A Question??? (Warning: ..long...)

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

On Fri, 11 Apr 1997, Giri wrote:

>         I have argued with other members of this list (via e-mail) that
> Shankara was born around 700-800 AD and not BC's and this is sorta
> confirmed by modern scholars. Vidya has posted long discussions on this on
> the net also, and the author of 'A Survey of Hinduism' cites Vidya as a
> source on these matters. But that is not what I am interested in, I just
> want to know what maths say on the date of birth of Shankara, if such
> records are kept. Thank you.

Sringeri records say that Sankara was born in the 14th year of the rule of
a king named Vikramaditya. By itself, this information is not very
conclusive, as Vikramaditya is the title of many kings in Indian history.
Earlier historians had assumed that this Vikramaditya was from the Gupta
dynasty and inferred a date of 1st century from this. Consequently, they
assigned a period of 700 years or so for Suresvara, in order to bring the
later succession in line with other available evidence. This seems
problematic, and has been quoted as if it were a deficiency of the
Sringeri records. Even now, one can find a few references here and there
that say that according to Sringeri records, Sankara's date is the 1st
century.

However, this is not correct. B. Lewis Rice, who put together the
Eprigraphica Carnatica for the kingdom of Mysore thinks that the
Vikramaditya of the Sringeri record is a Chalukyan king who ruled from
Badami in Karnataka. This Vikramaditya is probably the son of Pulakesin,
the famous ruler. If so, the time of Sankara will have to be closer to 700
AD. But we must be careful even with this Chalukyan identification,
because there was another Vikramaditya in the same dynasty, as per K.
A. Nilakantha Sastri (History of South India). The Sringeri matha's record
is corroborated by identical statements in the texts KongudeSa rAjAkkaL (a
list of the rulers of the kongudeSa, i.e. the modern Coimbatore region),
and Keralotpatti (a traditional history of Kerala). Now, both these texts
have been found to be faulty in details, and may not be very reliable, but
it is quite likely that in the matter of Sankara's date, they were just
quoting the oral tradition. In any case, Rice's interpretation of the
Sringeri record brings the period allotted to Suresvara to a more
believable number, and is consistent with the Sringeri tradition that
there have been 36 successors to the title, from Adi Sankaracharya to the
present.

The Sringeri matha has taken the official position that it stands by its
records, but that the interpretation of dates is the historian's job. This
has been explicitly stated in a letter from the private secretary of the
Sankaracharya of Sringeri, quoted by Swami Tapasyananda in his
introduction to the translation of the Madhaviya Sankaravijayam.

I am not very conversant with the records of Dwaraka, Puri and Jyotirmath,
except for the following. Since the Jyotirmath sucession had lapsed for a
few centuries before 1941, its extant records are very meagre on details.
Dwaraka matha has some 70 odd names in their list, while Puri has more
than 140 names in their list, but I've heard that no clear dates are known
for most of these names. I am relying on memory, which may be faulty, but
exact details about these two mathas can be found in Varanasi Rajagopal
Sharma's Hindi book, "Sri Sankara matha-vishayak vimarsha". In any case,
clearly, an approach which assumes that the date of Sankara can be
calculated by taking some average of 25-30 years for each successor will
fail. By this approach, the Dwaraka matha's list will yield a date around
2000 years ago, while the Puri matha's list will give a period of about
4000 years. This has been the approach taken by most historians, who then
find fault with the records of the mathas for being mutually
contradictory. I think that since specific dates are not available from
these records, there is not much point in finding fault with them on
that account. The fault seems to lie in the analytical approach rather
than in the records themselves. In conversations with my father in Bombay,
many of the older followers of these two mathas have said that the larger
number of names in the Puri and Dwaraka lists have to be attributed to the
fact that most of them became sannyAsins at an advanced age, having first
been householders, whereas in Sringeri, the custom has usually been for
brahmacArins to become sannyAsins directly without going through the
gr.hastha stage. This seems to be common practice at the Puri matha, from
my personal knowledge. I have some other details at the advaita site, in
the page on Sankara's date.
<http://www.cco.caltech.edu/~vidya/advaita/dating-Sankara.html>.

I don't know about the original records of the Kanchi matha, but all their
publications have given the 5th century BC date for Sankara. They have
also given very precise details (e.g. phase of the moon, fortnight,
month, year name and number in Kali Yuga reckoning, the occurence
of an eclipse at the time etc.) for the birth, death, ascension to the
title etc for each of the successors in their list. These details have
been debated back and forth for a long time now. Read Polakam Rama
Sastri's Tamil book, "Aticankarar mutal Kanciyil totarntu varum
kuruparamparai" in defense of these dates. "The Truth about the
Kumbhakonam Mutt", by R. Krishnaswamy Iyer (Sri Jnanananda Bharati) and K.
R. Venkataraman, points out specific problems with these dates, and
discusses the history of the Kumbhakonam/Kanchi matha and the controversy
about it.

S. Vidyasankar

ps. The Kanchi matha also used to be called the Kumbhakonam matha, because
Kumbhakonam was the headquarters of this matha in the 19th century.

pps. There are records from other mathas also, like Kudali, Hampi,
Pushpagiri, Karavir, Sankeshwar etc. I don't know if any systematic study
of all these records has been done.

ppps. Personally, I think the date of Sankara can be more reliably
obtained from internal evidence in his works and external evidence from
more reliable, general historical records like inscriptions, grants etc.
Kings and merchants have always been more careful about keeping records
than sannyAsins who have renounced the world. This is easily seen by the
fact that the most solid evidence about the Sringeri matha comes from the
records of the Vijayanagar empire and its successor kingdoms. The
pre-Vijayanagar records are in the form of inscriptions in temples and
villages nearby. The matha's own records then have to be interpreted in
the light of such independent evidence.