Śrīkaṇṭha and the Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya

Abstract

This chapter focuses on Appaya’s main source of exegesis, Śrīkaṇṭha’s Brahmamīmāṃsābhāṣya, and assesses the current evidence about Śrīkaṇṭha’s date of activity. It explores Śrīkaṇṭha’s intellectual background and influences, and draws attention in particular to conceptual and linguistic affinities between Śrīkaṇṭha’s work and Rāmānuja’s theology. It also provides a detailed analysis of the relationship between Śrīkaṇṭha’s theology and the theology deployed in the work of Vīraśaiva scholars writing in Sanskrit. The chapter also complicates the relationship between Śrīkaṇṭha and Nīlakaṇṭha, a figure central to the Vīraśaiva Vedānta tradition.