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Hinduism · Advaita Vedanta

Adi Shankara

आदि शङ्कर · शङ्कराचार्य · Ādi Śaṅkarācārya · ശങ്കരാചാര്യർ

c. 788 – c. 820Historically documented person

Sanskrit philosopher and exegete, the most influential systematiser of Advaita Vedānta, the doctrine of the non-duality of the self (ātman) and the absolute (brahman). Almost everything about his life comes from late hagiographies; what is certain are his commentaries on the Brahmasūtras, the Bhagavadgītā and the principal Upaniṣads, together with the Upadeśasāhasrī. The traditional date, 788–820, is disputed: much scholarship places him around 700–750. Hundreds of hymns and manuals bear his name without being securely his.

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Śaṅkara con sus discípulos, de Raja Ravi Varma

Śaṅkara con sus discípulos, de Raja Ravi Varma · Public domain

In their words

«It is a matter not requiring any proof that the object and the subject whose respective spheres are the notion of the 'Thou' (the Non-Ego) and the 'Ego', and which are opposed to each other as much as darkness and light are, cannot be identified.»

Brahmasūtrabhāṣya, prólogo sobre la superposición (adhyāsabhāṣya), frase inicial; trad. inglesa de Thibaut, SBE 34 (1890); versión española del investigador

Commentary on the Brahmasūtras — Adi Shankara

Their central idea

Superimposition (adhyāsa): The concept with which Śaṅkara opens his commentary on the Brahmasūtras.

See in context

Biography

5 min read

A name greater than his life

Few figures in the history of thought have left so deep a mark with so faint a biography. Of Śaṅkara —whom tradition calls Ādi, "the first", to distinguish him from the abbots who inherited his title— we possess commentaries of extraordinary argumentative density, and almost nothing else. There are no contemporary inscriptions, no letters, no testimony from disciples about his person. Everything told about his childhood, his travels and his death comes from the Śaṅkaravijayas, the "conquests of Śaṅkara", hagiographic poems composed several centuries later; the most widespread, attributed to Mādhava-Vidyāraṇya, was composed, according to scholars, long after Vidyāraṇya (fourteenth century), probably between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Jonathan Bader, who has studied them together, shows that they transmit not a biographical memory but a model: the life of the perfect renunciant who travels to the four quarters of India and subdues them to the truth of Vedānta.

The problem of dates

Not even the century is certain. The date repeated in handbooks, 788–820, comes from a nineteenth-century reading of traditional chronicles and became established in early Indology by inertia. Hajime Nakamura, after examining every proposal, argued for 700–750; Karl Potter places him between the late seventh and early eighth centuries, on the chronology of Maṇḍana Miśra, the Advaitin whom Śaṅkara met or at least read. Some monasteries uphold much earlier datings, even the fifth century BCE, which historical criticism does not accept. This entry keeps the traditional date as a reference, with approximate precision, and warns that the reasonable range spans almost a century.

What the hagiographies tell

According to these accounts he was born at Kālaḍi, by the river Pūrṇā, in present-day Kerala, to a family of Nambudiri brahmins; his father, Śivaguru, died when he was a child, and his mother, Āryāmbā, raised him alone. He was a prodigy who mastered the Vedas before the age of eight. He wished to become a renunciant and his mother refused, until a crocodile seized him in the river and he asked her leave to take the vows in extremis; she consented, the animal let him go and the boy set out for the north. On the banks of the Narmadā he found his teacher, Govinda Bhagavatpāda, himself a disciple of Gauḍapāda, author of the Māṇḍūkya-kārikā. Then came Benares, the first disciples —Sanandana, later called Padmapāda—, the writing of the great commentaries in his teens and a series of victorious debates, the most famous against Maṇḍana Miśra, who supposedly ended as his disciple under the name Sureśvara. The hagiographies credit him with founding four monasteries at the edges of the subcontinent —Śṛṅgeri, Dvārakā, Purī and Jyotirmaṭh— and with an early death, at thirty-two, in the Himalaya.

Almost none of this can be confirmed. The identification of Maṇḍana with Sureśvara is doubtful, since their doctrines differ; documentary evidence of the monasteries as seats "of Śaṅkara" begins much later, and in the case of Śṛṅgeri is consolidated under Vijayanagara patronage in the fourteenth century. Matthew Clark has shown that the organisation of the Daśanāmī renunciants around these centres was a long-term construction, not a founding act.

What he wrote

What does define Śaṅkara is his exegetical work. He composed the oldest surviving complete commentaries on the Brahmasūtras of Bādarāyaṇa, on the Bhagavadgītā and on the ten principal Upaniṣads —Īśā, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍūkya (with Gauḍapāda's kārikās), Aitareya, Taittirīya, Chāndogya and Bṛhadāraṇyaka—, the triple canon (prasthānatrayī) of Vedānta. He also wrote an independent treatise in prose and verse, the Upadeśasāhasrī, "the thousand teachings", the only book of his that does not comment on another.

Around this core grew a cloud of more than three hundred works bearing his name: introductory manuals such as the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi or the Ātmabodha, hymns such as the Bhaja Govindam, the Nirvāṇaṣaṭkam or the Saundaryalaharī, tantric treatises and even a sub-commentary on the Yogasūtras. In 1947 Paul Hacker proposed terminological criteria —the use of avidyā, nāmarūpa, māyā or īśvara— to separate the author of the commentaries from the successive holders of the name "Śaṅkarācārya"; Sengaku Mayeda applied them and confirmed the authenticity of the Upadeśasāhasrī, the Gītā commentary and most of the Upaniṣad commentaries. Nearly all scholars regard the popular hymns and manuals as later works of the school, however beautiful; this entry records them as attributed.

The thought

Śaṅkara's starting point is an observation: we systematically confuse the knowing subject with what it knows. We ascribe to the self, which is pure consciousness, the properties of body and mind, and to body and mind the light of consciousness. That superimposition (adhyāsa) is ignorance (avidyā), and it is not corrected by ritual works or merit but by knowledge. The Upaniṣads do not report a new object: they remove what had been superimposed, until it is recognised that the ātman is brahman, identical, without a second. The world is not nothing; it has the practical reality (vyāvahārika) of what is experienced, but not ultimate reality (pāramārthika). Hence the distinction between a brahman without attributes and an īśvara who is legitimately worshipped in the order of practice.

Liberation is not produced but recognised, and it can occur in life (jīvanmukti). Śaṅkara nonetheless required a prior discipline —discrimination, dispassion, the six virtues, the longing for freedom— and a teacher who expounds the text. His method is exegetical before it is mystical; interpreters still debate what role he gave to meditation and states of absorption.

The legacy

His immediate disciples, Padmapāda and Sureśvara, began the exegetical tradition from which the two great schools arose —Vivaraṇa, from Padmapāda's Pañcapādikā, and Bhāmatī, from Vācaspati Miśra— which dominated Vedānta for a millennium and argued with the theists Rāmānuja and Madhva. In the nineteenth century Vivekananda presented Advaita as India's universal philosophy, and the figure of Śaṅkara became a national emblem. Ramana Maharshi translated into Tamil texts attributed to him; Nisargadatta's school read him as an authority. The distance between the rigorous exegete revealed by the commentaries and the prodigious saint of the hagiographies takes nothing away from either: it says a great deal about how a tradition turns a thinker into a founder.

Sources: Brown, W. Norman (ed. y trad.). The Saundaryalaharī or Flood of Beauty, Traditionally Ascribed to Śaṅkarācārya. Harvard Oriental Series 43. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1958. · Leggett, Trevor (trad.). Śaṅkara on the Yoga Sūtra-s: The Vivaraṇa Sub-commentary to Vyāsa-bhāṣya on the Yoga-sūtra-s of Patañjali. Londres: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981–1983; The Complete Commentary by Śaṅkara on the Yoga Sūtra-s, Londres: Kegan Paul International, 1990 (ISBN 0710302770). · Clark, Matthew. The Daśanāmī-Saṃnyāsīs: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order. Leiden: Brill, 2006. · Isayeva, Natalia. Shankara and Indian Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993. · Pande, Govind Chandra. Life and Thought of Śaṅkarācārya. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994.

