[Advaita-l] Sankara's praise of Buddha

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2011, V Subrahmanian wrote:

> *The title of the work is 'dashAvatArastotram'.  The verse appears after
> KrishnAvatara and before Kalki avatAra.  The work is attributed to
> Shakaracharya.
>

Note that this stotra was not included in the Vani Vilas edition of the 
complete works of Shankaracharya.  I doubt if it is genuine.  Even when 
Gaudapadacharya gives (albeit backhanded) praise to the Buddha in the 
Mandukya karikas, Shankaracharya does not follow suit and I'm not aware of 
any other place where he speaks of the Buddha in a positive way or even at 
all.  (Most of his engagement with Buddhists is with much later 
philosophers.)

Neither as far as I know has this stotra been commented on by later 
Advaitins such as Anandagiri or Svayamprakasha.  While not a clincher this 
would be very unlikely if this was an original work of Shankaracharya.

Radhakrishnan had some scholarly credentials but he was first and foremost 
a politician and this wouldn't be the first time he distorted the truth to 
fit his personal agenda.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>