# Brahma Sutra Bhashya *By Adi Shankara (the *Brahmasutrabhasya*, his commentary on the Brahma Sutras attributed to Badarayana).* > I read Wikipedia's articles on the Brahma Sutras and on Adi Shankara, the opening of Shankara's introduction and the passage on Sutras III.2.18-21 in George Thibaut's English translation (Sacred Books of the East, vols. 34 and 38, via the Internet Archive's OCR text), and the vault note for the video. I did not read the whole commentary, and the OCR text has errors, so quotations are cleaned of obvious OCR faults only. ## 1. Book facts | | | |---|---| | Title | *Brahma Sutra Bhashya* (*Brahmasūtrabhāṣya*; Thibaut: *Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Śankarâkârya*) | | Author | Adi Shankara. The Brahma Sutras themselves are attributed to Badarayana (also called Vyasa) | | Date | Shankara: scholarship has proposed 788-820 CE (older view) and c. 700-750 CE (current tendency); monastic traditions say far earlier (Wikipedia). The Brahma Sutras: 500 BCE-450 CE; Wikipedia says 200 BCE is "most likely" for the oldest version | | Form | A commentary on 555 aphorisms (sutras) in four chapters (*adhyayas*), each of four parts (*padas*) (Wikipedia). Wikipedia lists the *Brahmasutrabhasya* among works "widely accepted to have been written by Shankara himself" | | Language | Sanskrit | | ISBN / pages / publisher | Not applicable: many editions and translations; none singled out, so left blank | **Where it came up.** - Video: [Is Anyone Home Inside an AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLz5EROz_8), *Count Grey Matter*. - Mention: [9:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLz5EROz_8&t=558s), "Part Five: The sun in the water" (the video note cites *Brahma Sutra* 3.2.18-20, Thibaut's 1896 translation). - Vault note: [[Video Summaries/Count Grey Matter/Is Anyone Home Inside an AI]]. ## 2. Book resources **Reference pages** - [Wikipedia: Adi Shankara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara) - [Wikipedia: Brahma Sutras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_Sutras) **Where to get it (legal, free; Thibaut's translation is from 1890 and 1896, so in the public domain)** - **Part I (Sacred Books of the East vol. 34, 1890):** adhyaya I and II.1-2, with Thibaut's introduction. Free scan on the Internet Archive: [vol. 34, Motilal Banarsidass reprint](https://archive.org/details/mlbd.vedantasutras00vol-34.bada), and the Clarendon Press original as [india.history.resource.90109](https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.90109) (page not opened). - **Part II (vol. 38, 1896):** adhyaya II.3-4, III and IV. [Internet Archive, vol. 38](https://archive.org/details/mlbd.sacredbooksofeas0038unse); original at [india.history.resource.90247](https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.90247) (not opened). [sacred-texts.com](https://sacred-texts.com/hin/sbe38/index.htm) also hosts vol. 38 and labels it public domain (Cloudflare blocks my fetcher from reading the text, so I only confirmed that the index page loads). - **Audiobook:** free [LibriVox, Vedanta-Sutras with the commentary by Sankaracarya, Volume 1](https://librivox.org/the-vedanta-sutras-volume-1-by-badarayana/) (Thibaut's translation; 20:53:55; read by Jeffrey Allen Stumpf). A Volume 2 is catalogued without a published page, so it is probably in progress; the passage in this note falls in Part II and is therefore **not** covered by the finished recording. **Other translations and commentaries.** Thibaut also translated Ramanuja's commentary (SBE vol. 48), which gives a non-Advaita reading; Wikipedia names commentaries on the Brahma Sutras by Ramanuja, Madhvacharya, Bhaskara and others. I did not check the rights of modern translations. ## 3. Author biography Reliable information on Shankara's life is scant (Wikipedia). - Adi Shankara (8th century CE by current scholarship) was an Indian monk, philosopher and teacher of Advaita Vedanta. - Oldest hagiographies place his birth in Kaladi, Kerala; they are later (14th-17th centuries) and conflict on many details. - Studied, according to Wikipedia, with Govindapada, himself a pupil of Gaudapada. See [[Book Summaries/Gaudapada/Mandukya Karika - Gaudapada|Mandukya Karika]]. - Works widely accepted as his: the *Brahmasutrabhasya*, commentaries on ten principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and the *Upadeshasahasri*. Wikipedia notes that the *Vivekachudamani* is mostly rejected as his. ## 4. Author interviews and talks None exist (ancient author). ## 5. Summary **Thesis.