Ādi Śaṅkarācārya

The traditional biographies (the most cited is the Śaṅkaravijaya attributed to Mādhava-Vidyāraṇya) credit Śaṅkara with a life of extraordinary intensity: born at Kālāḍi in Kerala to a Nambūdiri brahmin family, a prodigious student of Sanskrit and Vedanta from childhood, renunciant at eight years, student of Govindapāda (himself a student of Gauḍapāda) by early adolescence, prolific commentarial writer and debater across the subcontinent, and dead at thirty-two.

The historicity of the traditional biographies is disputed — the dates, the precise itinerary, the claimed debates are not independently verifiable. What is historically certain: his texts exist, are internally consistent with a single authorial voice, and were composed within the Gauḍapāda lineage of the Advaita tradition. His teacher's teacher Gauḍapāda wrote the Māṇḍūkya Kārikā — the most systematically rigorous pre-Śaṅkara Advaita text — and Śaṅkara builds directly on its foundations.

He established four monastic centres (maṭha) at the cardinal points of the subcontinent — Śṛṅgeri (south), Dvārakā (west), Badarī (north), Purī (east) — which continue to function as centres of the Advaita tradition. The Śṛṅgeri Śāradā Pīṭha in Karnataka maintains the continuous line of teachers (paramparā) from Śaṅkara to the present.

Śaṅkara wrote commentaries on all three texts that constitute the prasthānatraya — the triple canonical basis of all Vedānta philosophy: the Upaniṣads (śruti prasthāna), the Bhagavad Gītā (smṛti prasthāna), and the Brahmasūtras (nyāya prasthāna). This triple commentary is what makes Advaita a fully systematic philosophical school — not just an interpretation of one text but a comprehensive reading of the entire Vedāntic canonical corpus. All subsequent Vedānta schools that challenged Advaita (Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita, Madhva's Dvaita) were required to write their own commentaries on the same three texts to be taken seriously as complete philosophical positions.

Before the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya proper begins, Śaṅkara writes a short introduction (adhyāsa bhāṣya or preamble) that many scholars consider his most important philosophical statement. He identifies adhyāsa (superimposition — the mutual attribution of properties between self and not-self) as the root of all bondage. The entire problem of human existence is: we take the self (consciousness, subject) to be an object, and we take objects to be self. This mutual superimposition is the seed of desire, fear, and suffering. The entire inquiry of the Upaniṣads — and of Śaṅkara's commentary — is the systematic removal of this superimposition. Not by gaining something new, but by recognising the error that was always already the problem.

Śaṅkara's commentarial project was systematic and comprehensive: he wrote bhāṣyas on what the tradition calls the prasthānatrayī — the threefold canonical foundation of Vedanta. The Upaniṣad bhāṣyas (ten principal Upanishads: Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Kauṣītaki, Kaṭha, Kena, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍūkya with Gauḍapāda's Kārikā, and Īśā). The Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya — the most accessible of the three sets of commentaries, and the one most frequently used in modern Advaita teaching. The Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya — the philosophical centrepiece, the most technically demanding, and the text through which Śaṅkara's Advaita Vedanta staked its claim as the authoritative interpretation of the Upanishadic tradition. Together these three commentarial sets constitute the most ambitious interpretive project in the history of Indian philosophy: a coherent, systematically non-dual reading of the entire canonical corpus.

The adhyāsa bhāṣya — the preamble to the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya — is perhaps the single most important piece of original philosophical writing in the Advaita tradition. Not a commentary but Śaṅkara's own framing of the epistemological problem the entire Vedanta inquiry addresses. The claim: all ordinary human cognition and all ordinary human suffering are rooted in a fundamental cognitive error — the superimposition of self and not-self on each other — and the Vedanta inquiry is the specific method for dissolving this foundational error. This framing makes the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya not just a commentary on Bādarāyaṇa's sūtras but a philosophical argument about the nature of the problem the entire tradition is addressing. The adhyāsa bhāṣya is Śaṅkara's calling card — the announcement of what Advaita is and why it is necessary.

