/lit/ - Literature

>>14854113

Pic related from ancient Greece

>>14610800

>>11735049
For anyone curious about what Shankara's commentaries are like, here is a typical example of his writing; in this case his 13 page commentary on the well-known Brihadaranyaka Upanishad verse about the infinite preceding from the infinite. In this picture is an example of him bringing up someone else's alternative interpretation only to then explain why it's wrong, he does this throughout all his commentaries. In this case it's the view of a specific person he is referencing although he will often just go through a half-dozen hypothetical counter-interpretations only to refute them all in turn in order to definitively establish the meaning of the more important points and verses. This picture should also help make it clear why it is that if you are reading the Upanishads and certain other texts without the more extensive commentaries that there is sometimes an entire universe of contexts you'll probably be missing.

>>11642089