Timeline

A life, year by year

Each point is a documented event. Click to read it, with its source and degree of certainty.

  1. c. 788 · age 0

    Birth according to the traditional chronology

    The hagiographies have him born at Kālaḍi, son of the Nambudiri brahmin Śivaguru and of Āryāmbā. The year 788 is the traditional date circulated since the nineteenth century; Nakamura proposes c. 700 and Potter the late seventh century.

    Disputed

  2. c. 791 · age 3

    Death of his father

    According to the Śaṅkaravijayas, Śivaguru dies when the child is about three and his mother takes charge of his Vedic education.

    Tradition

  3. c. 796 · age 8

    The crocodile and renunciation

    Hagiographic episode: seized by a crocodile in the river, he obtains his mother's leave in extremis to become a saṃnyāsin, promising to return for her funeral.

    Tradition

  4. c. 797 · age 9

    Meeting Govinda Bhagavatpāda

    He receives initiation from Govinda, a disciple of Gauḍapāda. Śaṅkara himself names Gauḍapāda as a teacher of the tradition in his commentaries; the place and circumstances of the meeting are traditional.

    Tradition

  5. c. 800 · age 12

    Benares and the first disciples

    Tradition places in Benares the arrival of Sanandana (Padmapāda) and the writing of the great commentaries, between the ages of twelve and sixteen. Padmapāda is historically his disciple, author of the Pañcapādikā.

    Tradition

  6. c. 804 · age 16

    The commentaries on the triple canon

    Composition of the bhāṣyas on the Brahmasūtras, the Bhagavadgītā and the principal Upaniṣads, and of the Upadeśasāhasrī. The works are certain; their internal chronology and the author's age are not.

    Documented

  7. c. 806 · age 18

    Debate with Maṇḍana Miśra

    The hagiographies narrate the debate judged by Ubhaya Bhāratī and the conversion of Maṇḍana, who would have taken the name Sureśvara. Hiriyanna and others doubt the identification because of doctrinal differences between the two.

    Disputed

  8. c. 810 · age 22

    His mother's funeral

    True to his promise, he returns to Kālaḍi for Āryāmbā's death and cremates her himself despite the opposition of his kin, according to traditional accounts.

    Tradition

  9. c. 812 · age 24

    Traditional founding of the four maṭhas

    Daśanāmī tradition credits Śaṅkara with the four cardinal monasteries. Clark (2006) shows that the order's organisation around them was a construction of later centuries.

    Disputed

  10. c. 820 · age 32

    Death at thirty-two

    The hagiographies disagree on the place: Kedārnāth in the Himalaya, Kāñcīpuram in the Kāmakoṭi Pīṭha tradition, Trichur in Keralan accounts. The age of thirty-two is traditional.

    Disputed

  11. c. 1346

    Vijayanagara patronage of Śṛṅgeri

    Grants by the founders of Vijayanagara to the Śṛṅgeri maṭha, in the time of Vidyātīrtha and Vidyāraṇya, consolidate the institution that presents itself as Śaṅkara's seat.

    Probable

  12. 1887

    First complete European translation of the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya

    Paul Deussen publishes in German Die Sûtra's des Vedânta with Śaṅkara's complete commentary (Brockhaus); George Thibaut's English version in the Sacred Books of the East follows (1890 and 1896).

    Documented

  13. 1947

    Hacker raises the authorship problem

    Paul Hacker distinguishes between the author of the commentaries and later holders of the name "Śaṅkarācārya" and proposes terminological criteria of authenticity, which Mayeda would apply in the 1960s.

    Documented

Works

Essential works

The works without which their legacy cannot be understood.

Commentary on the Brahmasūtras — Adi Shankara

Written work · c. 800

Commentary on the Brahmasūtras

ब्रह्मसूत्रभाष्य (Brahmasūtrabhāṣya / Śārīrakamīmāṃsābhāṣya)

Śaṅkara's major work and one of the great texts of Sanskrit philosophy. It comments on Bādarāyaṇa's aphorisms, which summarise the teaching of the Upaniṣads, and reads them as affirming the identity of ātman and brahman. It opens with the famous "preamble on superimposition" (adhyāsabhāṣya), which defines ignorance as the confusion of subject and object, and argues at length against Sāṃkhya, Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika, the Buddhist and Jaina schools and the ritualism of Mīmāṃsā. It became the base text of the Bhāmatī and Vivaraṇa schools.

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4 editions · amazon.com

Commentary on the Bhagavadgītā — Adi Shankara

Written work · c. 800

Commentary on the Bhagavadgītā

भगवद्गीताभाष्य (Bhagavadgītābhāṣya)

The oldest surviving commentary on the Gītā. Śaṅkara reads it as a teaching of liberating knowledge: disinterested action purifies the mind, but only knowledge of the self liberates, and renunciation is the way of life that befits it. The introduction sets out the twofold Vedic path of action and renunciation, and the commentary argues against those who combined works and knowledge. It is one of the three legs of the Vedāntic canon and, being accessible, the usual gateway into his thought.

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Upadeśasāhasrī (A Thousand Teachings) — Adi Shankara

Written work

Upadeśasāhasrī (A Thousand Teachings)

उपदेशसाहस्री (Upadeśasāhasrī)

A treatise in two parts, one in prose (three chapters on how to teach a pupil) and one in verse (nineteen chapters). It is the only book by Śaṅkara that does not comment on another, and the best way to know his teaching method: the teacher leads the pupil through questions to discriminate between the conscious witness and what is observed. Sengaku Mayeda published its critical edition and the standard translation.

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Complete works (34)

See all 34 works in the library

Quotations

Quotations located in a specific work. Each carries its provenance and its level of confidence.

It is a matter not requiring any proof that the object and the subject whose respective spheres are the notion of the 'Thou' (the Non-Ego) and the 'Ego', and which are opposed to each other as much as darkness and light are, cannot be identified.

yuṣmadasmatpratyayagocarayor viṣayaviṣayiṇos tamaḥprakāśavad viruddhasvabhāvayor itaretarabhāvānupapattau siddhāyām…

VerifiedBrahmasūtrabhāṣya, prólogo sobre la superposición (adhyāsabhāṣya), frase inicial; trad. inglesa de Thibaut, SBE 34 (1890); versión española del investigador

1 / 7
Apocryphal quotes or disputed attributions (2)

  • «Brahman is real, the world is illusory; the individual soul is none other than brahman.»

    It is the summary of Advaita most often quoted under Śaṅkara's name, but it does not appear in the authentic commentaries. The first half-line is in Vivekacūḍāmaṇi 20 (attributed); the full formula, with "jīvo brahmaiva nāparaḥ", circulates as a verse of the Brahmajñānāvalīmālā, another traditionally ascribed work. It is a school summary faithful in essence, not a quotation from the author of the bhāṣyas.

  • «Truth is one; the wise call it by many names.»

    Often ascribed to Śaṅkara on quotation websites, it actually comes from the Ṛgveda (1.164.46: "ekaṃ sad viprā bahudhā vadanti"), centuries earlier than him.

Last words

There are no verifiable records of their last words.

There is no reliable record of his last words. The hagiographies do not even agree on where he died: the Śaṅkaradigvijaya attributed to Mādhava places his death at Kedārnāth in the Himalaya; the tradition of the Kāñcī maṭha at Kāñcīpuram; some Keralan accounts at Trichur. None of these sources is contemporary (Bader 2000).