The question of which texts are genuinely by Śaṅkara is one of the most contested issues in Indological scholarship. The scholarly consensus, largely established through the work of Paul Hacker and Sengaku Mayeda, identifies a core of authentic texts on the basis of consistent philosophical vocabulary, doctrinal positions, and stylistic features: the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya, the ten Upaniṣad bhāṣyas, the Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya, the Upadeśasāhasrī, the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (disputed), and a small number of shorter works. Dozens of texts traditionally attributed to Śaṅkara — including the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, which most Advaita teachers continue to use as his — are of disputed or likely later authorship. The devotional hymns attributed to Śaṅkara (the Bhaja Govindam, the various stotras) are almost certainly by later authors. This does not make them less valuable as Advaita texts — it simply means that the authentic Śaṅkara corpus is smaller and more focused than the traditional attribution suggests.

The philosophical significance of the attribution question: if the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi is not by Śaṅkara (as Hacker and others argue on philological grounds), then the most practically oriented Advaita teaching text — the one most widely used in modern instruction — represents a later development of the tradition rather than Śaṅkara's own pedagogical approach. The authentic Śaṅkara, in Hacker's and Mayeda's reconstruction, is somewhat more austere and philosophically technical: his own preferred teaching text appears to have been the Upadeśasāhasrī, not the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi. The practical Advaita tradition has been shaped more by the (possibly later) Vivekacūḍāmaṇi than by the authentic Śaṅkara corpus — which says something interesting about how traditions develop.

Śaṅkara's interpretive method — called adhyāropa-apavāda (deliberate superimposition followed by its retraction) — is the key to understanding both his commentaries and his pedagogy. The method works in two stages. First, superimpose: describe Brahman in positive, accessible terms that the student can engage with — Brahman as the cosmic creator, the inner controller, the ground of all existence. This gives the student something to work toward. Second, retract: when the student is sufficiently oriented, systematically remove the superimposed descriptions, showing that Brahman is prior to all the characteristics attributed to it. The positive description is a provisional orientation; the retraction is the neti neti that removes the provisional and reveals the ultimate. This method explains why Śaṅkara's commentaries can appear to affirm contradictory positions: at one level he affirms Brahman as creator (saguṇa, for the beginning student); at another level he affirms Brahman as nirguṇa (for the advanced student). Both are correct at their respective levels; the method moves from the former to the latter.

Śaṅkara's philosophical legacy is difficult to overstate. He synthesised the Upanishadic inheritance into a coherent system at a time when several rival interpretations (Sāṃkhya, Mīmāṃsā, early Viśiṣṭādvaita) were competing for the status of the authoritative Vedantic school. His Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya defined the terms of the debate for the next thousand years. His successors — Rāmānuja, Madhva, Nimbārka — all wrote their own Brahmasūtra Bhāṣyas in explicit response to Śaṅkara's. Even the philosophical schools that most vigorously disagreed with him (Rāmānuja's Viśiṣṭādvaita, Madhva's Dvaita) were shaped by the framework he established. The non-dual Brahman of the Advaita tradition, the two-level vyāvahārika-pāramārthika analysis, the precise adhyāsa account of bondage, the karma-jñāna distinction — all of these are Śaṅkara's philosophical gifts to the Indian tradition and, increasingly, to the global conversation about consciousness and the nature of the self.

Primary texts in reliable translation: Sengaku Mayeda, trans., A Thousand Teachings: The Upadeśasāhasrī of Śaṅkara (SUNY Press, 1992) — the most reliably authentic Śaṅkara teaching text in excellent scholarly translation. Swami Gambhirananda, trans., Brahma-Sūtra-Bhāṣya of Śrī Śaṅkarācārya (Advaita Ashrama, 2010) — the complete Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya. Swami Gambhirananda, trans., Eight Upaniṣads with the Commentary of Śaṅkarācārya (Advaita Ashrama, 2009) — eight of the ten principal Upanishad commentaries. Swami Gambhirananda, trans., Bhagavad-Gītā with the Commentary of Śaṅkarācārya (Advaita Ashrama, 2010).

