INTRODUCTION

Advent of Sankara

When religion was thus becoming tainted with vice and crime Sankaracharya (788-820), the great Advaita philosopher was born at Kaladi, an obscure village in central Kerala. He could not bear the
sight of people quarrelling in the name of God and indulging in immorality and bloodshed to propitiate Him. Declining the gold and position offered by King Raja- sekhara of Kodungallur, this Nambudiri Brahmin left Kerala in his youth and undertook a pilgrimage of all important centres of Hinduism in the country (See Kaladi-The Birth Place of Adi Sankara, Chapter II for story of the Saint.)

He propounded the philosophy of Advaita or one without a second and convinced the learned everywhere, who acknowledged the superiority of this system based on the teachings of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. According to this philosophy there is nothing real in this world except the One Supreme God, i.e. the Brahman.

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