[Advaita-l] Re:Birth Place of Shankara

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>i have come to know that, Sri Swami Sachidanandendra Saraswathi of 
>Holenarsipur has written a masterly analysis about the Great Acharya, - Sri 
>Shankara Chartira itihasa......vichara (some thing like that) in Kannada.
>
>in that, interestingly he (as i was told) has said that from the original 
>writings of Sri Acharya, we have no evidence to conclude that he was born 
>in south India only.  In his work he mentions about pataliputra (Brahma 
>Sutra Bhashya) and thus, mention about north india is definite.
>

Yes, we have no indication from Sankara's own works that he was a south 
Indian. The bhAShya mentions places in north India, but this evidence again 
does not say anything about his birthplace. On the other hand, sureSvara 
clearly refers to the teachers from gauDa and drAviDa (evaM gauDair 
drAviDair naH pUjyair ayam arthaH prabhAShitaH) in the naiShkarmyasiddhi. It 
is obvious that gauDapAda of the mANDUkya kArikA-s is the gauDa teacher 
referred to in the above verse, and it follows that SankarabhagavatpAda is 
the drAviDa teacher. This is the best evidence we have from any original 
advaita work, long before any of the Sankara-digvijaya accounts were 
written.

Vidyasankar

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