on zankara's date - 2

[Sudalaimuthu Palaniappan]

While cleaning up some old files, I came upon an old Indology posting.

On Sun, 24 May 1998 12:43:07 PDT, Vidyasankar Sundaresan  wrote,

"Many thanks to all who answered my query on the South Indian place
names. The references were from a 17th century kAvya called
SankarAbhyudya, by one rAjacUDAmaNi dIkshita. The two places I'm still
unsure of are mahAsurAlaya in Kerala and koTTalampAkkam in TN. The
Sanskritized names occur in numerous verses, so I won't quote them all.
One verse which I thought was particularly interesting refers to the
Tamil literary tradition of Madurai (V. 34) -

atha tatra sanghapalakAdhirohiNo draviDa prabandha paradevatAtmanaH |
kalaSIkumArakRta sUtravartmanA kavayan vyajeshTa katicit kavISvarAn ||

Here, SankarAcArya is said to have debated with some Tamil poets. The
word sanghapalaka is a reference to the Tamil cankam, kalaSIkumAra is
agastya, and the sUtra attributed to him is the Tamil grammar. Rather
than viewing this as purely legendary, I think the verse talks of a very
real interaction between Sanskritic and Tamil traditions in 17th century
Tamil Nadu. The "SankarAcArya" of this verse is not the author of the
Advaita commentaries, but almost certainly a later personality, who bore
the name SankarAcArya as a title."

It will be good if he can expand on this. Is the kAvya about Adi zaGkara or a
later zaGkarAcArya? What are the reasons for postulating a later
zaGkarAcArya? My reason is that if this Sanskrit tradition is about Adi
zaGkara, it will agree with the possibility of zaGkara meeting mANikkavAcakar
who was a poet-saint who earlier was the minister of the Pandyan king in
Madurai.

Regards
S. Palaniappan