** The Brahma Sutras systematise the teachings of the Upanishads about Brahman. Shankara reads them as teaching that Brahman is the sole reality and that the individual self is in truth identical with it. His commentary opens with an argument about *superimposition*. **Structure.** Four chapters of four parts each (Wikipedia); Thibaut's volumes divide them as noted in section 2. Wikipedia's summary of the sutras themselves: chapter 1 harmonises Upanishadic statements about Brahman and rejects Samkhya's inert first principle; chapter 2 answers objections from Samkhya, Nyaya, Yoga, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa, Buddhism and Jainism; chapter 3 compares the Upanishadic *vidyas* and *upasanas*; chapter 4 states why such knowledge matters. **Key ideas** - **Superimposition (*adhyasa*)** opens the commentary. Thibaut's translation: "It is a matter not requiring any proof that the object and the subject whose respective spheres are the notion of the 'Thou' (the Non-Ego) and the 'Ego', and which are opposed to each other as much as darkness and light are, cannot be identified." - **Sutra I.1.1**: "Then therefore the enquiry into Brahman." - **The sun in the water (III.2.18-21).** Thibaut's translation of Sutra 18: "For this very reason (there are applied to Brahman) comparisons such as that of the images of the sun and the like." In the commentary on Sutra 20 Shankara says the comparison rests on one point only, participation in "increase and decrease": the reflected sun "dilates when the surface of the water expands; it contracts when the water shrinks; it trembles when the water is agitated; it divides itself when the water is divided... while the real sun remains all the time the same". Brahman, he says, "participates as it were" in the states of its limiting adjuncts while remaining uniform. - **Reflection image elsewhere (II.3.50):** the individual soul is "a mere appearance of the highest Self, like the reflection of the sun in the water", so that when one reflection trembles another does not. - **In the video**: the image leads into a "new bowl filled with everything humans wrote" and the question whether that water is "still enough to catch the light itself, or does it only glitter with ours". ## 6. Fact-check Overall verdict: **supported**. The video's account of the sun-in-water comparison matches the passage in Thibaut's translation, and its citation of Sutras 3.2.18-20 and the 1896 translation is correct. | Claim (video) | Verdict | Evidence | |---|---|---| | Shankara lived about 1,200 years ago | Supported (approximate) | Wikipedia: 788-820 CE (older view), c. 700-750 CE (current tendency); date contested, so "about 1,200-1,300 years" | | One sun in the sky, a small sun in every bowl of water | Supported | Thibaut, III.2.18 and commentary: the *Moksha Shastras* compare the Self to "the images of the sun reflected in the water" | | The reflection grows, shrinks, trembles and splits with the water | Supported | Commentary on III.2.20: dilates, contracts, trembles, divides; "the real sun remains all the time the same" | | "The reflection is you": your mind is the water | Not testable | An interpretive gloss within the tradition; Shankara compares the individual soul to the reflection (II.3.50) | | Sutra range 3.2.18-20 and the 1896 translation | Supported | The passage sits at III.2.18-21 in SBE 38 (1896) | | Shankara wrote a commentary on the Brahma Sutras | Supported | Wikipedia lists it among his works widely accepted as authentic | ## 7. Citations and references - Shankara. *Brahma Sutra Bhashya*. Thibaut, George (trans.), *The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Śankarâkârya*, Sacred Books of the East vol. 34 (1890) and vol. 38 (1896). [Vol. 34](https://archive.org/details/mlbd.vedantasutras00vol-34.bada); [vol. 38](https://archive.org/details/mlbd.sacredbooksofeas0038unse). - Wikipedia: [Adi Shankara](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Shankara); [Brahma Sutras](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahma_Sutras). - LibriVox: [Vedanta-Sutras, Volume 1](https://librivox.org/the-vedanta-sutras-volume-1-by-badarayana/). - Video: [Is Anyone Home Inside an AI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lLz5EROz_8), *Count Grey Matter*.