[Advaita-l] Age/History of Sankara

[Shyam Subramanian]

vijay kartik wrote:
>   One hates to say this, but certainly a lot of "sponsored research" was conducted and published in the last century on some of these topics relating to Sankara's life.
>    
>   Lots of new theories and evidence was brought out suddenly in the last century ,each one of these reports reinforcing what another research report said. The irony is, a lot of these reports sought to bring versions of Sankara's life almost unknown till that time.
>    
>   The added irony is that, anyone who tries to highlight the conflicts of these reports with accepted traditions/ known history is branded as negative and narrow-minded.  
>   
Don't you think it is necessary to give some references when you make 
such claims, especially for the benefit of the kanchi matha supporters 
(who obviously have no reason to believe or reject it otherwise). FYI, I 
am a devotee of the sringeri matha.  (and yes, you are not explicitly 
mentioning kanchi here but  your first line and previous mails do 
indicate so).

Regarding W.R.Antarkar, some of Antarkar's papers, especially the ones 
relating to the sankara vijayams are at http://www.easterntradition.org  
, (a website hosted by people who believe in the 5BCE date for adi 
sankara but who simultaneously reject his writing of the bhashyas!). 
This website also has Narayana Sastri's "The Age of Sankara" which (in 
my opinion strictly) is so full of bias in its criticism of the 
madhaviyam and the sringeri matha that even Antarkar rejects Sastri's 
claims about the madhaviyam (though he does consider it again at the 
end). Some of the contents of Sri Vidyasankar's paper (and counterpoints 
by Sri Ravishankar and further replies by Vidyasankar) are at 
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/2005-January.txt.gz 
(search for "sankaravijaya texts") and at 
http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/archives/advaita-l/2000-June/001047.html. 
His criticism of Antarkar is not there but he  gives his refutations to 
some of the points Antarkar has raised . I request Sri B.Shridhar to 
read both and check for himself which of the opinions is biased (or 
rather, more biased).

Finally, I would like to add that I do consider SrI candraSekharendra 
sarasvati to be a jIvanmukta and respect him for being a Srotriya and a 
brahmanishTha. I would like to ask, as was asked by Sri Amuthan, is a 
jIvanmukta necessarily a sarvaj~na too?

I hope I am being objective here.

Regards,
Shyam