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Adi Shankara

Adi Shankara (8th century C.E) is the most famous Advaita philosopher, who had a profound influence on the growth of Hinduism through his non-dualistic philosophy. Shankara travelled extensively through the Himalaya's too, while writing commentaries on the Upanishads, Vishnu sahasranama, Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita. He advocated the greatness and importance of the Vedas and the Upanishads, spoke about a spirituality based on reason and without dogma or ritualism, and respirited Hinduism at a time when Buddhism and Jainism were gaining popularity. Adi Sankara is also known by the names Shri Shankaracharya, Adhi Shankaracharya ( 'the first Shankara' in his lineage) and is reverentially called Bhagavatpada Acharya (the teacher at the feet of Lord).

Life

Shankara was born in Kalady, a small village in Kerala, to a Nambuthiri brahmin couple, Shivaguru and Aryamba. The traditional source for accounts of his life is the Shankara Vijayams, which are essentially hagiographies. The most important among them are the MadhavIya Shankaravijaya, the AnandagirIya Shankaravijaya, cidvilAsIya Shankaravijaya, and keralIya Shankaravijaya. What follows is the standard story of Shankara's life; some of it is clearly mythical, but a substantial portion is historical, according to most scholars. (see also below: errata)

Birth

Shankara's parents were childless for many years, and prayed at the Vadakkumnathan (vRashAcala) temple in Thrissur, Kerala, for the boon of a child. Legend has it that Shiva appeared to both husband and wife in their dreams, and offered them a choice: a mediocre son who would live a long life, or an extraordinary son who would not live long. Both Shivaguru and Aryamba chose the latter. The son was named Shankara, in honour of Shiva.

Formal education

Shivaguru died while Shankara was very young. The child showed remarkable scholarship, and is said to have mastered the four Vedas by the age of eight. Following the common practice of that era, Shankara lived and studied at the home of his teacher. It was customary for students and men of learning to receive Bhiksha or alms from the laity; on one occasion, while accepting Bhiksha, Shankara came upon a woman who had nothing to eat in her house except a single dried amlaka fruit. Rather than consume this last bit of food herself, the pious lady gave away the fruit to Sankara as Bhiksha. Moved by her piety, Shankara composed the Kanakadhara Stotram on the spot. Legend has it that on completion of the stotram, golden amlaka fruits were showered upon the woman by the goddess Lakshmi.

Renunciation

From a young age, Shankara was attracted to asceticism and to the life of a renunciate. His mother Aryamba was however entirely against his becoming a Sannyasi, and consistently refused him her formal permission, which was required before he could take Sannyasam. Once when Shankara was bathing in the river, a crocodile gripped him by the leg and began rapidly to drag him into the water. His mother alone was nearby, and it proved impossible for her to get him away from the grip of the crocodile. Shankara then told his mother that he was on the verge of death; if she would give him her formal permission verbally, he would at this moment renounce the world and die a Sannyasi or ascetic. At the end of her wits, his mother agreed; Shankara immediately recited the words that made a renunciate of him, entered Sannyasa, and awaited death. But inexplicably, the crocodile released him from its very jaws and swam away. Shankara emerged unscathed from the river, now a Sannyasi.

Seeing in this incident the hand of God, Aryamba put no further obstacles in the path of her son. Shankara then left Kerala and travelled thoroughout India. When he reached the banks of the river Narmada, he met Govinda Bhagavatpada, the disciple of the Advaitin Gaudapada. Shankara was initiated as his disciple.

Travels

Shankara travelled extensively, while writing commentaries on the Upanishads, Vishnu sahasranama, Brahma Sutras, and the Bhagavad Gita. He engaged in a series of debates with Buddhist scholars, and with scholars of the Purva Mimamsa school, which helped in cementing his spiritual ascendancy. One of the most famous of these debates was with the famed ritualist Mandana Mishra.

