[INDOLOGY] On Adhyash.

David and Nancy Reigle dnreigle at gmail.com
Sun Apr 14 16:43:04 UTC 2019


 Dear Alakendu Das,

If you had not written that "superimposition" is a translation of adhyash,
I would not have recognized what word you meant by adhyash. It is always
helpful to use the standard transliteration for Sanskrit words, in this
case adhyāsa; or if you do not have access to unicode characters, then
adhyaasa or adhyAsa would work.

Already in George Thibaut's 1890 translation of *The Vedānta-sūtras with
the Commentary by Śaṅkarācārya*, Part 1, "superimposition" was used for adhy
āsa (p. 4, etc.). Swami Gambhirananda, too, in his 1965 translation of
*Brahma-sūtra-bhāṣya
of Śrī Śaṅkarācārya* used "superimposition" for adhyāsa (p. 2, etc.). This
seems to be one of those cases where the English translation of a Sanskrit
term, "superimposition" for adhyāsa, is so good that everyone adopted it. I
have not taken note of other translations of adhyāsa.

However, if a simpler translation is wanted, such as for
English-as-a-second-language speakers who may not know the word
"superimposition," one could use "false attribution," the definition of adhy
āsa given in Apte's Sanskrit-English dictionary.

Best regards,

David Reigle
Colorado, U.S.A.


On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 6:07 AM alakendu das via INDOLOGY <
indology at list.indology.info> wrote:

> Respected Scholars,
>
> Adhyash happens to be a significant concept in Vedanta philosophy.So
> far,"Superimposition" is the only word which I came across,as a literal
> translation of Adhyash in English.Is there any other word ,in the
> philosophical context,which tantamounts to Adhyash?
>
>    Alakendu Das.
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from RediffmailNG on Android
>
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