vAcaspatimizra

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

N. Ganesan <naga_ganesan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:


>vAcaspatimizra who is generally dated to mid-9th to 10th century.
>Sankara's date is usually backed from this vAcaspati's date. The
>existence of a Cambodian inscription mentioning one Sankara
>(R. Nagaswamy,  The date of Sankara, JOI (Baroda),  1962 says
>Cambodian inscription's Sankara is different from Adi Sankara)

Nagaswamy has his own reasons for doubting this, don't you think? If you
recall, he also wants Sankara's date to be in the BC period.

>and the vAcaspatimizra's 9/10th century have combined to create
>the late 8th/9th century date for Sankara. Perhaps, an Indian author
>forwarded the mid-9th century date for vAcaspati and, this caught a
>wide acceptance in the West. How many bhAmati mss. are in existence?
>Do all(or most) of them give colophons to 850 CE?
>

Inscriptions and their interpretation aside, there is concrete literary
evidence for vAcaspatimizra. bhAmatI colophons do not give the date of
composition. vAcaspati gives a date in a nyAya work of his, from which you
get either 840 CE or 975 CE, depending on whether you add 78 to or subtract
57 from the given date.

Vidyasankar