ADI SHANKARACHARYA

Shankara was a man of amazing energy and vast activity. He was no escapist retiring into his shell or into a corner of the forest, seeking his own individual perfection and oblivious of what happened to others. Born in Malabar in the far south of India, he travelled incessantly all over India, meeting innumerable people, arguing, debating, reasoning, convincing, and filling them with a part of his own passion and tremendous vitality. He was evidently a man who was intensely conscious of his mission, a man who looked upon the whole of India from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas as his field of action and as something that held together culturally and was infused by the same spirit, though this might take many external forms. He strove hard to synthesize the diverse currents that were troubling the mind of India of his day and to build a unity of outlook out of that diversity. In a brief life of thirty-two years, he did the work of many long lives and left such an impression of his powerful mind and rich personality on india that it is very evident today. He was a curious mixture of a philosopher and a scholar, an agnostic and a mystic, a poet and a saint, and in addition to all this, a practical reformer and an able organizer. He built up for the first time within the Brahminical fold ten religious orders and of these four are very much alive today. He established four great maths or Monasteries, locating them far from each other, almost at the four corners of India. One of these was in the south at Sringeri in Mysore, another at Puri on the east coast the third at Dwaraka in Kathiawad on the west coast, and the fourth at Badrinath in the heart of the Himalayas. At the age of thirty-two, this Brahmin from the tropical south died at Kedarnath in the upper snow-covered reaches of the Himalayas.

There is a significance about these long journeys of Shankara throughout this vast land at a time when travel was difficult and the means of transport very slow and primitive. The very conception of these journeys, and his meeting kindred souls everywhere and speaking to them in Sanskrit, the common language of the learned throughout India, brings out the essential unity of India even in those far-off days. Such journeys could not have been uncommon then or earlier, people went to and fro in spite of political divisions, new books travelled, and every new thought or, fresh theory spread rapidly over the entire country and became the subject of interesting talk and often of heated debates. There was not only a common intellectual and cultural life among the educated people, but vast numbers of common folk were continually travelling to the numerous places of pilgrimage, spread out all over the land and famous from epic times.

All this going to and fro and meeting people from different parts of the country must have intensified the conception of a common land and a common culture. This travelling was not confined to the upper castes, among the pilgrims were men and women of all castes and classes. Whatever the religious significance of these pilgrimages in thy minds of the people might have been, they were looked upon also as they are today, as holiday time and opportunities for merry-making and seeing different parts of the country. Every place of pilgrimage contained a cross- section of to people of India in all their great variety of custom, dress, and language, and yet very conscious of their common features and the bonds that hold them together and brought all of them to meet in one place. Even the difference of language between the north and the south did not prove a formidable barrier to this intercourse.

All this was so then and Shankara was doubtless fully aware of it. It would seem that Shankara wanted to add to this sense of national unity and common consciousness. He functioned on the intellectual, philosophical and religious plane and tried to bring about a greater unity of thought all over the county. He functioned also on the popular plane in many ways, destroying many dogma and opening the door of his philosophic sanctuary to every one who was capable of entering it. By locating his four great monasteries in the north, south, east, and west, he evidently wanted to encourage the conception of a culturally united india. These four places had been previously places of pilgrimage from all parts of the country, and now became more so. How well the ancient Indians chose their sacred places of pilgrimage. Almost always they are lovely spots with beautiful natural surroundings. There is the icy cave of Amarnath in Kashmir, and there is the temple of the Virgin Goddess right at the southern tip of india at Rameshwaram, near Cape Comorin. There is Benares, of course, and Hardwar, nestling at the foot of the Himalayas, where the Ganges flows, out of it tortuous mountain valleys into the plains below, and Prayaga (or Allahabad) where the Ganges meets the Jumna, and Mathura and Brindaban by the Jumna, round which the Krishna legends cluster, and Budh Gaya where Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment, and so many peaces in the south. Many of the old temples, especially in the south, contain famous sculptures and other artistic remains. A visit to many of the places of pilgrimage thus gives an insight into the old Indian art.