[Advaita-l] Conference on that Date of Adi Sankaracharya in October, 2002

[Bhaskar YR]

Hope mother Sarada will guide us in this endeavour to satisfy ourselves 
regarding the date of Adi Sankaracharya.

praNAms Sri Sunil prabhuji
Hare Krishna

If at all I pray for mother shArada's guidance, I pray for jnAna & 
vairAgya and definitely not for authenticated shankara's birth certificate 
:-)) 

I am really wondering is this really such a big issue??!!  In what way 
determining the shankara's birth date to certainity going to help us??  I 
am sure, advancing shankara's birth date to 5th century or earlier to that 
 does not going to help us to advance our self realization or postponing 
the date to 8th century or later to that delay our realization :-)) 
Normally, as I have observed, my cyber guruji Sri Vidya prabhuji does not 
speak unnecessarily but this time I am surprising to see he is spending 
most of his valuable time, energy & intelligence on this issue!!  How does 
fixing date of birth of shankara is going to help us in our spiritual / 
vedAntic sAdhana I am not able to understand.  Dont you think this fight 
is due to mere academic superiority complex!!

While on the subject, I would like to bring to the notice of this forum 
that late Prof. S.K. Ramachandra Rao, (was the chief of Kalpataru 
saMshOdhana Kendra here in Bangalore dakshiNamnaya shankara mutt branch) 
has written & discussed elaborately on shankara's birth date in his 
English book 'Shankara & adhyAsa bhAshya'...Those who are interested in 
his views can refer this book.  Interestingly he says in his Kannada book 
'shAnkara sandesha' that shankara's date has now been fixed and i.e. 632 
to 664...He quotes the reference for this : T.R. Chintaamani, Journal of 
Oriental Research, Madras, 1929, III,  pages -39 to 56..he also says here 
in this reference that this calculation has been completely accepted by 
mahA mahOpAdhyAya Sri Kuppuswami shAstri and other well known scholars 
(prasiddha vidvAmsa-s).

Hari Hari Hari Bol!!!
bhaskar