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

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What their work answers

Twelve great human questions and what their texts allow us to answer, with references. We never put words in their mouth.

  • What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

    Only attributeless Brahman is real; Ishvara is its relative aspect

    An impersonal AbsoluteStated explicitly

    Adi Shankara, the great systematiser of Advaita Vedanta, distinguishes two levels of truth. On the absolute plane (paramarthika) there is only attributeless Brahman (nirguna), pure existence and consciousness, without parts or relations. On the plane of ordinary experience (vyavaharika), that same Brahman, associated with the limiting conditions of maya, appears as Ishvara, the Lord with attributes (saguna), cause of the world, object of worship and dispenser of the fruits of action. In his commentary on the Brahma Sutras he defines Brahman as that from which the world proceeds, in which it subsists and into which it is reabsorbed, and he explains the error of superimposing what is not the Self onto the Self. Worship of Ishvara is legitimate and purifying, but the ultimate is not a person: it is consciousness without a second.

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  • Who am I? Is there a true self?

    Atman is Brahman; the error is superimposing the non-Self on the Self

    The Self is the AbsoluteStated explicitly

    Adi Shankara opens his commentary on the Brahma Sutras with an analysis of superimposition (adhyasa): through ignorance we attribute to the Self, which is pure consciousness, the properties of body, senses and mind, and vice versa, like someone who sees a snake where there is a rope. From this confusion arises the sense of being an agent and a subject who enjoys and suffers. The true Self (atman) neither acts nor suffers: it is the unchanging witness of all states, and it is identical with Brahman, as the great Upanishadic sayings affirm, «that thou art» or «I am Brahman». In the Upadesa Sahasri he develops this discernment as a dialogue between teacher and disciple. The individual (jiva) is Brahman apparently limited by conditions; once ignorance dissolves, no one remains distinct from the Absolute.

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  • Why do we suffer?

    Ignorance superimposes body and mind on the Self: hence suffering

    Ignorance of what we areStated explicitly

    Adi Shankara locates the root of suffering in ignorance (avidya), and defines it at the start of his commentary on the Brahma Sutras as superimposition: we attribute to the Self, which is pure consciousness, the qualities of body, senses and mind, and say «I am fat», «I am blind», «I suffer». From this confusion arise the sense of being an agent who acts and a subject who enjoys and suffers, desire, action and the cycle of births (samsara). The Self does not suffer: it is the unchanging witness of the states in which suffering appears. Liberation is therefore not attained by acts, not even by meritorious rites, which only produce new fruits within the cycle, but by the knowledge that dissolves ignorance, as light dispels the confusion between rope and snake.

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  • What happens after death?

    The Atman is neither born nor dies; the one who knows it does not transmigrate

    What I am is never born and never diesStated explicitly

    For Adi Shankara the question has two answers depending on the plane. On the empirical plane, subject to ignorance (avidyā), the individual soul transmigrates: with its subtle body and its karma it passes from one body to another, along the paths described in the Upanishads, until knowledge frees it. On the ultimate plane, the Self (Ātman) is identical with Brahman and is neither born nor dies; birth, death and transmigration belong to what is superimposed, not to what is real. Commenting on the Bhagavad Gita (2.20), he insists that the Self is not slain when the body is slain. And in the commentary on the Brahma Sutras he holds that the vital breaths of the knower of Brahman do not go forth anywhere at death: they dissolve right there, because there is nowhere to go. Liberation does not happen after death; it is the recognition of what was never born.

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  • How is liberation or salvation attained?

    Only knowledge of the identity of atman and Brahman liberates; works only purify

    Through direct knowledgeStated explicitly

    For Adi Shankara bondage is not a real state to be undone but a superimposition (adhyasa) due to ignorance: the Self is confused with the body, the senses and the mind. Since the cause is ignorance, the only remedy is knowledge, just as only light dispels the confusion of mistaking a rope for a snake. In his commentary on the Brahma Sutras he holds that liberation is not the product of any action, since whatever is produced would be perishable: it is the eternal nature of the Self, revealed by the teachings of the Upanishads. Ritual works and devotion purify the mind and prepare it, but do not liberate; knowledge is received by hearing the teacher, reflecting and meditating on scripture.

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  • Is a teacher necessary?

    Knowledge of Brahman is received from a teacher versed in scripture

    IndispensableStated explicitly

    For Adi Shankara, liberating knowledge comes from revealed scripture, the Upanishads, and is received through a teacher. Commenting on the Mundaka Upanishad (1.2.12), which enjoins approaching, fuel in hand, a teacher versed in the texts and established in Brahman, he stresses that even someone who knows the scriptures should not seek that knowledge on his own. The prose part of the Upadesa Sahasri opens by describing how the teacher should instruct a disciple who approaches him duly prepared, and how to answer his doubts. The teacher is not a mediator of grace but the one who makes the great Upanishadic sayings intelligible, and in that role he is indispensable.

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  • Is the world real?

    The world is real for experience, superimposed on Brahman, the only reality

    Appearance over the one realityStated explicitly

    Adi Shankara distinguishes levels of reality. From the ultimate point of view, only Brahman is real; the world of names and forms is a superimposition due to ignorance, like the snake seen in a rope, and its status is indefinable: neither real nor unreal. But from the empirical point of view the world is fully valid: actions have consequences, the scriptures govern and objects exist outside the mind. In his commentary on the Brahma Sutras (2.2.28 ff.) he refutes the Buddhist idealists who reduced the world to ideas, insisting that external objects are perceived as such. The world is not a subjective dream but an objective appearance upon Brahman.

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  • What is love?

    All is loved for the sake of the Self; supreme devotion is inquiry into it

    What appears when the self ceasesInferred from their doctrine

    Adi Shankara does not treat love as a theme of its own, but his work allows a position to be reconstructed. Commenting on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, where Yajnavalkya teaches Maitreyi that husband, wife or children are not dear for their own sake but for the sake of the Self, Shankara explains that all affection is ultimately directed to the Ātman, which is bliss; love for objects is a deflected reflection of that bliss, superimposed through ignorance. When the empirical self, with its sense of agency and ownership, is recognised as superimposition, what remains is Brahman, which is being, consciousness and fullness. The Vivekachudamani, which tradition attributes to him, defines devotion as inquiry into one's own true nature. Shankara is also credited by tradition with devotional hymns, but he subordinates devotion to knowledge.

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  • Are we free, or is everything determined?

    The Self does not act: agency is a superimposition

    There is no doerStated explicitly

    Shankara deals with the question in his commentary on the *Brahma Sutras* (2.3.33-40). There he grants that the individual soul is an agent, since otherwise the injunctions and prohibitions of scripture would be meaningless; but he clarifies that this agency does not belong to it by nature. It is a condition superimposed by the limiting adjuncts (*upādhi*) of body and mind, like the carpenter who works when he takes up his tools and rests when he lays them down (2.3.40). On the empirical level, therefore, there is action, karma and responsibility; on the ultimate level, the Ātman identical with Brahman has never done anything. Liberation does not consist in choosing better, but in knowing that one was never the doer.

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  • Why meditate or pray?

    Neither action nor meditation liberates, but knowing one is Brahman

    Returning to the source of the IStated explicitly

    Shankara rigorously distinguishes action from knowledge. Liberation is not an effect produced by a ritual or a meditation, for then it would be something new and perishable; it is the recognition of what one already is, the Ātman identical with Brahman (commentary on the *Brahma Sutras*, 1.1.4). The way is to hear the Upaniṣads from a teacher (*śravaṇa*), reflect on them (*manana*) and assimilate them through sustained contemplation (*nididhyāsana*). Devotional meditations (*upāsana*) and rites purify the mind and prepare, but do not liberate. In the *Upadeśasāhasrī* he teaches the disciple to discern the Self, the unchanging witness, from everything that can be known as an object.

