Calling themselves Hindu in the 14th century

[Vidyasankar Sundaresan]

>It is interesting that in this mileau where the term Hindu as
>a religious category gets adopted by Hindus themselves,
>Madava Vidyaranya starts the first Sankaran matha and propagates a
>a myth that it was founded by the phlosopher Sankara himself.
>After seeing the production of dvaita sect founder's hagiography,
>Madava, the minister at the early court of Vijayanagar, probably
>started writing the Sankara digvijaya text,- also a first.

It seems to me that participation on this list serves no
purpose ultimately. The year 1235 for an inscription naming
Vidyasankara sticks out from a century before the earliest
evidence from Vijayanagara. I taxed the patience of list
members by discussing loads of information on this count,
under the Madhava-Vidyaranya-Sringeri thread, a couple of
months ago, where I argued for a more nuanced evaluation
of 13th and 14th century data. At the end of it all, this
kind of gross oversimplification is what remains. Reminds
me of one of my own earlier comments on sunaHpucchas and
their akuTilIkaraNa.

Vidyasankar
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