Recently I published my research on the date of Adi Shankara as a book in print and also as an eBook on kindle.
The purpose of the book was to find out the birth year of Adi Shankaracharya for which I collected all the olden texts and those written by scholars of recent times to pick out the date features of Adi Shankara. Fortunately, most of the authors including Cithsukhacharya, a contemporary of Adi Shankara were unanimous in stating his birth in Nandana year, Vaishakha month, Shukla Pancami and Punarvasu on a Sunday noon. I checked the Nandana years between 500 BCE to 500 CE and found just one year coming up with all these details together. That was 11th April, 148 BCE.
Initially, I presented the existing version supported by the Mutts and showed why they are wrong. In most cases, the year was not Nandana at all. For example, the presently believed year of 509 BCE was not a Nandana year.
Then I go on to show the chronogram used. Paramacharya depended on the chronogram to arrive at the year 509 BCE whereas, the chronogram with an exchange of two numbers give 148 BCE. Instead of 2953, the texts have given the number 2593 kali years. 2953 gives 148 BCE where 2593 gives 509 BCE (when deducted from the base year of Kali 3102 BCE). The actual base year of Kali Yuga was 3101 BCE which many scholars disregarded. And many of them treated Yudhishthira Shaka as different from Kali Yuga.
The chronogram for his Mukti time also is slightly misread. This book offers the correct chronogram and the dates of other Shankara Mutts. A Chola King was the contemporary of Adi Shankara who made him re-design Kanchi as it is today. Cross references from the life of this Chola king and Tamil Sangam texts are provided to establish that Adi Shankara indeed was born in 148 BCE.
The contemporary king in Magadha at his time is revealed in this book with proper evidences. The names of places and kings used by Shankara in his commentaries are also satisfactorily explained in this book.
This book can be obtained from me for the cost of Rs.75 (shipping cost is Rs. 42)
Write to jayasreebooks@gmail.com to get the print copy. The list of all my books is given HERE
The Kindle edition of this book is available here: Kindle edition
2 comments:
Unrelated to this specific post. I have question on the claim made by your favorite Astronomy software ninja regarding the order n naming of the days of the week.
The claim is: arrange grhas in order from slowest to fastest assign it to each hr of the day repeating for the 24 hrs. Start with the remaining for the new day. The grha assigned to the first hr is the day of wk. The use of 24 instead of 30 is justified by Srimad Bhagavatam being the source for 24 hrs. Please confirm if this is correct. I am sceptical of the Planetarium Ninja.
Thanks,
Regards
@ M.C. Sriram,
I don't know what you mean by 'your favourite Astronomy software ninja'. There is nothing like that being a my favorite. I have always talked about the week day formation as given in astrology texts. The seven planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury and Moon are repeated in this order continuously and endlessly for ever, for ages!! The rationale of this line-up is found in Indic texts such as Surya Siddhānta, as the orbits of planets one below the other. Though this is not true in reality, this appears to be how it could have been perceived by the ancient society by naked eye observation.
Venus and Mercury were considered to be in lower orbits, because they don’t cross the sky and appear low. Moon was rightly perceived to be closer to the earth. From moon to Saturn these celestial entities were arranged in the order as observed and understood by them. That early society thought that these planets (sun and moon are also regarded as planets known as ‘Graha-s’ by the Vedic society even till this date) control each hora of the day one after another.
In a day the hora-s keep moving one after another for 24 horas. The enumeration starts from sunrise. The naming of the week days is done on the basis of the hora at sunrise. For example, if the sun hora is there at the time of sunrise, then the day is called as Sun’s Day – Sunday. If moon hora is present at the time of sunrise, the day is called as Monday. Like this other week days have been named. The 25th hora will be the first hora at sunrise the next morning. It lends its graha name to the week day. That is the rationale. Any other explanation is not valid. If Bhagavatam says 30, what is that 30? It is most likely to the 30 Nazhiagai (nadika) and not hora.
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