Secondary scholarship: Paul Hacker, essays in Philology and Confrontation (SUNY Press, 1995) — foundational scholarship on the authentic Śaṅkara corpus. Sengaku Mayeda, Introduction to A Thousand Teachings — the most reliable modern account of Śaṅkara's philosophy and its historical context. Eliot Deutsch, Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction (University of Hawaii Press, 1969) — accessible philosophical reconstruction. A.J. Alston, Śaṅkara on the Absolute (Shanti Sadan, London, 1980) — detailed thematic study.

One of Śaṅkara's most enduring institutional contributions was the establishment of four monastic centres (maṭhas) at the cardinal points of the Indian subcontinent. Śṛṅgeri Śāradā Pīṭha (south, Karnataka): associated with the Ṛg Veda and the mahāvākya "Ahaṃ Brahmāsmi." Dvārakā Śāradā Pīṭha (west, Gujarat): associated with the Sāma Veda and "Tat Tvam Asi." Jyotir Maṭha Pīṭha (north, Uttarakhand): associated with the Atharva Veda and "Ayam Ātmā Brahma." Govardhana Pīṭha Purī (east, Odisha): associated with the Yajur Veda and "Prajñānam Brahma." Each maṭha is headed by a Śaṅkarācārya — a lineage of teachers maintaining the unbroken Advaita teaching tradition. The Śṛṅgeri maṭha is the most prominent in terms of scholarly continuity; the late Chandrasekhara Bharati (died 1954) and the current head Bharati Tirtha are examples of its continued philosophical activity.

The establishment of the four maṭhas was not merely organisational — it was Śaṅkara's instrument for ensuring that the Advaita teaching would have institutional homes at every point of the subcontinent, making the tradition accessible throughout India regardless of political and cultural variations. The maṭhas also established the tradition of the sannyāsin-teacher as the primary vehicle for the Advaita teaching — the renunciant who has completed the personal inquiry and whose entire life is devoted to the teaching of others.

The traditional biographies give extended accounts of Śaṅkara's debates with the representatives of rival philosophical schools — Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya, Sāṃkhya, and the Buddhist and Jain traditions. The most famous of these accounts is the debate with Maṇḍana Miśra, the most eminent Mīmāṃsā philosopher of the day, which the tradition says Śaṅkara won with the help of Maṇḍana's wife Ubhaya Bhāratī as judge. Whether or not these specific debates are historically verifiable, the philosophical record shows that Śaṅkara engaged systematically with every major rival position in the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya, devoting specific sections to the refutation of each. Chapter 2 of the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya — the Avirodha chapter (non-contradiction) — is essentially an extended philosophical debate with every major rival school, showing in each case why the Advaita reading of the Upanishads is more consistent with the canonical texts than the rival's reading.

The philosophical method of the debates: Śaṅkara consistently argues that his opponents' positions produce internal inconsistencies that his own two-level framework avoids. The Mīmāṃsaka who says ritual action is the primary path to liberation cannot explain why the Mahāvākyas — direct statements of identity — require anything more than hearing and recognition; action cannot produce the recognition that precedes all action. The Sāṃkhya dualist who says Puruṣa and Prakṛti are two independent realities cannot explain the apparent unity of consciousness and matter in the knowing subject. The Buddhist who says there is no self cannot explain why the doctrine of non-self requires a consciousness to notice the no-self. Śaṅkara's Advaita is the one position that, in his analysis, remains self-consistent throughout.

Śaṅkara's influence on Indian philosophy is structural as well as substantive: he defined the terms within which all subsequent Vedanta philosophy operates. The very framework of the prasthānatrayī (the threefold canonical foundation), the distinction between jñāna and karma as different-order means, the two-level (vyāvahārika-pāramārthika) analysis, the precise karma-liberation relationship — all of these are Śaṅkara's contributions. Even the philosophers who most vigorously disagreed with him (Rāmānuja, Madhva) conducted their disagreements within frameworks that Śaṅkara had largely defined. In the modern period, Swami Vivekananda's presentation of Vedanta to Western audiences, the Ramakrishna mission's teaching, the Arsha Vidya lineage of Swami Dayananda Saraswati — all draw primarily on Śaṅkara's systematic Advaita. The global contemporary "non-dual" teaching movement — however simplified some of its forms — is ultimately traceable to Śaṅkara's systematisation of the Upanishadic non-dual recognition.

