ಶಂಕರ ಜಯಂತಿ | Shankara Jayanti

Shankara Jayanti marks the birth of Adi Shankaracharya at Kalady, on the bank of the Purna in what is now Kerala. He is the author of the commentaries that gave Advaita Vedanta its settled form, and the founder of the mathas that still carry the tradition.

When it falls

The tithi is Vaishakha Shukla Panchami, and the day is the one on which the panchami is running at sunrise. Traditional accounts add that he was born under the nakshatra Ardra and at midday, and some almanacs weigh the nakshatra when the panchami is split across two days, but the tithi at sunrise is the ordinary rule.

What is done

This is an observance of the mathas and of Vedanta students rather than a household festival, and it looks like one. The day is kept with abhisheka to the padukas, recitation of the Shankara stotras, the Totakashtaka and the Guru Ashtaka among them, and a discourse on a passage from one of the bhashyas. At Sringeri the Sharada Peetham keeps it as one of the principal days of its year, and Karnataka practice follows Sringeri here.

Where there is a feeding it is of students and of the poor, which matches the character of the day. There is no fast attached, and no vrata for householders to keep.

What he wrote, and what he is credited with

The works whose authorship is not in dispute are the commentaries: on the Brahma Sutra, on the Bhagavad Gita, and on ten of the Upanishads. To these are added the Upadesha Sahasri and a body of stotras, of which the Bhaja Govindam, the Soundarya Lahari and the Kanakadhara Stotra are the best known.

A much larger body of writing is attributed to him than he can have written, and scholars treat several popular works, the Vivekachudamani among them, as later. This is worth saying because the attribution is often repeated as settled when it is not.

The four amnaya mathas are held to have been established by him at Sringeri, Dwaraka, Puri and Badari, with the Kanchi matha also tracing its descent to him. His life as it is told, the sannyasa taken as a boy, the debate with Mandana Mishra, the journeys the length of the subcontinent, comes from the digvijaya texts, which are devotional biography written centuries afterwards.

The date of his life

There is no agreement on when he lived. The dating accepted in most academic work places him in the eighth century. Some mathas hold to a much earlier date, the fifth century before the common era, on the strength of their own succession lists. The observance does not depend on settling this, and an almanac has no business pretending the question is closed.

One point of ordinary confusion: Shankara is also a name of Shiva, so a temple notice for a Shankara Jayanti in some regions may mean something else entirely. This entry is the acharya.