His most famous encounter was however with an untouchable. On his way to the Vishwanath temple in Kashi he came upon an untouchable and his dog. When asked to move aside by Shankara's disciples, the untouchable asked: "Do you wish that I move my soul, the atman and ever lasting, or this body made of clay?" Seeing the untouchable as none other than the Lord Shiva, Shankara prostrated before Ishwara, composing five shlokas (Manisha Panchakam).

Once he was saved by Sri Narasimha from being sacrificed to goddess Kali by a Kapalika. He then composed the Laksmi-Nrsimha stotra. Another famous composition of Sri Adi Shankara is his Bhaja Govindam, in praise of Vishnu.

It is a traditional belief that Adi Sankara installed at Srirangam a yantra called janakarshana to attract pilgrims to this sacred temple, just as at Tirupati he installed the dhanakarshana yantra. Indeed, Srirangam is the most visited Hindu temple in the world, and Tirupati is the richest.

Shankara is believed to have attained the Sarvajnapitha in Kashmir. After a while, he withdrew to Kedarnath and attained samadhi at the age of thirty-two.

The Kamakshi Amman temple at Kanchipuram also has a vrindavanam where he is believed to have attained siddhi. (A variant tradition expounded by keralIya Shankaravijaya places his place of death as Vadakkumnathan (vRashAcala) temple in Thrissur, Kerala.)

Shankara's dates

Modern scholarship is agreed on dates in the 8th century C.E., though it has proved impossible to reach agreement on Shankara's precise dates of birth or death. Some religious institutions dedicated to Shankara, such as Shankara mathams, however, ascribe B.C.E. dates to him. If these dates were true, they would require moving back the date of Buddha (which serves as an anchor for modern academic history of India.).

Of the major Shankara Mathams active today, the Kanchi, Dwaraka, and Puri ascribe the dates 509–477 B.C.E. to Shankara. The Sringeri Peetham, on the other hand, accepts the 788–820 C.E. dates.

The Guru Parampara of the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham can be found here, and the Guru Parampara of the Sringeri Sarada Peetham can be found here.

External material supporting the 509–477 B.C.E. dates can be found here.

According to Swami Niranjanananda Saraswati's biography of Shankara, published in his book "Sannyasa Darshan", Shankara was born in Kaladi, Kerala, in 686 C.E., and attained Mahasamadhi at Kedarnath, Uttarakhand, in 718 C.E.

Philosophy and religious thought

At the time of Shankara's life, Hinduism had lost some of its appeal because of the influence of Buddhism and Jainism. Shankara stressed the importance of the Vedas, and his work helped Hinduism regain strength and popularity. Although he did not live long, he had travelled on foot to various parts of India to restore the study of the Vedas.

Shankara's theology maintains that spiritual ignorance (avidya) is caused by seeing the self (Ātman) where self is not. Discrimination needs to be developed in order to distinguish true from false and knowledge (jnana) from ignorance (avidya). Shankara proposed that, while the phenomenal universe, our consciousness and bodily being are certainly experienced, they are not true reality, but are rather maya. He considered that the ultimate truth was Brahman, the single divine foundation, which is beyond time, space, and causation. Brahman is immanent and transcendent, but not merely a pantheistic concept. Indeed, while Brahman is the efficient and material cause for the cosmos, Brahman itself is not limited by self-projection, and transcends all binary opposites or dualities, especially such individuated aspects as form and being.

We must pierce through a hazy lens to understand our true being and nature, which is not change and mortality, but unmitigated bliss for eternity. If we are to understand the true motive behind our actions and thoughts, we must become aware of the fundamental unity of being. How, he asks, can a limited mind comprehend the limitless Ātman? It cannot, he argues, and therefore we must transcend even the mind and become one with Soul-consciousness.

Shankara denounced caste and meaningless ritual as foolish, and in his own charismatic manner exhorted the true devotee to meditate on god's love and to apprehend truth. His treatises on the Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Vedanta Sutras are testaments to a keen and intuitive mind that did not want to admit dogma but advocated reason. His greatest lesson was that reason and abstract philosophising alone would not lead to moksha (liberation). It was only through selflessness and love governed by viveka (discrimination) that a devotee would realise his inner self. Charges that his philosophical views were influenced by Buddhism are unfounded, since Shankara vehemently opposed negation of being (shunyata), and believed that the unmanifest Brahman manifested itself as Ishwara, the loving, perfect being on high who is seen by many as being Vishnu or Shiva or whatever their hearts dictate. Shankara is said to have travelled throughout India, from the south to Kashmir, preaching to the local populaces and ebating philosophy (apparently successfully, though no documentation exists) with other Hindu and Buddhist scholars and monks along the way.

