Adi Shankara and the Revival of Advaita Vedanta

Date

c. 700-750 CE

Category

Religion & ideology

Region

South Asia

Era

Post-Classical / Medieval

Significance

Adi Shankara, a Hindu philosopher and theologian born at Kaladi in Kerala and active in the first half of the eighth century CE, systematised the non-dualist (Advaita) school of Vedanta and reinvigorated orthodox Brahminical thought against the prevailing influence of Buddhism, Jainism, and ritualist Mimamsa.

He argued that the individual self (atman) is identical with the absolute reality (Brahman) and that the perceived plurality of the world is maya, a provisional appearance dissolved by liberating knowledge. His authenticated commentaries (bhashyas) on the Brahma Sutras, the principal Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita, together with treatises such as the Upadesasahasri, became the foundational texts of the tradition. Tradition credits him with founding four monastic centres (mathas) at Sringeri in the south, Dvaraka in the west, Jagannatha Puri in the east, and Badrinath/Jyotirmath in the north, and with organising Hindu ascetics into the Dashanami orders. Though his historical influence grew chiefly through later hagiography from the fourteenth century onward, Advaita Vedanta became the dominant strand of Hindu philosophy and shaped Indian religious and intellectual life for more than a millennium.

Empires active in c. 700-750 CE

• Umayyad Caliphate
  661 CE – 750 CE
• Tang Dynasty
  618 CE – 907 CE
• Byzantine Empire
  330 CE – 1453 CE
• Kanem-Bornu Empire
  700 CE – 1900 CE
• Tibetan Empire
  618 CE – 842 CE
• Khazar Khaganate
  650 CE – 969 CE

Related religion & ideology events

• The Hijra: Muhammad's migration to Medina
  622 CE
• Muhammad's first revelation in the Cave of Hira
  c. 610 CE
• Battle of Karbala and the Sunni–Shia divide
  10 October 680 CE
• Onset of Byzantine Iconoclasm under Leo III
  c. 726–730 CE
• Official Introduction of Buddhism to Japan
  552 CE (traditional date; 538 CE in some sources)
• Church of the East Reaches Tang China (Alopen Mission)
  635 CE

Further reading

A Little History of Religion

The wider story

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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