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  • Can reason know the ultimate?

    Brahman is known only through Scripture; reason serves it, does not replace it

    Scripture and reasoningStated explicitly

    Shankara is the reference for this key. In his commentary on the *Brahma Sutras* he holds that Brahman cannot be known by perception or inference, for it is not an object, and that its only valid means of knowledge (*pramāṇa*) is the revelation of the Upaniṣads (1.1.3-4). Commenting on sutra 2.1.11 he argues that independent reasoning lacks firm foundation: what one thinker proves today, a cleverer one refutes tomorrow. Yet reason has an indispensable role: interpreting scripture correctly, refuting rival doctrines —Sāṃkhya, Buddhist, Nyāya— and reflecting (*manana*) until doubts are removed. The knowledge that liberates is born of scripture understood, not of argument alone.

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  • Withdraw from the world or transform it?

    Only knowledge liberates; renunciation belongs to the knower

    Withdraw in order to findStated explicitly

    Adi Shankara holds that liberation is not the fruit of any action, because it is the recognition of what one already is; ritual or moral action only purifies the mind and prepares it for knowledge. Against those who proposed combining knowledge and action, he argues in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita that they are incompatible in the same subject: action presupposes an agent and a fruit, which knowledge dissolves. Hence he assigns to the mature seeker renunciation (saṃnyāsa), the wandering, propertyless life of the monk, and the teaching of the Upadeśasāhasrī is addressed to a renunciant disciple. According to tradition, he himself organised Advaita monasticism and founded monasteries (maṭhas) in different parts of India. Action in the world is legitimate for one who does not yet know, as a purifying duty; for the knower it ceases.

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Affinities & tensions

Affinities and tensions

Calculated question by question from their positions. The reason for each agreement or clash, on click.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Adi Shankara · Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha

The Self that is Brahman versus the absence of self: India's great controversy

Siddhartha Gautama, according to the Pali canon, analyses the person into five aggregates and shows in the Anattalakkhana Sutta (SN 22.59) that none of them can be a self, since all are impermanent and do not obey one's will; the Alagaddupama Sutta (MN 22) further rejects the idea of an eternal self identical with the world, close to the Upanishadic thesis. Adi Shankara affirms exactly what is denied there: the atman, unchanging witness of all states, is identical with Brahman, and the error lies in superimposing body and mind upon it (introduction to the commentary on the Brahma Sutras). They agree on the negative diagnosis, since nothing observable is the self, and on ignorance as what binds. They part over what remains: for the Buddha, a conditioned process without a core; for Shankara, consciousness without a second that was never an object.

Why: The clash is not a modern construction: Shankara devotes sutras 2.2.18–32 of his Brahma Sutra commentary to refuting the Buddhist schools, realist, idealist and those of emptiness, and concludes that the Buddha's teaching is incoherent. Some scholars argue that no-self denies the empirical self rather than the atman, so the distance would be smaller than both believed; but the canon itself rejects the eternal self in MN 22, and Shankara held that denying a permanent subject made memory and liberation impossible. The two traditions start from a similar analysis of experience and reach incompatible metaphysical conclusions, which is why they treated each other as rivals for centuries.

They agree on

Adi Shankara · Ibn Arabi

Two metaphysics of unity, in Murcia and in Kerala

Separated by language, religion and four centuries, they build strikingly parallel metaphysics. Both distinguish an inaccessible ground from a face that relates: Brahman without attributes and Ishvara in Shankara (Brahma Sutra commentary, I.1.2); the Essence of which nothing can be said and the Lord who manifests through his Names in Ibn Arabi (Fusus al-hikam, chapter on Adam). Both deny the self an existence of its own: the individual is Brahman apparently limited, says Shankara; what exists in the human being is the existence of the Real, says Ibn Arabi. And both give the world an intermediate status: neither real nor unreal in Shankara, He and not He in Ibn Arabi. In both, to know oneself is to know the Absolute.

Why: The affinity comes from the same question pushed to its limit: how can there be multiplicity if the Absolute is one. Both answer with a doctrine of levels, empirical and ultimate truth in one, Essence and Names in the other, which allows them to keep worship and law without giving up unity. There is no historical relation between them, and the differences are serious: for Ibn Arabi the world is a self-revelation willed by a God who loves to be known, and the servant remains a servant; for Shankara the world is a superimposition due to ignorance, and the liberated one retains no distinction. One thinks a theophany; the other, an error that dissolves. They agree in structure, not in feeling.

They clash onApparent contradiction

Adi Shankara · Swami Vivekananda

The sage who renounces and the sage who serves: two readings of the same Advaita

Adi Shankara holds in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gita (introduction and 3.1) that knowledge and action are incompatible in the same subject, and assigns renunciation to the one who knows: the wandering, propertyless life of the monk. Swami Vivekananda, himself an Advaita monk, set out to bring Vedanta out of the forests and caves: in his lectures on Practical Vedanta (London, 1896) he makes unity in the atman the foundation of an ethics of service, and in 1897 he founded the Ramakrishna Mission, with hospitals, schools and famine relief. One withdraws the sage from the world; the other sends him into it. Yet they agree on the essential: the goal is the realisation of identity with Brahman, and no action produces it. For both, selfless work purifies the mind.

Why: The contradiction is largely apparent. Shankara does not condemn action: he regards it as the purifying duty of those who do not yet know, and Vivekananda presents karma yoga precisely as a path of purification towards a knowledge that remains, for him, the summit. What changes is audience and era. Shankara writes for renunciants, in a scholastic dispute with those who combined ritual and knowledge; Vivekananda, who saw himself as heir to Advaita, speaks to a colonised and impoverished India and to a Western public, and turns service into worship of the divine in every being. A real difference of emphasis remains: in Shankara the liberated one ceases to act; in Vivekananda, he goes on serving.

They agree on

Adi Shankara · Ramana Maharshi

The Advaita of the commentaries and the Advaita of silence

Ramana and Shankara hold the same central thesis: the Self is identical with the Absolute, and suffering comes from superimposing body and mind upon it. Shankara states it in the introduction to his Brahma Sutra commentary with the image of the snake seen in the rope; Ramana uses it in Who Am I? to explain that the world appears when the thought “I” arises. For both, liberation is not the product of any action, since it is the eternal nature of the Self; works, devotion or breath control only prepare. And both give the world a nuanced status: it is not real independently of the Self, yet not nothing either; for one who knows, Ramana says in Forty Verses on Reality, it is the Self itself.

Why: The relationship is documented in one sense: Ramana rendered into Tamil texts attributed to Shankara, such as the Vivekachudamani and the Atmabodha, although scholars dispute Shankara's authorship of them. The difference is one of method and authority. Shankara is a commentator who holds that Brahman is known only through scripture, with reason in its service, and who assigns monastic renunciation to the sage. Ramana never received scholastic training, spoke from an experience lived at sixteen, proposed a single question as method and considered that true renunciation is of the ego, not of home or work. One argues for the identity; the other invites one to verify it.

They clash onFundamental disagreement

Adi Shankara · Nisargadatta Maharaj

Scripture as the only means of knowing Brahman, or a cigarette seller without books

Both hold that the ultimate is not an object and therefore is not reached by perception or inference. But Shankara concludes that the only valid means of knowing it is the revelation of the Upanishads (Brahma Sutra commentary, 1.1.3–4), that independent reasoning lacks firm foundation (2.1.11) and that the necessary teacher is one versed in scripture (commentary on the Mundaka Upanishad, 1.2.12). Nisargadatta, who had hardly any formal schooling and sold cigarettes in Bombay, holds in I Am That that everything conceivable, ideas of God included, is not what one is; that book learning can be one more obstacle; and that it is enough to abide in the feeling I am until the false falls away. One grounds liberation in a revealed text; the other, in an attention without texts.