His beliefs form the basis of the Smarta tradition, or Smartism.

Even though he lived for only thirty-two years, his impact on India and on Hinduism cannot be stressed enough, as he countered the increasing sacerdotalism (the belief that priests can mediate between humans and god) of the masses, and reintroduced a purer form of Vedic thought. He presented a face of Hinduism that could reasonably contend with Buddhist ideas and spread it, as well as reformist measures, across the land, travelling from as far up as Kashmir from areas in the South of India. His Hindu revival movement paved the way for the strict theistic movements of Ramanuja and Madhva, and helped lead to the decline of Buddhism in much of India.Works

Books certainly written by Adi Shankara:

Books he probably wrote are:

Mathas (Monasteries)

Shankara is said to have founded four mathas (a matha is a monastery or religious order), which are mportant to this day. These are at Sringeri in Karnataka, in the south, Dwaraka in Gujarat in the west, Puri in Orissa in the east, and Jyotirmath (Joshimath) in Uttarakhand in the north. He put in charge of these mathas his four main disciples: Sureshwaracharya, Hastamalaka, Padmapada, and Trotakaharya respectively; the heads of the mathas trace their authority back to them. However, there is no concrete evidence for the existence of these mathas before the 14th century, so the claim that Adi Shankara founded them is dubious at best.

The matha at Kanchipuram or Kanchi in Tamil Nadu claims that it was also founded by Shankara. According to this matha, it was where he settled in his last days and attained mahaasamaadhi (i.e. left his body), but there are other, equally well-founded accounts which claim that he attained mahaasamadhi at Kedarnath.

External links

errata 1

The SANKARAVIJAYA LITERATURE

A number of works titled Sankaravijaya, or Sankara digvijaya, are extant in India. These are typically known after the names of their authors, but are mostly hagiographic accounts of Sankara's life, with myth and legend interspersed with historical fact. The primary reason for this situation is that most of these texts were written many centuries after Sankara lived, so that these authors already regarded Sankara as a legendary figure. The following is a brief survey of these texts.

mAdhavIya Sankaravijaya - The mAdhavIya is probably the oldest available, and also the most authentic and widely known among the different Sankaravijayas today. It is certainly the most popular such text in the advaita tradition, and is also known as the sam.kshepa Sankarajaya. The popularity of this work derives from the fame of its author, mAdhava, who is usually identified with vidyAraNya, the 14th century maThAdhipati at Sringeri. Old manuscripts of this work are available from diverse places in India, and printed editions based on a comparison of various manuscripts are available from as early as 1863 CE. [1] Two commentaries have been written to the mAdhavIya, one titled DiNDimA, by dhanapati sUrI (composed in 1798 CE), and another titled advaitarAjyalakshmI by acyutarAya (composed in 1824 CE). There are a couple of good English translations of the mAdhavIya, one by swAmI tapasyAnanda of the Ramakrishna Math, [2] and another by K. Padmanabhan. Contemporary accounts of Sankara's life follow this text in most details, e.g. birth in Kaladi, meeting with his guru on the banks of the river Narmada, writing of commentaries, debate with mandana miSra, establishment of the SAradA temple at Sringeri, ascension of the sarvajnapITha in Kashmir and his last days in the Himalayas.

