Adi Shankara

Indian philosopher and theologian (Adi Shankara, traditionally dated to the eighth century AD, though some modern scholarship proposes earlier dates), born, according to tradition, in Kaladi, in the present-day state of Kerala, into a Brahmin family, and regarded as the most influential systematiser of Advaita Vedanta ('non-dualism of the Vedanta'), the Hindu philosophical school holding that ultimate reality (Brahman) and the individual soul (Atman) are, in essence, identical, and that the world's perceived duality and multiplicity result from metaphysical ignorance (avidya) and an illusory veil (maya) concealing this fundamental unity. According to hagiographic tradition, he renounced the world while still a teenager to become a wandering monk (sannyasi), and in an exceptionally short life — he died, according to various sources, between the ages of thirty-two and thirty-eight — travelled the length of the Indian subcontinent debating rival philosophers from Buddhist, Jain and other Hindu traditions, and founding four great monasteries (mathas) at the four cardinal points of India to consolidate and perpetuate his teaching, institutions still active today. His most important philosophical work consists of extensive commentaries (bhashyas) on the three texts regarded as the 'triple foundation' (prasthanatrayi) of Vedanta: the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras, in which he argues with sophisticated logical rigour that only direct knowledge (jnana) of the identity between Atman and Brahman — not ritual or works — can lead to final liberation (moksha) from the cycle of rebirths. His philosophical synthesis, which integrated and subjected the diversity of earlier Vedic traditions to rigorous non-dualist interpretation, is generally regarded as the most influential and sophisticated intellectual framework of all classical Hinduism, and his imprint is decisive across virtually all later schools of Indian philosophy, both those that agree with him and those that critique him.

4 works

• Atma Bodha (The Knowledge of Spirit)
• Bhagavad-Gita with the Commentary of Sri Shankaracharya, translated to English b
• Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracharya, Part I (Brahma Sutra Bhashya)
• Vivekachudamani