Why: The contradiction is real at the level of method, even if the goal is the same. Shankara is a Brahmin commentator debating rival schools and needs to establish what counts as valid knowledge: for him, without the word of scripture there is no way of knowing that the Self is Brahman. Nisargadatta belongs to a devotional lineage from Maharashtra that transmitted the teaching in the vernacular and through the master's direct instruction, and he speaks to modern seekers, often saturated with reading. Neither trusts free-standing reasoning, and both rely on a master; they differ over whether ultimate authority lies in the revealed word or in the evidence of one's own existing.

They clash onApparent contradiction

Adi Shankara · Eckhart Tolle

Is the world an illusion? Superimposition on Brahman or form in which consciousness awakens

Adi Shankara holds that from the ultimate standpoint only Brahman is real and the world of names and forms is a superimposition due to ignorance, like the snake seen in a rope (Brahma Sutra commentary, introduction). Eckhart Tolle, by contrast, states that the world is not an illusion: in The Power of Now he distinguishes the manifested, the world of forms, from the unmanifested, its formless source, and in A New Earth he holds that the purpose of the universe is for consciousness to awaken in form. It looks like an opposition between denying the world and affirming it. But Shankara insists that the world is fully valid on the empirical level, that objects exist outside the mind (2.2.28) and that its status is indefinable, neither real nor unreal; and Tolle calls illusory not form but identification with it.

Why: The contradiction is largely apparent: both distinguish two levels, a formless source and a world dependent on it, and both locate the error in the subject who confuses the levels, ignorance in Shankara, identification in Tolle. Vocabulary separates them more than structure: maya sounds like negation to a modern reader, although in Shankara it does not amount to a subjective dream. A real difference of evaluation remains. For Shankara multiplicity has no purpose and vanishes for one who knows; for Tolle, along a line closer to manifestation than to illusion, form is the place where consciousness recognises itself, and the universe has an evolutionary meaning.

Anecdotes and stories

Anecdotes and stories

Hagiographic accountinfancia (fecha tradicional c. 796)

The crocodile of the Pūrṇā

The boy wished to become a renunciant and his mother, widowed and with no other son, would not allow it: without descendants, who would perform her funeral rites? One day, while he was bathing in the river near Kālaḍi, a crocodile seized his leg. From the water he called to Āryāmbā that he was about to die and that only one way out remained: if she allowed him to take the vows of saṃnyāsa that instant, he would die a renunciant, or perhaps fate would change. The desperate mother consented; the boy pronounced the vows in his mind, the crocodile let him go and he came out of the river a monk. Before leaving he made her a promise: wherever he was, he would return to attend her at the hour of her death. The episode resolves with a wonder a real dilemma of brahmanical law —renunciation required the parents' consent— and prepares the return at the end.

Origin of the story: An account from the Śaṅkaravijayas, in particular the Śaṅkaradigvijaya attributed to Mādhava-Vidyāraṇya; Bader (2000) compares its variants. No contemporary source.

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

Hagiographic accountadolescencia

"Who are you?" on the banks of the Narmadā

After crossing half of India the young renunciant reached the cave where Govinda Bhagavatpāda meditated, by the Narmadā. When the master asked who he was, the boy gave neither name nor lineage: he answered with verses denying every identification —I am not earth, nor water, nor fire, nor air, nor space, nor the senses— to conclude that he was what alone remains when all that is withdrawn. Govinda accepted him as a disciple. Tradition identifies that reply with the Daśaślokī, "ten verses", and sometimes with the Nirvāṇaṣaṭkam; the scene turns a courtesy question into the first exercise of discrimination in the saint's life.

Origin of the story: A scene from the hagiographies; its association with the Daśaślokī and the Nirvāṇaṣaṭkam is traditional and late. That Govinda was his teacher is historically accepted (SEP); the dialogue is not.

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

Hagiographic accountestancia en Benarés

The outcaste of Benares

One morning, on the way to the Ganges with his disciples, Śaṅkara met in an alley a caṇḍāla, an outcaste, with four dogs. The disciples ordered him to stand aside so as not to pollute the master. The man replied with a question: what did they want to move away —the body of food from the body of food, or consciousness from consciousness? Śaṅkara recognised in it the truth he taught and bowed down; from that encounter would come the five verses of the Manīṣāpañcaka, which end by declaring that whoever has realised unity is his teacher, be he brahmin or outcaste. Devotional tradition adds that the caṇḍāla was Śiva and the dogs the four Vedas. The episode is the sharpest critique of ritual purity that legend puts in the mouth of Advaita itself.

Origin of the story: It appears in the hagiographies and in the traditional preamble to the Manīṣāpañcaka, itself a hymn of disputed attribution. Advaita Ashrama publishes a popular version ("Sankaracharya and an Untouchable").

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

Hagiographic accountjuventud

Ubhaya Bhāratī's garlands

Maṇḍana Miśra was the great champion of Vedic ritualism, and Śaṅkara sought him out to debate. As umpire they chose Maṇḍana's wife, Ubhaya Bhāratī, as learned as he. She hung a garland of flowers around each contestant's neck: the first whose garland withered would be the loser. According to the accounts the debate lasted days; in the end Maṇḍana's garland dried and he agreed to become the young renunciant's disciple under the name Sureśvara. But Ubhaya Bhāratī objected that Śaṅkara had defeated only half of the couple, and challenged him to answer questions on the art of love, of which a celibate monk knew nothing. The story is famous throughout India; the historicity of the debate and the identity of Maṇḍana and Sureśvara are disputed.

Origin of the story: Śaṅkaravijayas (the Mādhavīya and others). Potter (1981) and other scholars distinguish Maṇḍana Miśra, author of the Brahmasiddhi, from Sureśvara on doctrinal grounds.

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

Hagiographic accountjuventud

King Amaruka's body

To answer Ubhaya Bhāratī's challenge without breaking his vow, Śaṅkara asked for time. He found the corpse of a king, Amaruka, recently dead, and leaving his own body in his disciples' care in a cave, he entered the monarch's by the yogic power of occupying another body. The court marvelled at the sudden wisdom of the revived king; the queens grew suspicious. Śaṅkara thus learned the erotic art, but began to forget who he was, until his disciples, disguised as singers, entered the palace and reminded him of his nature with Vedāntic songs. He returned to his body just as the servants, alerted, were about to burn it. Tradition links the episode with the Amaruśataka, an anthology of love poetry. It is the most novelistic tale in the hagiographies and the one that best shows their function: to prove that the sage also masters the world he transcends.

Origin of the story: Śaṅkaradigvijaya attributed to Mādhava; Bader (2000). No historical basis; the link with the Amaruśataka is traditional.

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

Oral traditionedad adulta

Āryāmbā's funeral

When he sensed that his mother was dying, Śaṅkara returned to Kālaḍi, keeping the promise made in the river. He attended her in her last moments —tradition says he sang her hymns to Śiva and then to Viṣṇu— and wished to perform the funeral rites himself. His Nambudiri kin refused: a renunciant is dead to the world and cannot officiate at obsequies. No one lent him fire or help. Śaṅkara gathered wood, stacked it in the courtyard of the family house and lit the pyre alone. Keralan accounts add that ever since, in that region, the dead are cremated on the house's own ground. Today a shrine at Kālaḍi marks the traditional site of the cremation.

Origin of the story: Hagiographies and local tradition at Kālaḍi; the explanation of the custom of cremating on household land is aetiological and unverifiable. The shrine is photographed on Wikimedia Commons ("Aryamba Samadhi").

Source: Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.

Teachings

Teachings

The notions that structure their thought, explained in context.