There has been some doubt in recent times about the date and authorship of the mAdhavIya Sankaravijaya, including charges that it was reworked extensively in the 19th century CE. Almost all of this criticism is baseless. If the author of this work is not identical with vidyAraNya, the latest date that can be put to it is 1798 CE, the year in which the DiNDimA commentary was completed. Moreover, another author, sadAnanda, who wrote a Sankaravijaya sAra in 1783, informs us that his source is mAdhava's work. As such, the criticism that the mAdhavIya was written as late as the 19th century CE, or that portions of it were re-written recently, cannot be upheld. swAmI tapasyAnanda is correct in dismissing such criticism as nothing more than "bazaar gossip." [5] However, the earliest possible date of this work (14th century CE) is still several centuries later than Sankara's own date. Some modern historians who doubt that Sankara established any maThas at all, attribute the origin of the tradition of four AmnAya maThas to mAdhava. [6] However, it must be noted that the mAdhavIya Sankaravijaya gives only a general description of the establishment of maThas, at Sringeri and other places, but does not specifically mention the number four.

AnandagirIya Sankaravijaya - This work is not available today, although according to many secondary sources, it must have existed at one time. It is attributed to Anandagiri, the 13th century author of well-known TIkAs to SankarAcArya's bhAshyas. One 19th century author, who wrote a commentary to the mAdhavIya refers to Anandagiri's Sankaravijaya as bRhat Sankaravijaya in one place and as prAcIna Sankaravijaya in another place. It seems clear that this text was considered to be old (prAcIna) and huge (bRhat). However, as it is no longer extant, the quotations attributed to this text are not very trustworthy.

In recent times, there have been various claims about a bRhat Sankaravijaya of an author named citsukha, although no manuscripts of this work have ever been available. No secondary sources refer to this text either, unlike the case with Anandagiri's text. citsukha is claimed to have been a childhood friend of Sankara's, and his work is therefore claimed to be an authoritative eye-witness account. However, even the source for this story about citsukha remains unknown, as none of the other Sankaravijayas mention such a childhood friend who witnessed all of Sankara's life. All claims about the bRhat Sankaravijaya of citsukha seem extremely far-fetched, and within the living advaita tradition, there is great controversy over the very existence of this text. There is a more recent text, called bRhat Sankaravijaya, by one brahmAnanda sarasvatI, which seems to date from the 17th or 18th century.

Another prAcIna Sankaravijaya is also sometimes attributed to one mUkakavi. As with the bRhat Sankaravijaya of citsukha, nothing specific is known about this prAcIna Sankaravijaya either, as all attempts to trace source manuscripts have failed. Some quotations from a prAcIna Sankaravijaya are found in some very recent works, but the real source of these quotations remains unknown.

anantAnandagirIya Sankaravijaya - In my opinion, this work is very unreliable. To begin with, it is a very late text and all available versions seem extremely corrupt. The author of this text identifies himself as anantAnandagiri. Many scholars mistakenly identify this text with that of Anandagiri, the TIkAkAra, probably due to the misleading similarity of their names. Among these, H. H. Wilson thinks that the author is an unblusing liar, because he reports miracles and supernatural events associated with Sankara. However, he seems prepared to accept this text's description of Hindu religious cults. About forty out of the seventy-odd chapters in this work describe some 72 different religious cults and sects prevalent in India, which Wilson uses in his study. A. C. Burnell, however, thinks that the work is spurious and very modern, [7] written in the interests of southern maThas which had broken their ties with the Sringeri maTha. Be that as it may, a casual reading of this Sankaravijaya text is enough to convince the reader that its author cannot be identified with Anandagiri at all. anantAnandagiri appears to be a quite different author altogether. He quotes sections from the adhikaraNa ratnamAlA, a 14th-century work of vidyAraNya and bhAratI tIrtha, but attributes these quotations to Sankara. He also makes barely veiled references to rAmAnuja, the 11th-century teacher of viSishTAdvaita, and AnandatIrtha, the 13th-century teacher of dvaita. Both of them have been described as direct disciples of Sankara himself.

