A Collection From Sankara's Commentaries on the Prasthana-Traya (English)

Sri Sankara, the greatest proponent of Advaita Vedanta, made it part of his life's work to comment upon the Prasthana-Traya, which is the three main pillars of Hinduism: The Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita. Almost all translations of these works contain the commentaries of Sankara.

In A Collection from Sankara's Commentaries on the Prasthana-Traya, Swami Kritarthananda has created a valuable sourcebook of references cited by Sankara in his commentaries on these Hindu scriptures. About 2500 memorable and important sentences have been culled from the Prasthana-Traya commentaries to build up the text portion of this book. On scrutinizing the sentences collected, it can be seen that there are chiefly three trends: inferential, illustrative, and definitive. Opponents' views have been avoided in this collection since the purpose of the book is to highlight only Sankara's views. However, in a few rare cases, where an opponent s argument contains some inherent truth universally accepted, that portion has also been included in this work, with special reference.

The book covers fourteen chapters containing the whole gamut of the Prasthana-Traya, namely, the Bhagavad Gita, the Upanishads, and the Vedanta-Darsana or Brahma Sutras. The Upanishads in this book comprise twelve major ones, namely, Isavasya, Kena, Prasna, Aitareya, Katha, Mundaka, Mandukya, Tattiriya, Svetasvatara, Chandogya, and Brihadaranyaka. Included is a select concordance, or index, of "catchwords" in English and in Devanagari & transliterated Roman