Superimposition (adhyāsa)adhyasa
The concept with which Śaṅkara opens his commentary on the Brahmasūtras. He defines superimposition as the appearance, in the form of memory, of something previously perceived upon something else: mother-of-pearl taken for silver, a rope taken for a snake. Applied to self-knowledge, superimposition is mutual: we ascribe to the self, which is pure consciousness, the properties of body, senses and mind ("I am fat", "I am sad"), and we ascribe to those instruments the light of consciousness that does not belong to them. Śaṅkara stresses that this confusion is natural and beginningless, and that all ordinary life depends on it, including ritual practice and the scriptures insofar as they command and forbid. Vedānta's task is not to add knowledge but to undo superimposition, which is why its method is negative and corrective.

Preamble of the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya; developed by Padmapāda in the Pañcapādikā and by the Vivaraṇa school.

Source: Thibaut, George (trad.). The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Śaṅkarâkârya. Sacred Books of the East, vols. 34 (1890) y 38 (1896). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reimpr. Dover, 1962; Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 8120801393).

Ignorance (avidyā) and māyāavidya
For Śaṅkara, avidyā is not merely a lack of information but the very superimposition that confuses subject and object. Paul Hacker showed that in the authentic commentaries avidyā is a precise technical term, whereas māyā appears less often and almost always as a metaphor for the power of illusion; the later school substantialised ignorance into an indefinable cosmic force (anirvacanīya), something barely hinted at in Śaṅkara. This nuance is one of the criteria by which scholars distinguish his authentic works from the attributed ones. Ignorance has no real bearer and no beginning; it is found to be non-existent at the moment knowledge dissolves it, just as the snake vanishes when the rope is seen.

Debate between the Bhāmatī and Vivaraṇa schools on the locus of ignorance; Hacker's studies (1950, repr. 1995).

Source: Hacker, Paul. «Śaṅkarācārya and Śaṅkarabhagavatpāda: Preliminary Remarks Concerning the Authorship Problem» (New Indian Antiquary 9, 1947) y «Distinctive Features of the Doctrine and Terminology of Śaṅkara: Avidyā, Nāmarūpa, Māyā, Īśvara», ambos en Wilhelm Halbfass (ed.), Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedānta. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.

Identity of ātman and brahmanatman-brahman
The core of Advaita, "non-duality": the innermost self of each being, the conscious witness that is never an object, is identical with the absolute ground of all. Śaṅkara reads this in the great Upaniṣadic sayings —"you are that" (Chāndogya 6.8.7), "I am brahman" (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.4.10)— and holds that these statements do not establish a likeness or participation but a strict identity, once the limiting adjuncts (upādhi) added by superimposition are removed. Brahman is defined as reality, knowledge and infinity (Taittirīya 2.1), definitions that point without delimiting. The identity is not attained but recognised, because it never ceased to be the case.

Later controversy with Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita and Madhva's Dvaita, which reject strict identity.

Source: Dalal, Neil. «Śaṅkara». En Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, primera publicación 4 de octubre de 2021.

Practical and ultimate realitydos-niveles-de-realidad
To reconcile the teaching of non-duality with the experience of a plural world, Śaṅkara's tradition distinguishes levels of reality. On the practical or conventional level (vyavahāra) the world, individuals, ritual duties and the Lord (īśvara) who creates and governs are fully valid: Śaṅkara denies neither perception nor morality. On the ultimate level (paramārtha) only brahman is real, without a second. The third category, the merely apparent (prātibhāsika), like a mirage, was systematised above all by later authors. The distinction allows him to defend devotion and duty without giving up the non-dual thesis, and explains why the world is "indescribable" —neither real nor unreal— in the school.

Comparable to the two truths of Buddhist Madhyamaka, a parallel that earned the school the charge of being "crypto-Buddhist".

Source: Dalal, Neil. «Śaṅkara». En Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, primera publicación 4 de octubre de 2021.

Liberation while living (jīvanmukti)jivanmukti
If liberation is knowledge and not an effect produced by works, it need not wait for death: whoever has recognised his identity with brahman is free though the body goes on living. Śaṅkara uses the image of the potter's wheel, which keeps turning for a while after the hand is withdrawn: the body continues through the momentum of past actions that have already begun to bear fruit (prārabdha), but the liberated one does not identify with it. The term jīvanmukti as such was systematised later —in Vidyāraṇya's Jīvanmuktiviveka, fourteenth century— but the idea is in the commentaries. It underlies the figure of the realised sage who teaches, central to modern Advaita.

Contested by the theistic schools, which admit liberation only after death.

Source: Dalal, Neil. «Śaṅkara». En Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, primera publicación 4 de octubre de 2021.

The four qualifications of the aspirantsadhana-chatushtaya
Commenting on the first aphorism of the Brahmasūtras —"now, therefore, the desire to know brahman"— Śaṅkara asks what must precede that inquiry and answers with four qualifications: discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal; dispassion towards enjoying the fruits of action, here and hereafter; the six virtues beginning with calm and self-control; and the longing for liberation. He does not, by contrast, require completion of ritual study. The Vivekacūḍāmaṇi and other attributed manuals made this list the backbone of Vedāntic training, and it is still taught that way in the monastic orders.

Brahmasūtrabhāṣya 1.1.1; Vivekacūḍāmaṇi 18–27.

Source: Śaṅkarācārya. Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya of Śrī Śaṅkarācārya. Trad. Swami Gambhirananda. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1965 (reed. 1977, ISBN 9780702500770; 2000, ISBN 9788175051058).

Retreats

Retreats and centres

Places and gatherings linked to their teaching. We put you in touch with the organisers.

  • Sringeri, distrito de Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka · India

    Sringeri Sharada Peetham

    Dakshinamnaya Sri Sharada Peetham, Sringeri

    Sringeri, on the banks of the Tunga river in the Western Ghats, is home to the first of the four monasteries tradition attributes to Adi Shankara, the Dakshinamnaya Sri Sharada Peetham, guardian of the south. Since then it has been led by an unbroken line of jagadgurus, the teachers who safeguard the Advaita teaching. The site brings together the temple of the goddess Sharada and the Vidyashankara temple, and the monastery remains a centre for the study of the Vedas and Vedanta. It offers pilgrim accommodation through its portal and publishes temple timings and the history of its lineage on its website.

    Request information

  • Saylorsburg, Pensilvania · Estados Unidos

    Arsha Vidya Gurukulam, Pennsylvania

    Arsha Vidya Gurukulam

    Arsha Vidya Gurukulam was founded in 1986 by Swami Dayananda Saraswati in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania to teach Advaita Vedanta by the traditional method, that is, through the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras read with Shankara's commentaries. It is run by resident teachers and offers Vedanta courses on campus, weekend classes, retreats and online studies, such as one on the Brahma Sutras. According to its website, Vedanta classes carry no fee: they are funded by donations and gurudakshina, with only nominal registration and lodging charges.

    Request information

  • Veliyanad, Ernakulam, Kerala · India

    Chinmaya International Foundation, Adi Sankara Nilayam

    Chinmaya International Foundation (Chinmaya Mission)

    Chinmaya International Foundation is the academic centre of the Chinmaya Mission devoted to preserving and disseminating India's knowledge traditions. It is based at Adi Sankara Nilayam in Veliyanad, Kerala, the ancestral home of Adi Shankara's mother's family, which Swami Chinmayananda acquired and restored. It offers courses in Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads and in Sanskrit, online and by post, as well as short residential retreats devoted to texts attributed to the teacher and longer immersion camps.

    Request information
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Videos

Videos

Recordings, interviews and documentaries. Videos play from YouTube; they are not hosted here.

