KAn.chI

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>QUESTION:  Do  the  other  lesser  "ShankarAcAryas"  say  of  KUDli,
>GayA  etc.  acknowledge  the  supremacy  of  the  4
>Super-ShankarAcAryas?  OR  are  they  independent?

Generally, everybody is independent, and there is no centralized authority.
For the AmnAya maThas themselves, their primary reason for setting
themselves apart from the rest is their traditional priority in history.
When it comes to personal relations, other rules hold. For example,
Virupaksha Sastri, who was a vidyA-guru of Swami Chandrasekhara Bharati of
Sringeri, later became the head of Kudali matha, with the name Valukesvara
Bharati. The "higher" status of Sringeri did not stop the Sringeri Swami
from acknowledging and paying respects to his teacher.

>the  small  group  of  GauDa-SArasvat  SmArtas.  The  abbotts  of
>ChitrApur-ShirALi  MaTha  belong  to  the  "Ashrama"  order.  The
>current  reigning  abbott  (as  far  I  know)  is  ParijNAnAshrama.

Swami Parijnanashrama of Chitrapura passed away in 1991. The seat was lying
vacant till 1997. The new Swami is called Sadyojata Shankarashrama.

Vidyasankar


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