrīnivāsa: English Transla-
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2. Jha G (Trans) (1907) Ślokavārttika of Kumārila Bhaṭṭa.
Asiatic Society of Bengal, Calcutta
3. Nakamura H (1983) A history of early Vedānta philos-
ophy. Motilal Banarsidass, Delhi
4. Jha G (Trans) (1933) Shabara-Bhāshya, in three
volumes. Oriental Institute, Baroda
5. Sankaranarayanan S (2003) Bādarāyaṇa and Vyāsa as
authors of the Brahmasūtras—a historical analysis.
Adyar Libr Bull 67:91–146
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the commentary of Madhwacharya. Thompson and Co,
Madras
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Śaṅkarācārya. Advaita Ashrama, Kolkata
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Bādarāyaṇa, with the commentary of Baladeva.
Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, Delhi
9. Venkataramiah D (Trans) (1948) The Pañcapādikā of
Padmapāda. Oriental Institute, Baroda