  • Vedanta-Advaita: Sankara

    Lecture· ES· 25 min

    UNED DocumentosOfficial channel

  • Advaita-Vedanta: generalidades

    Lecture· ES· 20 min

    UNED DocumentosOfficial channel

  • Shankara & Advaita Vedanta

    Analysis· EN· 45 min

    Let's Talk Religion

  • Adhyasa Bhashya 1 | Swami Sarvapriyananda

    Lecture· EN· 77 min

    Vedanta Society of New YorkOfficial channel

  • Brahma Sutra with Shankara Bhashyam | Session 1 | Swami Tattwamayananda

    Lecture· EN· 86 min

    Vedanta Society of New YorkOfficial channel

  • Vivekachudamani - Retreat (Part 1) | Swami Sarvapriyananda

    Lecture· EN· 129 min

    Vedanta Society of New YorkOfficial channel

  • Kalady: The Triumph of Faith Over Time (Rediscovery of Sri Adi Shankaracharya's Birth Place)

    Documentary· EN· 81 min

    sharadapeethamOfficial channel

  • The Jagadguru Shankaracharya of Sringeri (Full Film)

    Documentary· EN· 83 min

    sharadapeethamOfficial channel

  • GFO2021: Adi Shankaracharya Sanskrit Movie: A panel discussion

    Analysis· EN· 74 min

    Advaita Academy

  • Auto-Conocimiento, Teatrización de Atma Bodha - por Shankara (Swami Tadatmananda)

    Third-party recording· ES· 71 min

    Raul Campos

Gallery

Gallery

Images with verified licences. Each keeps its authorship and attribution.

Manuscripts

Manuscripts

Manuscript witnesses and ancient texts, with their custodian and conditions of access.

  • SA · Devanagari · c. siglo VIII (fecha del autor discutida)

    ऐतरेयोपनिषद्भाष्य (Aitareyopaniṣadbhāṣya)

    Surviving witness
    Manuscrito en papel; la descripción de Commons da a la vez 1593 y 1863 como fecha de copia, contradicción no resuelta
    Custodian
    Cambridge University Library · MS Add.2092
Manuscripts →

Connections

Connections

Influences, discipleships and affinities. Documented relations are distinguished from similarities identified by analysis.

  • Disciple of

    Govinda Bhagavatpāda

    His teacher, according to tradition and scholarship (Dalal, SEP); almost nothing is known of his life.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced by

    Gaudapada

    Author of the Māṇḍūkya-kārikā and teacher of Govinda; Śaṅkara commented on his verses and cites him as an authority of the tradition.

    Documented relation

  • Teacher of

    Padmapāda

    Direct disciple, author of the Pañcapādikā, a commentary on the opening of the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya from which the Vivaraṇa school derives.

    Documented relation

  • Teacher of

    Sureśvara

    Direct disciple, author of the Vārttikas on the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Taittirīya commentaries and of the Naiṣkarmyasiddhi. His identification with Maṇḍana Miśra is disputed.

    Documented relation

  • Contemporary of

    Maṇḍana Miśra

    Contemporary Advaitin and Mīmāṃsaka, author of the Brahmasiddhi; the debate with Śaṅkara is hagiographic, and Potter uses his chronology to date Śaṅkara.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Influenced

    Ramana Maharshi

    Ramana translated into Tamil the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (in prose) and the Ātmabodha (in verse), works attributed to Śaṅkara, and recommended reading them.

    Documented relation

  • Influenced

    Swami Vivekananda

    Vivekananda spread Śaṅkara's Advaita in the West as India's universal philosophy, reinterpreting it in a practical key.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Nisargadatta Maharaj

    Nisargadatta's Inchegeri lineage read Śaṅkara as an authority; his teaching of the "I am" and of the witness extends, without exegetical method, the distinction between consciousness and object.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Nāgārjuna

    The distinction between conventional and ultimate reality recalls the two truths of Madhyamaka; theistic critics accused Advaita of being "crypto-Buddhism" (pracchanna-bauddha).

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Ideas akin to

    Meister Eckhart

    Rudolf Otto systematically compared Śaṅkara and Eckhart in West-östliche Mystik (1926); the likeness is drawn by the comparativist, not by any historical contact.

    Similarity identified by analysis

  • Disagreed with

    Rāmānuja

    Posthumous relation: Rāmānuja (11th–12th c.) criticised Advaita's doctrine of ignorance and strict identity in the Śrībhāṣya.

    Similarity identified by analysis

Linked from other profiles

Sources

Sources

Bibliography and catalogues consulted for this profile.