Moreover, most of the available manuscripts of this work are incomplete, and even these seem to have been heavily tampered with. Two separate accounts of Sankara's life may be found in different editions of this work. For example, the 19th century editions from Calcutta, [8] and all their source manuscripts, describe Sankara's birth at Cidambaram in Tamil Nadu, while the 1971 Madras edition [9] says that Sankara was born at Kaladi in Kerala. The earlier 19th century editions mention a maTha at Sringeri, and no maTha at Kancipuram. However, in the 1971 Madras edition, an ASrama has been mentioned near Sringeri, and a maTha at Kancipuram has been described in great detail. All editions mention that Sankara stayed at Sringeri for twelve years, and his last days are placed at Kancipuram, but this text is totally silent about any sarvajnapITha. It has been pointed out that the 1971 Madras edition is not true to the manuscripts that it lists as its sources. [10] T. M. P. Mahadevan's introduction to this edition also wrongly identifies this work with that of Anandagiri, the TIkAkAra, and claims that this must be the work that is called both bRhat and prAcIna. However, Mahadevan is silent about the bRhat text said to have been written by citsukha and the prAcIna text attributed to mUkakavi.

cidvilAsIya Sankaravijaya - This text is also known as the Sankaravijaya vilAsa, and was probably written between the 15th and 17th centuries. It is in the form of a dialogue between one cidvilAsa and his disciple, named vijnAnakanda. [11] This is one of the few texts that explicitly record the tradition that four maThas were established by Sankara, at Sringeri, Dvaraka, Puri and Badrinath. cidvilAsa devotes three entire chapters to the founding of the Sringeri maTha, and one chapter to a sarvajnapITha at Kancipuram. However, he does not say anything about the establishment of a fifth maTha at Kancipuram, [12] and Sankara's last days are placed near Badrinath in the Himalayas. Except for its variant tradition about the sarvajnapITha, this text also agrees with the mAdhavIya in most other details.

keralIya Sankaravijaya - This text is also called the SankarAcAryacarita and is attributed to one govindanAtha in all manuscripts. [13] This text conflates the variant traditions about the sarvajnapITha, and mentions both Kashmir and Kancipuram in the same verse. It is completely silent about the establishment of any maThas, and describes Sankara's last days at the vRshAcaleSvara temple in Trichur, Kerala. In this last detail, it differs from all other available oral traditions and Sankaravijaya texts. It dates from the 17th century.

Other minor texts - The kUshmANDa Sankaravijaya of purushottama bhAratI describes the establishment of a SAradA temple at a place called Pammapura, and is rather unique in describing Sankara and his four disciples as incarnations of the five Pandavas, who are in turn described as partial incarnations of Siva! A 17th century author named rAjacUDAmaNi dIkshita wrote a short hagiographical poem named SankarAbhyudaya. Among more recent works (late 18th century and after), sadAnanda's Sankaravijaya sAra and nIlakaNTha's SankaramandAra saurabha follow the details given in the mAdhavIya. Both authors explicitly mention their source in their introductory chapters. nIlakaNTha also wrote another poem named SankarAbhyudaya, which is one of the few works to give the 788 CE date for Sankara's birth. Another SankarAbhyudaya is attributed to one tirumala dIkshita. This and a work known as vyAsAcalIya Sankaravijaya are of extremely doubtful authenticity, as they reproduce a large number of verses from the mAdhavIya Sankaravijaya. The bhagavatpAdAbhyudaya of mahAkavi lakshmaNa sUrin is an early 20th century work, which recounts all the traditional details of Sankara's life.

References:

Transliteration key

It is impossible not to use Sanskrit (sam.skRta) words when talking of advaita vedAnta. I have kept philosophical terms, which often have meanings specific to the school of advaita, in the original sam.skRta, instead of translating them into English.

Here is the key to the transliteration rules that I follow when I use a sam.skRta word in the middle of English text. This transliteration is by no means perfect, but it is meant for easy online representation in the international Roman alphabet. The intention is to convey a flavor of the original pronunciation of the sam.skRta words. I have avoided the use of additional diacritical marks as much as possible, by making use of upper-case letters. Basic knowledge of the devanAgari script is assumed.

NOTES:

Acknowledgement: Prof. Ashok Aklujkar of the University of British Columbia provided the devanAgari font used in the above scheme, and in the gif files at the Slokas page.

Sources