[Advaita-l] The historicity of the Madhaviya Shankara Vijaya

[V Subrahmanian]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2018 at 7:17 AM, Raghav Kumar Dwivedula via Advaita-l <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

>  Namaste Sri Kalyan
>
> We have a similar situation with Adi Shankara whose oldest  biography
> was written only 400-500 years after his life but is still regarded
> as authentic.
>

Dear Raghav ji,

The above is from your post in the other thread on Buddhism and Caste.

There is one point that is worth consideration by all those who are
interested in the Shankara-date issue.  The Madhaviya Shankara Vijaya, at
the outset itself says that this work is based on a 'Brihat Shankara
Vijaya', and that the present work is only a condensation/abridged of the
earlier one, although that earlier work is not available to us.

My interest in this is getting condensed because of an observation of mine
in the 'Mani Manjari', a work admitted by Madhvas as of one Narayana
Pandita who is a contemporary of Madhva. This work has in it a dialogue
that is famous in the Madhaviya Shankara Vijaya, as between Mandana Misra
and Shankara.  The lines 'कुतो मुण्डी?',  'आगलान्मुण्डी', etc. is found in
the Mani Manjari, almost as it is in the Shankara Vijaya.  It is well known
that the author of the Vijaya is later to the time of Madhva by at least
one century.  Hence my guess that the Brihat Shankara Vijaya must have
existed much before even Madhva and that Narayana Pandita must have taken
parts from it to concoct his story of Shankara.  A further research in this
is worth, I think.

warm regards
subbu

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> Raghav
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