Part 1 - Sri Sankara Vijayam

Thanks to my spiritual Friend Subramanian.R Garu for sharing this information.

Sri Sankara's life and teachings have been written by various people under the title Sri Sankara Vijayam. There are several versions, by Anandagiri, Madhva Vidyaranyar and others. There is also one book in Malayalam called Keraliya Sankara Vijayam.

Sri P. Seshadri Iyer's Sri Sankara Charitram in Malayalam is the most authentic one. Sri Seshadri Iyer was a direct disciple of Swami Brahmananda, the first disciple of Sri Ramakrishna.Sri Iyer knew 27 languages and he learnt Bengali to read Sri Ramakrishna's life in Bengali original!

Sri P. Seshadri Iyer has gone through all Sankara Vijayams right from Anandagiri and Madhva Vidyaranya and wrote his book.

Sri Iyer says that Sri Sankara had come with a chool, broom stick,called discrimination and a muram, a plate to collect and remove all the bogus philosophies of 72 religions that were in vogue in India.

His famous saying is: Truth can only propagate(transmit) you.You cannot propagate the Truth.Unless a learned becomes a Brahma Jnani,a man living in Truth, he cannot find the inadequacies of other philosophies and religions. With that Truth in the Heart, a Jnani can propagate to the world.

Aryambika and Siva Guru were Sri Sankara's parents.They were quite poor and great devotees of both Vishnu and Siva. They had no issues. They wanted a child. They were on a pilgrimage to the temple of Vadkkanathar in Kerala. Vadakkanathar is Siva.

In the temple, Siva came in dream of both and asked: "Do you want a child who would live for 100 years but absolute dunce or a child who would live only for 16 years, but a great Brahma Jnani?" The parents opted for a Jnani.

Soon Siva Guru found one day in his meditation, that a light appared in his Heart and then travelled to Aryambika's stomach.She became pregnant soon after, without union between the two.Sri Sankara thus became an immaculate conception. He is Siva reincarnated.Siva, the achalam, became an ever-moving Siva in Sri Sankara's avatar.

Sri Sankara travelled from south to north, two times in his 32 years of life, established four Maths and rose to the Sarvajna Peetam,the Seat of Absolute-Knowledge in Kanchipuram,which became his fifth Math. He wrote commentaries for all major Upanishads and the eleventh Upanishad called Svetasvatara Upanishad. He wrote commentaries for Brahma Sutram and Sri Vishnu Sahasranamam.

He wrote original works like Vivekachoodamani and Sri Dakshinamurthy Stotram and Atma Bodham.He composed a lot of devotional verses.He wrote the all imporant Sri Soundarya Lahari,the pinnacle of mantra-sastra.

Source: http://www.arunachala-ramana.org/forum/index.php?board=10.150