Several specific philosophical positions distinguish Śaṅkara's Advaita from both its predecessors and its successors. The anirvacanīya status of Māyā: neither ultimately real (sat) nor simply non-existent (asat), but capable of producing real effects — "that which is, is not, and is not, is not" is Śaṅkara's formula for the logical status of Māyā. This unusual middle category (not real, not unreal) is one of the most debated aspects of his system. Rāmānuja argues it is incoherent: something either exists or does not. Śaṅkara responds that the appearance which is dissolved at liberation (the snake-rope appearance) is real enough to have real effects (the fear of the snake is genuinely feared) but unreal in the sense that it dissolves completely at the liberating recognition and leaves no trace. The logical category of "neither real nor unreal" accurately describes this specific kind of appearance.

The Brahman-of-false-attribution versus the Brahman of pure consciousness (sopādhika versus nirūpādhika Brahman): Śaṅkara systematically distinguishes between Brahman as it appears through the adjuncts of Māyā (saguṇa — with qualities, the cosmic creator) and Brahman as it is in itself (nirguṇa — without qualities, pure consciousness). These are not two different Brahmans — they are the same Brahman described with and without the limiting adjuncts that Māyā superimposes. The practical consequence: meditation on saguṇa Brahman (Īśvara) is a valid and valuable vyāvahārika practice; the pāramārthika recognition is of nirguṇa Brahman. The path moves from the first to the second, using the first as a preparation and orientation for the second.

The vivartavāda account of causation: the world is an apparent transformation (vivarta) of Brahman, not an actual transformation (pariṇāma). The gold necklace: the necklace is gold appearing as a necklace — the gold has not actually transformed its nature into the necklace-substance. The necklace's form (its necklace-ness) is superimposed on the gold; the gold itself remains unchanged. The world is Brahman appearing as the world; Brahman has not changed its nature; the world's apparent independence is superimposed on Brahman through Māyā. This is Śaṅkara's alternative to the Sāṃkhya pariṇāmavāda (real transformation) and the Nyāya ārambhavāda (new creation from atoms). It preserves Brahman's unchanging nature while explaining the world's genuine appearance.

An aspect of Śaṅkara that is often overlooked in discussions of his philosophical rigour: he was also a poet-devotee. The tradition attributes to him — with varying degrees of scholarly confidence — a remarkable body of devotional hymns (stotras) addressed to various forms of the divine: the Soundaryalaharī (to Śakti/Devī), the Viṣṇu Pādādi Keśānta Stotra, the Dakṣiṇāmūrti Stotra, and others. Whether or not all these are authentically his, the philosophical Śaṅkara of the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya clearly did not regard devotion (bhakti) as inferior to or incompatible with the jñāna path. His Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya acknowledges bhakti and upāsanā as valid vyāvahārika paths; his position is not that devotion is wrong but that it is preparatory rather than directly liberating. The path moves from devotion (which purifies the ego's orientation) through knowledge (which dissolves the ego-identification) to liberation (which is the natural consequence of the dissolution). Devotion and knowledge are not rivals in Śaṅkara's framework — they are stages in a continuous development.

The Dakṣiṇāmūrti tradition — Śiva as the silent teacher (Dakṣiṇāmūrti), sitting under the fig tree, teaching the four disciples who are already established in the recognition through silence alone — is one of the most beautiful images in the Advaita tradition and is attributed to Śaṅkara's inspiration. The Dakṣiṇāmūrti Stotra hymns the silent teacher who dissolves the student's ignorance not through words but through the quality of awareness that radiates from the recognition itself. This image — the jīvanmukta teacher whose presence is itself the teaching — is Śaṅkara's characterisation of the most direct form of the teaching relationship, and it reflects a dimension of the tradition that the philosophical texts alone do not capture.

