As I discuss in this question, by far the most popular school of Hindu philosophy is the Vedānta school, which bases its tenets on the doctrines laid out in the Brahma Sūtras, a work by the sage Vyāsa which summarizes and systematizes the philosophical teachings of the Upaniṣads. You can read the Brahma Sūtras here.
In any case, in Adhyāya 2 Pada 2 of the Brahma Sūtras, Vyāsa discusses various rival schools to Vedānta. In particular, he says this:
Topic-7: God Is Not a Mere Superintendent
- For the Lord there can be no creatorship, for that leads to incongruity.
- And (the incongruity arises) because of the impossibility of a relationship.
- And (the position is untenable) because of the impossibility of (Nature) coming under (His) direction. (Or) And (God cannot be proved), since no physical support (adhiṣṭhāna) is possible for Him.
- Should it be argued that God will direct Nature like (a man directing) the organs, then it cannot be so, for that will result in God’s having experiences (of happiness, sorrow etc.). (Or) If a body, equipped with sense-organs, be assumed for God, (we say that) this is not possible; because of (consequent) experiences etc.
- God will be subject to finitude or loss of omniscience.
Topic 8: Bhagavata View Refuted
- (The Bhagavata view that Samkarsana and others originate successively from Vāsudeva and others is wrong), since any origin (for the soul) is impossible.
- And (this view is wrong because) an implement cannot originate from its agent (who wields it).
- Alternatively even if (it be assumed that Vāsudeva and others are) possessed of knowledge, (majesty etc.,), still the defect cannot be remedied.
- Besides, (in this scripture) many contradictions are met with and it runs counter to the Vedas.
Now most commentators on the Brahma Sūtras agree that Adhikaraṇa (Topic) 7 refers to the philosophy of the Śaiva Āgamas, the defining texts of Śaivism, and Adhikaraṇa 8 refers to the philosophy of the Pañcarātra Āgamas, the defining texts of Vaiṣṇavism. Where they differ is on how they interpret Vyasa's attitudes toward these two philosophies.
The Advaitin commentator Ādi Śaṅkarācārya argues that in Adhikaraṇa 7, Vyāsa is criticizing the Śaiva Agamas for their belief that Īśvara (The supreme lord) is only the efficient cause of the Universe, as opposed to the Vedānta school's view that Brāhmaṇa is both the efficient cause and the material cause of the Universe. And he argues that in Adhikaraṇa 8, Vyasa is criticizing the Pañcarātra Āgamas for their belief that the Jīva emerges from Brāhmaṇa, as opposed to the Vedanta school's view that the Jīva has always existed (as I discuss here).
Now as expected, Śaivite commentators dispute Ādi Śaṅkarācārya's interpretation of Adhikaraṇa 7, and Vaiṣṇava commentators dispute his interpretation of Adhikaraṇa 8. In each case, they either say that Vyāsa is criticizing people who misinterpret the philosophy in question, not the philosophy itself, or they say that the Adhikaraṇa is referring to a completely different philosophy than the one Ādi Śaṅkarācārya thinks it refers to. But my question is, is Ādi Śaṅkarācārya the only commentator on the Brahma Sutras that believes that the Brahma Sūtras are criticizing both the Shaiva Agamas & Pañcarātra Āgamas?
Now of course Ādi Śaṅkarācārya has had a lot of followers who have written commentaries based on his commentary, but I'm asking whether any non-Advaita commentators agree with his interpretations of both Adhikaraṇa 7 and Adhikaraṇa 8. To facilitate answering my question, I've compiled a table of commentaries and how they interpret these Adhikaraṇas, along with links to sources backing it up:
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓ ┃ Commentator ┃ Philosophy ┃ Reject ┃ Reject ┃ ┃ ┃ ┃ Shaiva?┃Pancharatra?┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Ādi Śaṅkarācārya ┃ Nirviśeṣādvaita ┃ Yes ┃ Yes ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Rāmānujācārya ┃ Viśiṣtādvaita ┃ Yes ┃ No ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Mādhvācārya ┃ Dvaita ┃ Yes ┃ href="https://i.sstatic.net/mBzlv.jpg">No ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Baladeva ┃ Acintya Bhedābheda ┃ Yes ┃ No ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Nimbārka ┃ Dvaitādvaita ┃ Yes ┃ No ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Śrīkanṭha Śivācārya ┃ Śivādvaita ┃ No ┃ Yes ┃ ┣━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━╋━━━━━━━━━━━━┫ ┃ Śrīpati ┃ Śakti Viśiṣtādvaita ┃ No ┃ Yes ┃ ┗━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━┛
As you can see, only Ādi Śaṅkarācārya answers "Yes-Yes". So are there other commentators that give the same answers?
There are some commentators who have no sectarian affiliations, like Bhāskara (whom I discuss here) and Vijñānabhikṣu, so how do they interpret these two Adhikaraṇas? What about commentators belonging to sects other than Vaiṣṇavism or Śaivism? Have any Śaktas, Ganapatya, Sauras, or Kaumaras written commentaries on the Brahma Sutras?
And what about the Vaikhanasas, who worship Viṣṇu but do not follow Pañcarātra Āgamas? Do they interpret Adhikaraṇa 8 as a criticism of the Pañcarātra Āgamas, or do they think it refers to their own Āgamas. Srinivasa Dikshitar wrote a Vaikhānasa commentary on the Brahma Sūtras, as I discuss here, so I'd be interested in hearing what he has to say on this issue.
Also, are there any commentators who would answer "No-No", i.e. who would say that the Brahma Sutras do not criticize either the Pañcarātra Āgamas or the Śaiva Āgamas? I assume that especially the sort of people who believe in religious unity would tend to believe that all the major sects following Āgamas are correct in their philosophical doctrines.
