In attempting to fix Amara Sinha's date (which attempt ultimately ended
in a miserable failure), he had to ascertain the period when Sankara
lived. Consequently his remarks concerning the said period appear in
his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary. We shall
now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with
the subject under consideration and comment upon them. Mr. Wilson
writes as follows:--
"The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other
remarkable incident amongst the Hindus. The Kadali (it ought to be
Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his
system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since; some accounts
place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third
or fourth century after; a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in
Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama
Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at
Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore
Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that
still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of
the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and
common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old.
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