SOURCE: "The Vedas as a Pramana" in Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Sankara, University of Hawaii Press, 1991, pp. 31-54.

In the following essay, Rambachan analyzes Sankara's belief in sruti as the essential and true source of knowledge of brahman.

Sabda can be seen as a pramana for our knowledge of the empirical world as well as ultimate reality. Advaita, however, is not primarily concerned with sabda-pramana as a vehicle of secular knowledge. As such a medium, sabda cannot lay claim to any particular uniqueness, for the knowledge which it conveys is, in most cases, available through other sources.¹ As a pramana of the empirical world, it does not have a sphere which is exclusively its own and which, by nature, it alone is capable of transmitting.² The special nature of sabda for Advaita, therefore, lies in its function as a means...