The Great Śaṅkarabrahmānanda: 20th Century Hagiography of a Malayali Saṃnyāsī

Olga Nowicka, PhD Candidate, Jagiellonian University, Kraków

Śaṅkarabrahmānandavilāsam composed by Ālattur Anujan Nambudirippad (1882-1943) is a hagiographic text composed, as author states himself, in Maṇipravālam, a literary style used in medieval liturgical texts in Kerala which used an admixture of Malayalam and Sanskrit. The work narrates a life story of a Trichur Thekke Maṭham’s (‘Southern Maṭham’) Svāmiyār (i.e. head of a monastic institution) named Śaṅkarabrahmānanda who was said to be born in Kirāṅṅāṭṭu Mana. As the Thekke Maṭham paramparā list enumerates few Swamiyārs of that name, it is still uncertain to which individual the story relates. The author of the composition was born in 1882 in Ālattur Mana near Wadakkancherry in Trichur District (central Kerala) as the son of Ālattur Janardanan Nambudirippad. His real name was Krishnan and he studied Vedas and Sanskrit in the traditional way in gurukula – possibly in Vadakke Maṭham Brahmaswam of Trichur what could explain his familiarity with the Trichur monastic tradition. He was considered to be proficient in prose as well as in poetry. One of his major works was a historical novel Rāṇī Gaṅgādharā Lakṣmī.

The poem Śaṅkarabrahmānandavilāsam by Ālattur Anujan Nambudirippad is an eulogy (comprising 326 stanzas) of Śaṅkarabrahmānanda – a saṃnyāsī of the Keralan Advaita Vedānta monastic tradition. The text is a unique record of the Advaita Vedānta ascetic’s life in the beginning of the twentieth century Kerala. It gives detailed description of the pūrvāśrama life of Śaṅkarabrahmānanda, his dīkṣā ceremony, quotidian ritualistic routine, funeral rites etc. but it also shows the recognition and standing of a Nambudiri saṃnyāsī within the local community.

In this paper, I intend to present a closer perspective on the regional Advaita Vedānta monastic tradition in Kerala in the early twentieth century by analyzing selected portions from the text Śaṅkarabrahmānandavilāsam.