  1. Advaita Ashrama (Mayavati/Kolkata), tienda en línea: catálogo de traducciones de los comentarios de Śaṅkara.
  2. Editorial Kairós, ficha de La esencia del Vedanta (Śaṅkara, trad. Raphael; versión castellana de Eleonora Berla), ISBN 9788472453579.
  3. Brown, W. Norman (ed. y trad.). The Saundaryalaharī or Flood of Beauty, Traditionally Ascribed to Śaṅkarācārya. Harvard Oriental Series 43. Cambridge (Mass.): Harvard University Press, 1958.
  4. Cambridge University Library, MS Add.2092: Aitareya Upaniṣad con el comentario de Śaṅkara, manuscrito sánscrito en devanagari procedente de un bhaṇḍār jaina de Benarés; reproducción fotográfica en Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
  5. Menon, Sangeetha. «Vedanta, Advaita». Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  6. Leggett, Trevor (trad.). Śaṅkara on the Yoga Sūtra-s: The Vivaraṇa Sub-commentary to Vyāsa-bhāṣya on the Yoga-sūtra-s of Patañjali. Londres: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981–1983; The Complete Commentary by Śaṅkara on the Yoga Sūtra-s, Londres: Kegan Paul International, 1990 (ISBN 0710302770).
  7. Clark, Matthew. The Daśanāmī-Saṃnyāsīs: The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order. Leiden: Brill, 2006.
  8. Isayeva, Natalia. Shankara and Indian Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press, 1993.
  9. Pande, Govind Chandra. Life and Thought of Śaṅkarācārya. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1994.
  10. Ramana Maharshi. The Collected Works of Ramana Maharshi. Ed. Arthur Osborne. Tiruvannamalai: Sri Ramanasramam (incluye sus versiones del Vivekacūḍāmaṇi y del Ātmabodha).
  11. Otto, Rudolf. West-östliche Mystik: Vergleich und Unterscheidung zur Wesensdeutung. Gotha: Leopold Klotz, 1926 (trad. ingl. Mysticism East and West, 1932).
  12. Sri Sringeri Sharada Peetham, web oficial del maṭha de Śṛṅgeri.
  13. Open Library, registros de ediciones de las obras menores atribuidas a Śaṅkara (Vākyavṛtti, Dṛg-dṛśya-viveka, Tattvabodha, Śivānandalaharī, Śataślokī, Svātmanirūpaṇa, Sanatsujātīya-bhāṣya…), consultados el 2026-10-25.
  14. Conway, Timothy. «Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981): Life & Teachings of Bombay's Fiery Sage of Liberating Wisdom». Enlightened-Spirituality.org, © 1981/2007 (enumera entre las lecturas de Nisargadatta «Sankara's treatises»).
  15. The Works of Sri Sankaracharya in the Original Sanskrit (Sri Vani Vilas Edition), ed. T. K. Balasubrahmanya Aiyar. Srirangam: Sri Vani Vilas Press, 1910–1913, 20 vols. (1–3 Brahmasūtrabhāṣya; 4–10 Upaniṣadbhāṣyas, con el Nṛsiṃhapūrvatāpanī; 11–12 Gītābhāṣya; 13 Viṣṇusahasranāma y Sanatsujātīya; 14 Vivekacūḍāmaṇi y Upadeśasāhasrī; 15–16 prakaraṇas, Aparokṣānubhūti, Prabodhasudhākara y otros 30; 17–18 stotras, 65, con el Lalitātriśatī-bhāṣya; 19–20 Prapañcasāra). Escaneos en Internet Archive, wg1056–wg1075.
  16. Open Library: Prapanchasāra Tantra. Calcuta: Sanskrit Press Depository, 1914 (serie Tantrik Texts dirigida por Arthur Avalon, seudónimo de Sir John Woodroffe), registro OL59251172M; Vedānta in ten verses (Daśaślokī) of Śaṅkarācārya, ed. y trad. T. M. P. Mahadevan y N. Veezhinathan, Madrás: Śaṅkara Vihār, 1965 (OL62265675M); Śrī Kanakadhārā stotram, Chennai: Śrī Tayā Papḷikēṣan, 1977 (OL47937733M).
  17. Wikidata, «Ādi Shankara», QID Q180967 (VIAF 54116823; LCCN n79073884; GND 118642278; BnF 119236417).
  18. Dalal, Neil. «Śaṅkara». En Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, primera publicación 4 de octubre de 2021.
  19. Nakamura, Hajime. A History of Early Vedānta Philosophy. Part One. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1983 (pp. 48–88 sobre la datación).
  20. Potter, Karl H. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, vol. III: Advaita Vedānta up to Śaṃkara and His Pupils. Princeton University Press / Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981.
  21. Mayeda, Sengaku. «The Authenticity of the Upadeśasāhasrī Ascribed to Śaṅkara». Journal of the American Oriental Society 85, n.º 2 (1965): 178–196. doi:10.2307/597989.
  22. Mayeda, Sengaku. «The Authenticity of the Bhagavadgītābhāṣya Ascribed to Śaṅkara». Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde Süd- und Ostasiens 9 (1965): 155–197; y «On Śaṅkara's Authorship of the Kenopaniṣadbhāṣya». Indo-Iranian Journal 10, n.º 1 (1967): 33–55.
  23. Mayeda, Sengaku (trad. y ed.). A Thousand Teachings: The Upadeśasāhasrī of Śaṅkara. Tokio: University of Tokyo Press, 1979; Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992. ISBN 0791409449.
  24. Hacker, Paul. «Śaṅkarācārya and Śaṅkarabhagavatpāda: Preliminary Remarks Concerning the Authorship Problem» (New Indian Antiquary 9, 1947) y «Distinctive Features of the Doctrine and Terminology of Śaṅkara: Avidyā, Nāmarūpa, Māyā, Īśvara», ambos en Wilhelm Halbfass (ed.), Philology and Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedānta. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.
  25. Bader, Jonathan. Conquest of the Four Quarters: Traditional Accounts of the Life of Śaṅkara. Nueva Delhi: Aditya Prakashan, 2000.
  26. Śaṅkarācārya. Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya of Śrī Śaṅkarācārya. Trad. Swami Gambhirananda. Calcuta: Advaita Ashrama, 1965 (reed. 1977, ISBN 9780702500770; 2000, ISBN 9788175051058).
  27. Thibaut, George (trad.). The Vedânta-Sûtras with the Commentary by Śaṅkarâkârya. Sacred Books of the East, vols. 34 (1890) y 38 (1896). Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reimpr. Dover, 1962; Motilal Banarsidass (ISBN 8120801393).
  28. Sundaresan, Vidyasankar. «What Determines Śaṅkara's Authorship? The Case of the Pañcīkaraṇa». Philosophy East and West 52, n.º 1 (2002): 1–35. doi:10.1353/pew.2002.0006.
  29. Śaṅkarācārya (atrib.). Vivekachudamani of Sri Sankaracharya. Trad. Swami Madhavananda. Mayavati: Advaita Ashrama, 1921 (reed. 1932 y sucesivas).
  30. Editorial Trotta, ficha de catálogo de las ediciones de Consuelo Martín: Bhagavad Gita con los comentarios advaita de Śaṅkara; Upaniṣad con los comentarios advaita de Śaṅkara; Gran Upaniṣad del bosque.
Rights holder
Obra original en dominio público (siglos VII–IX). Las traducciones modernas tienen derechos propios: Advaita Ashrama y Ramakrishna Math (Gambhirananda, Madhavananda, Nikhilananda), Editorial Trotta (Consuelo Martín), Editorial Kairós (Raphael/Berla), SUNY Press (Mayeda), Vedanta Press (Prabhavananda e Isherwood), Harvard University Press (Brown), Motilal Banarsidass. La de Thibaut (1890–1896) es de dominio público.

Pending confirmation

What this profile has not yet been able to settle. We would rather say so than fill it in.

  • Confirmar en el catálogo de Cambridge University Library la fecha de copia de MS Add.2092 (1593 o 1863) y si existe digitalización en Cambridge Digital Library (la consulta devolvió 403).
  • Localizar ISBN de las traducciones de Gambhirananda al Chāndogya, Māṇḍūkya y Śvetāśvatara y de la Aparokṣānubhūti (Vimuktananda), no hallados en Open Library.
  • No se ha encontrado traducción castellana en catálogo del Upadeśasāhasrī: verificar en la BNE (se cita a veces una versión de Consuelo Martín).
  • Buscar ediciones con ISBN en francés, italiano (Raphael, Edizioni Āśram Vidyā), ruso e hindi de los comentarios principales.
  • Verificar en una edición crítica la numeración y el texto exacto de BSBh 1.1.2 (cita marcada como probable).
  • Confirmar el año de la primera edición de la Aparokṣānubhūti de Advaita Ashrama.
  • Google Books devolvió 429 (sin cuota): las comprobaciones de ISBN se hicieron solo con Open Library.
  • Obras completas (2026-10-25): la tradición atribuye a Shankara más de trescientas obras (comentarios, tratados introductorios o prakaraṇas e himnos o stotras). Se registran los comentarios auténticos y las obras atribuidas principales. Quedan fuera los numerosos stotras breves (Kanakadhārā, Annapūrṇā, Bhavānyaṣṭaka, Govindāṣṭaka, Śivāparādhakṣamāpaṇa…), los prakaraṇas menores (Maniṣāpañcaka, Praśnottararatnamālikā, Ekaślokī, Brahmajñānāvalīmālā, Ātmānātmaviveka, Sarvavedāntasiddhāntasārasaṅgraha) y los atribuidos dudosos como el Prapañcasāra Tantra. Los comentarios a cada una de las Upaniṣads menores (Īśa, Kena —pada y vākya—, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Taittirīya, Aitareya) quedan agrupados en «upanishad-bhashyas». Catálogo de referencia: Potter (a4) y la colección de obras completas de Vani Vilas Press (Srirangam, primeras décadas del siglo XX).
  • Verificar con catálogo una edición en Advaita Ashrama de la Dṛg-dṛśya-viveka (trad. Swami Nikhilananda), citada con frecuencia pero no localizada en Open Library.
  • Obras (2026-10-25, 2.ª pasada): añadidas seis atribuidas con edición verificada (Prapañcasāra Tantra, Daśaślokī, Kanakadhārā Stotra, comentarios a la Nṛsiṃhapūrvatāpanī y a la Lalitātriśatī, Prabodhasudhākara). La edición Vani Vilas (a29) contiene además unos 30 prakaraṇas menores (vols. 15–16) y 65 stotras (vols. 17–18) cuya lista exacta no se pudo leer en el OCR del escaneo: cotejar con su índice impreso para completar la relación.
  • Sala de lectura (2026-10-25): faltan traducciones libres del Upadeśasāhasrī (la de Swami Jagadananda, 1941, depende de la fecha de muerte del traductor, no verificada), de la Aparokṣānubhūti y de los comentarios upaniṣádicos de S. Sitarama Sastri y Ganganath Jha (Natesan, 1898–1901), así como cualquier texto en español de dominio público (es.wikisource no tiene ninguno). Los volúmenes sánscritos de Vani Vilas restantes (wg1059–wg1065, wg1068, wg1070–wg1073, wg1075) pueden añadirse como facsímiles.

Researched on 2026-10-25