Since the story of Maṇḍana Miśra becoming Sureśvara is only found in some religious biographies of Śaṅkarācārya, we cannot know for certain whether it is fact or fiction. Therefore some scholars have tried to determine this by comparing the writings of Maṇḍana Miśra and Sureśvara, and finding references to them in other writings.

The first person to call into question the accepted tradition of their identity seems to have been M. Hiriyanna in two articles, “Suresvara and Mandana-Misra,” published in The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1923, pp. 259-263, and 1924, pp. 96-97. After some intervening articles on this topic by others, S. Kuppuswami Sastri, in his long English Introduction to his 1937 Sanskrit edition of Brahmasiddhi of Ācārya Maṇḍanamiśra, pp. xxiv-lvii, provided considerably more evidence that the two are different individuals. Yet in the Foreword to that same 1937 book, pp. vi-ix, P. P. Subrahmanya Sastri countered this evidence and maintained the traditional identity of the two. The debate has continued ever since. Suffice it to give two examples.

R. Balasubramanian in his article, “Identity of Maṇḍanamiśra” (Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 82, 1962, pp. 522-532), did not accept as definitive Kuppuswami Sastri’s evidence that the two are different individuals. He concluded, p. 532: “We can settle this question only if there is more definite evidence than we have at present in favour of either of the two views.”

Allan Wright Thrasher in his book, The Advaita Vedānta of Brahma-siddhi (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1993), wrote, p. 121: “I do not wish here to reopen the debate on Maṇḍana’s identity with Sureśvara, which I consider to have been settled once for all against their identity by Kuppuswami Sastri in his introduction to the BS.” Thrasher gives a bibliography of the debate in note 36 on pp. 155-156, with fuller references found in the Bibliography to his book, including dates of publication. He also counters Balasubramanian’s article in note 37, pp. 156-157.