[Advaita-l] Conference on that Date

[Satish Arigela]

>Interesting.  I have not read about any Navagupta nor about his fame and works  in the >history of Kamarupa.



I don't know if anybody is sure of the existence of any shAkta by name
navagupta in Assam. The mAdhavIya shankara digvijaya contains fanciful
elements like the encounter with kApAlika-s etc etc given that it is a
hagiography but that is not reason enough to brush aside its other
contents which may be historically accurate.

http://www.advaita-vedanta.org/avhp/sankara-vijayam.html



As an aside:



It is normal that works like this contain stories but they cannot be
dismissed as a whole on that ground. There are other encounters it
mentions with scholars who were not Shankara's contemporaries. There is
a possibility that navagupta is a thinly veiled reference to
abhinavagupta of kAshmIr though we can never be sure.



Take the case of the buddhist works which call the vaidika brAhmaNa-s
as evil even though the nature of the people it is referring to, is totally opposite. The references to this evil shAkta navagupta or
the treacherous kApAlika-s should probably be seen in this light.