Madhava, Vidyaranya, Sringeri, and Kulke

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

Part 2 of bibliography -

13. C. Kamakoti Sastri, 1981, SrI kAmAtci ampAL stala varalARu (Tamil),
Madras: Shammi Syndicate Press - where Sankara is said to have established
four Mathas at Sringeri, Puri, Dwaraka and Haridwar (note again the south
Indian author's general lack of knowledge about the north - tradition places
the main northern institution at Badrinath, not Haridwar). The author is the
hereditary sthAnIka of the Kanchi Kamakshi temple. He is diplomatically
silent about a Kanchi Matha, mentioning Sri Chandrasekharendra Sarasvati
only in connection with the Kumbhabhishekam of the Bangaru Kamakshi temple
in Tanjavur in the 1950's.

14. R. Krishnaswamy Aiyar and K. R. Venkataraman, 1977, The Truth about the
Kumbhakonam Mutt, Madurai: Ramakrishna Press - the first English language
publication from the Sringeri side that presents anti-Kanchi polemic. The
first author also wrote a Tamil work in 1933 or so. Compare these dates with
those of items 3, 4 and 12 in this list, which show that theirs is largely a
response to the anti-Sringeri polemic from Kanchipuram. However, the authors
stubbornly refuse to mention Kanchipuram, and talk only of the Kumbhakonam
Matha, without clarifying that there is only one institution at both places.
This has completely mislead C. J. Fuller (Servants of the Goddess, Cambridge
University Press, 1984) and William Cenkner (item 21a below).

15. M. R. Bodas, 1923, SrI SankarAcArya va tyAMcA sampradAya (Marathi)
Bombay, private publication - where it is held that the main southern
institution should have been neither at Sringeri nor at Kanchipuram, but at
Rameswaram, which is part of the notion of cAr-dhAm, along with Dwaraka,
Puri and Badrinath.

16. Natalia Isayeva, 1993, Shankara and Indian Philosophy. Albany: SUNY
Press - where she has wondered why a scholar of the stature of T. M. P.
Mahadevan has involved himself with this polemic. She has also seriously
questioned Hacker's contention that Sankara was a Vaishnava, and made into a
Saiva only by hagiography.

17. L. Schmithausen, 1978, ed. Kleine Schriften (German), Wiesbaden: Steiner
- containing Paul Hacker's articles on Sankara and Vidyaranya. Most of these
have been translated into English and published as, Philology and
Confrontation: Paul Hacker on Traditional and Modern Vedanta, Wilhem
Halbfass, ed. and trans., 1995, Albany: SUNY Press.

18. Sengaku Mayeda, 1992, A Thousand Teachings: The Upadesasahasri of
Sankara, Albany: SUNY Press - Author's translation of his critical edition
of this Sankaran text. His extensive introduction is very good. Mayeda is
also the author of the entry on Sankara in the current Encyclopedia
Britannica.

19. G. C. Pande, 1994, Life and Thought of Sankaracarya, Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass - one can have various opinions of this text, based on one's
perspective. He argues for accepting a larger corpus of texts attributed to
Sankara as genuine, but nowhere offers very strong arguments. My only major
comment about it is that although he says he has taken up the suggestion of
Prof. K. Satchidananda Murthy to handle the traditional material critically,
Pande's treatment falls far short of his goal.

20. William Cenkner, 1983, A Tradition of Teachers: Sankara and the
Jagadgurus today, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. My comments on this text may
be found elsewhere. See
<http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucgadkw/position/shank-jyot.html>.

21a. William Cenkner, 1992, "The Sankaracharya of Kanchi and the Kamakshi
temple as Ritual center." In, Raymond B. Williams, ed. A Sacred Thread,
Chambersburg, PA: Anima Publications - reads almost like an apologetic for
the Kanchi Matha.

21b. Glenn Yocum, 1992, "The coronation of a Guru: Charisma, politics, and
philosophy in contemporary India." In, Raymond B. Williams, ed. A Sacred
Thread, Chambersburg, PA: Anima Publications - describing the 1989
coronation of the current Sankaracharya of Sringeri, from a anthropological
structuralist perspective. The rest is conveyed by the title.

22. D. N. Lorenzen, 1983, "The Life of Sankaracarya." In, Fred W. Clothey
and J. Bruce Long, eds., Experiencing Siva: Encounters with a Hindu Deity,
155-175. New Delhi: Manohar Publications - where the legend of Sankara as an
incarnation of Siva is compared with the mythology of Krishna, and the
Puranic avatAras of Vishnu.

23. Yoshitsugu Sawai, 1992, The faith of ascetics and lay smartas: a study
of the Sankaran tradition of Srngeri, Sammlung de Nobili, Instituet fuer
Indologie der Universitaet Wien (Institute of Indology, University of
Vienna).

24. A. K. Shastry, 1982, A History of Sringeri, Dharwad: Karnatak
University.

Regards,
Vidyasankar
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