The Bhoja Prabandha
enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that
prince; his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries.
The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to
reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been
born three times; first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago,
again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in
Tuluva, no more than 600 years since; the latter assertion being
intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that
was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious
controversy. The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared
in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era. Dr. Taylor
thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from
the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of
about 1,000 years. This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy,
a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his
doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a
calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara
Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the
seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time
agreeing with the statements made to Dr.
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