The traditional dates for Śaṅkara (788–820 CE, or in some accounts 509–477 BCE in the traditional chronology) are disputed in modern scholarship. The modern scholarly consensus (Hacker, Mayeda, Nakamura) places him in the late 8th to early 9th century CE based on: the philosophical texts' relationship to Buddhist philosophy (they engage with Mādhyamaka and Vijñānavāda, which places them after those schools' classical period); references to Śaṅkara in other dated texts; and the internal chronology of the Advaita tradition's development. The traditional shorter chronology (32 years) is accepted by most Indian scholars as historically accurate; the modern scholarship acknowledges the textual evidence but notes the impossibility of writing commentaries of the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya's scale in such a short period. The philosophical significance of the dating question is limited: the texts exist, are internally consistent, and constitute the most complete systematic Advaita philosophy regardless of when precisely they were written.

For a student approaching Śaṅkara's work today, the recommended sequence depends on the student's background and aim. For philosophical study: begin with the adhyāsa bhāṣya (the preamble to the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya) in Gambhirananda's translation — this is Śaṅkara's most original philosophical contribution and the key to understanding his entire interpretive project. Then read the Kaṭha Upaniṣad Bhāṣya (the most accessible of the Upanishad commentaries) and the Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya. For the most rigorously authentic Śaṅkara: read Mayeda's translation of the Upadeśasāhasrī, which is the most reliable attribution and the text Śaṅkara apparently preferred for his own teaching. For the most complete systematic picture: the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya complete — but only after familiarity with the other texts and with the rival schools Śaṅkara is engaging.

The student who engages seriously with Śaṅkara's texts will find something that surprises: the philosophical rigour is greater than most introductions suggest, and the compassion is greater than the austere reputation implies. The Vivekacūḍāmaṇi (whoever its actual author) captures the compassionate urgency of the Advaita teacher who has completed the recognition and is reaching toward the student who has not. The Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya captures the philosophical rigour of the thinker who has established the non-dual recognition as the most defensible possible account of what the self is. Both qualities — the compassion and the rigour — are characteristic of the tradition Śaṅkara established. And both are available to any student who approaches the texts with the viveka and vairāgya the texts require.

What distinguishes Śaṅkara's commentaries from other Sanskrit philosophical commentaries is a specific quality that is difficult to name but immediately recognisable in reading: the commentaries are not merely explanatory but illuminating. Śaṅkara does not simply paraphrase the Upanishadic texts or systematise their claims — he makes the recognition that the texts point toward feel cognitively available. The Kaṭha Upaniṣad Bhāṣya, for example, does not merely explain what the text says about Turīya — it uses the text as a vehicle for pointing at the witnessing awareness directly, in a way that a prepared student reading the commentary can experience as a direct pointing rather than a philosophical description. This quality — the commentary as pointing rather than merely describing — is what makes Śaṅkara's work different from systematic philosophy. It is philosophical commentary in the service of recognition.

The Upadeśasāhasrī in particular demonstrates this quality: it is structured as a dialogue between teacher and student, and the teacher's responses are specifically designed to dissolve each category of intellectual obstacle the student presents. The student argues: "I understand that Ātman is Brahman, but how can I, who am finite, be the infinite?" The teacher's response is not a philosophical argument establishing the infinity of the self — it is a pointing at the witnessing awareness that is already present, already infinite, already not affected by the student's finitude. The dialogue proceeds through dozens of objections; each response is a pointing. This is the authentic Śaṅkara method: not the building of a philosophical system (though the system is there) but the removal, one by one, of the obstacles to the recognition that was always already available.

In the 21st century, Śaṅkara's Advaita has become part of a genuinely global philosophical conversation about consciousness, the nature of the self, and the relationship between subjective experience and objective reality. The Advaita framework — consciousness as primary, the world as appearance within consciousness, the individual self as identical with the universal consciousness — engages directly with the most pressing questions in contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and physics. David Chalmers' "hard problem of consciousness" (why does physical processing give rise to subjective experience?) dissolves in Advaita's framework: if consciousness is primary, the question is not why matter produces consciousness but why consciousness appears as matter. The observer-dependence in quantum mechanics — the role of measurement (which requires a measurer, which requires consciousness) in determining quantum outcomes — is structurally parallel to the Advaita teaching that the world of objects is constituted by the observing consciousness. Thomas Nagel's "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" — the demonstration that subjective experience cannot be fully accounted for by objective, third-person description — is a contemporary analogue to the Advaita teaching that the witnessing consciousness cannot be fully described from outside itself. These convergences do not validate Advaita — its pramāṇa is the direct recognition, not scientific evidence — but they suggest that Śaṅkara's eighth-century systematic analysis of consciousness anticipated problems that contemporary philosophy and science are only now beginning to formulate clearly.

