The date of Sankara

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>that while Kunjunni subtracts only around 40 years from
>vAcaspati to get to Sankara, a liberal 75 yrs. were taken out
>to reach this 900 CE. I don't know  how Bhaskara comes
>into this unless he or his successors lived between 850-900 CE.

That is precisely the case. Error margins around the most
probable dates are not infinitely plastic, to be molded any
which way one likes.

Bhaskara's date is not a new piece of evidence that I
introduce to this discussion, just to upset your stand.
As early as 1933, Hiriyanna showed that Bhaskara was pre-
Vacaspati and post-Sankara. In 1954, Ingalls pointed out that
Bhaskara may also have been post-Suresvara and post-Padmapada.
Bhaskara's earliest date would thus make him contemporaneous
with Sankara's direct disciples, and the latest date would be
contemporaneous with Vacaspati. The dates of these people are
not so many different unrelated problems. It is really one
single problem, dealing with the same evidence and the same
issues. So if you wish to recalculate Sankara's date, it would
be better to replace a fragmentary approach, based on a single
paper, with a more global survey of the relevant literature.
That you have given a margin of 75 years as compared to 40
years does not confer any great merit to the calculation.

Best wishes,
Vidyasankar
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