Taking into consideration the author's vast
knowledge and information, and the opportunities he had for collecting
materials for his work when he was the head of the Sringeri Matham,
there is every reason to believe that he had embodied in his work the
most reliable information he could obtain. Mr. Wilson, however, says
that the book in question is "much too poetical and legendary" to be
acknowledged as a great authority. We admit that the style is highly
poetical, but we deny that the work is legendary. Mr. Wilson is not
justified in characterizing it as such on account of its description of
some of the wonderful phenomena shown by Sankara. Probably the learned
Orientalist would not be inclined to consider the Biblical account of
Christ in the same light. It is not the peculiar privilege of
Christianity to have a miracle-worker for its first propagator. In the
following observations we shall take such facts as are required from
this work.
It is generally believed that a person named Govinda Yogi was Sankara's
Guru, but it is not generally known that this Yogi was in fact
Patanjali--the great author of the Mahabhashya and the Yoga Sutras--
under a new name.
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