Three passages from Śaṅkara's authentic works that give the most direct access to his teaching quality. From the adhyāsa bhāṣya: "This is the natural behaviour of mankind: superimposing on the inner self — which is the witness of all — the not-self, and superimposing the self, and the properties of the self, on the not-self. This is avidyā." In one sentence: the problem. From the Upadeśasāhasrī (verse section, 18.52): "When will I be free of fear — I who am the eternal, self-luminous consciousness, the witness of all, untouched by the activities of the mind and the senses?" The teacher pointing the student toward the recognition. From the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya (on 4.4.22, the final sūtra): "Non-return is the fruit of liberation, established by scripture and by reason. The liberated one does not return, because the avidyā that constituted bondage has been destroyed, and what has been destroyed cannot be re-established." The final assurance. Together, these three passages give the arc of Śaṅkara's teaching in miniature: the problem (adhyāsa), the pointing (the inquiry), the assurance (non-return). The complete Advaita path, in three passages from the tradition's most precise and most reliable philosopher.

Śaṅkara's achievement, seen whole, is extraordinary by any standard: in a life the tradition estimates at thirty-two years, he wrote a philosophical corpus that addressed every significant philosophical challenge of his time, established the institutional infrastructure for the Advaita teaching tradition (the four maṭhas, the guruparampara), and articulated the non-dual recognition with a precision and rigour that has not been superseded in twelve centuries of subsequent philosophical development. The authentic corpus — the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya, the Upanishad Bhāṣyas, the Bhagavad Gītā Bhāṣya, the Upadeśasāhasrī — is not the work of a systematiser or scholar but of a mind that had completed the recognition and was using every available intellectual resource to communicate it to students who had not yet arrived there. The philosophical rigour is in the service of the recognition; the recognition is what the rigour is pointing toward. Understanding this relationship — that the philosophy is the vehicle, the recognition is the destination — is the key to reading Śaṅkara correctly. His texts are not primarily about philosophy. They are philosophy in the service of the recognition that was the tradition's beginning, middle, and end.

The reason Śaṅkara's work remains relevant twelve centuries after its composition is not historical interest but practical relevance: the problem he was addressing — the misidentification of the self with the body-mind, and the suffering that arises from that misidentification — has not changed. The ego-structure that Śaṅkara analysed with extraordinary precision is the same ego-structure that produces anxiety, depression, existential dread, and the compulsive seeking that characterises contemporary life as much as 8th-century India. The recognition that dissolves the ego-structure — the recognition that Ātman is Brahman — is as available now as it was when Śaṅkara wrote the Brahmasūtra Bhāṣya. The precision of his analysis makes the path toward that recognition as clear as it has ever been made in the philosophical literature. For any student who is genuinely asking the question Śaṅkara spent his life addressing — "what is the self, really?" — Śaṅkara's answer is the most precisely stated, most rigorously defended, and most practically applicable answer available in any philosophical tradition.

If Śaṅkara's entire philosophical project had to be stated in one sentence, it would be this: the witnessing awareness that is present through every experience is not the limited, mortal body-mind that it has been confused with — it is Brahman, the infinite, self-luminous consciousness that is the ground of all reality; and recognising this — directly, not as a belief but as the present fact of one's own nature — is liberation from every form of the suffering that arises from the misidentification. Thirty years of writing, one hundred and thirty or more commentaries and original works, four monastic centres, the whole systematic elaboration of the prasthānatrayī: all of it in the service of this one recognition. That the student who has the recognition can look back at all that preparation and see it was always in the service of what was always already present — that is, in the tradition's view, Śaṅkara's greatest achievement. Not the philosophy. The recognition the philosophy was always pointing toward.

Gauḍapāda → Govindapāda → Śaṅkarācārya → Sureśvara, Padmapāda, Hastamalaka, Toṭakapāda → the four maṭhas → the living Advaita tradition today.