SANKARA

Sankara, an Indian philosopher and theologian, is most renowned as an exponent of the Advaita Vedānta school of philosophy, from whose doctrines the main cur-rents of modern Indian thought are derived. He wrote commentaries on the Brahma-sūtras and the principal Upanis.ads, affirming his belief in one eternal unchanging reality  (Brahman)  and  the  illusion  of  plurality  and differentiation.According to one tradition, Śan.kara was born into a pious Nambūdiri Brahman family in a quiet village called Kālad.i on the Cūrn.ā (or P ūrn.ā, Periyār) River, Kerala, southern India. He is said to have lost his father, Śivaguru, early in his life. He renounced the world and became a sannyāsin (ascetic) against his mother’s will. He studied under Govinda, who was a pupil of Gaud.apāda. 

Nothing certain is known about Govinda, but Gaud.apāda is notable as the author of an important Vedānta work, Mān.d.ūkya-kārikā, in which the influence of Mahāyāna Buddhism—a form of Buddhism aiming at the salvation of all beings and tending toward nondualistic or monistic thought—is evident and even extreme, especially in its last chapter.Biographers narrate that Śan.kara first went to Kāśī (Vārānasi), a city celebrated for learning and spirituality, and then travelled all over India, holding discussions with phi-losophers of different creeds. His heated debate with Man.d.ana Miśra, a philosopher of the Mīmām.sā (Investigation) school, whose wife served as an umpire, is perhaps the most interesting episode in his biography and may reflect a historical fact; that is, keen conflict between Śan.kara, who regarded the knowledge of Brahman as the only means to final release, and followers of the Mīmām.sā school, which emphasized the performance of ordained duty and the Vedic rituals.Śan.kara was active in a politically chaotic age. 

He would not teach his doctrine to city dwellers. The power of Buddhism was still strong in the cities, though already declining, and Jainism, a nontheistic ascetic faith, prevailed among the merchants and manufacturers. Popular Hindu­ ism occupied the minds of ordinary people, while city dwellers pursued ease and pleasure. There were also epicu-reans in cities. It was difficult for Śan.kara to communicate Vedānta philosophy to these people. Consequently, Śan.kara propagated his teachings chiefly to sannyāsins and intellectuals in the villages, and he gradually won the respect of Brahmans and feudal lords. 

He enthusiastically endeavoured to restore the orthodox Brahmanical tradition without paying attention to the bhakti (devotional) movement, which had made a deep impression on ordinary Hindus in his age.Śan.kara made full use of his knowledge of Buddhism to attack Buddhist doctrines severely or to transmute them into his own Vedāntic nondualism, and he tried with great effort to “vedanticize” the Vedānta philosophy, which had been made extremely Buddhistic by his predecessors. The basic structure of his philosophy is more akin to Sān.kya, a philosophic system of nontheistic dualism, and the Yoga school than to Buddhism. It is said that Śankara died at Kedārnātha in the Himalayas.