The Advaitic school says there are 555 sutras in Sage Vyasa’s Brahma Sutra, but the Visishtadvaita school says there are 545, said T.S.R.Narayanachariar in a lecture. In keeping with the Visishtadvaitic tradition, Desika, in his Adhikaranasaravali which elaborates on Ramanuja’s Sri Bhashya, says that there are 545 sutras.
But what is amazing is the way he does this. He uses the word subhAsI, in the introduction to the work. The word indicates auspiciousness. There is a reason for Desika’s use of this word, instead of some other word with the same meaning. In the Katapayadi Sankhya system, letters are used to represent numerals. So, numbers take the form of words, and this makes it easy to remember the number. In this scheme, one of the letters that can be used to represent five is the letter ‘s’. Four can be represented through ‘bha.’ So, when Desika wanted to indicate that there were 545 sutras, he used the word subhAsi, for this in the Katapayadi scheme translates to 545. So here we have a word that means auspiciousness, and also represents the number 545.
Sri Bhashya has 156 adhikaranas. Again, Desika uses the Katapayadi Sankhya scheme, and comes up with the word ‘chinmayee.’ Chinmayee simply put means jnana rupa. The Brahma Sutra dwells on jnana. So, using the word chinmayee is appropriate. Desika wants us to remember the number of adhikaranas in Sri Bhashya. So, again he uses a word that not only means jnana, but also indicates that Sri Bhashya has 156 adhikaranas.
In the Katapayadi Sankhya scheme, six can be represented through ‘ca,’ five can also be represented through ‘ma,’ and one is represented through ‘ya.’ Thus, numerals are given to us in a meaningful way in Adhikaranasaravali.
