[Advaita-l] Interesting article.

[viji sridhar]

Hello friends, 
I came across this interesting article about Adi Sankara and thought to share it with all my friends here. 
Thanks. 

There has been lots of controversy whether Adi Sankara was born in 780 AD or 509 BC with various historical evidence being exchanged both for and against each of the dates. A striking scientific proof in favour of the BC theory was provided by the 68th pontiff of The Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati (affectionately called as the Paramacharya) himself.

History says that as Sankara's mother was finding difficulty to go the the River Purna (Presently called as River Periyar) to take bath, so Sankara requested the River Purna to divert and follow his footsteps (Kal-adi) to flow near his anscestral house to enable his mother to take bath without any difficulty and then later join again to the main course of the river.  

One day a very reputed Geologist happened to visit Kanchipuram to take darshan of the Paramacharya. After enquiring about his family, the Paramacharya requested him arrange for a diver to dive and take out sand from two different locations of the River Purna. One location should be when the River Purna enters Kerala, before it diverts into entering Kaladi and the other location to be at Kaladi itself. Later Paramacharya asked him to use the technique of carbon dating to find out the age of the sand from these two locations. The geologist performed the exercise as instructed by the Paramacharya and provided the results which was that the sand from the first location yielded an age of being more than 100,000 years old whereas the age of the sand from the second location in Kaladi was close to about 2500 years. 


The Age of the River sand at Kaladi confirmed that the River got diverted about 2,500 years back and thus again, Adi Sankara was indeed born in BC, which should be 509BC as per majority of the Sankaracharya mutts.