I came across this interesting article about Adi Sankara and thought
to share it with all my friends here.
There has been lots of controversy whether Adi Sankara was born in 780
AD or 509 BC with various historical evidence being exchanged both for
and against each of the dates. A striking scientific proof in favour
of the BC theory was provided by the 68th pontiff of The Kanchi
Kamakoti Peetam, Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati (affectionately
called as the Paramacharya) himself.
History says that as Sankara's mother was finding difficulty to go the
the River Purna (Presently called as River Periyar) to take bath, so
Sankara requested the River Purna to divert and follow his footsteps
(Kal-adi) to flow near his anscestral house to enable his mother to
take bath without any difficulty and then later join again to the main
course of the river.
One day a very reputed Geologist happened to visit Kanchipuram to take
darshan of the Paramacharya. After enquiring about his family, the
Paramacharya requested him arrange for a diver to dive and take out
sand from two different locations of the River Purna. One location
should be when the River Purna enters Kerala, before it diverts into
entering Kaladi and the other location to be at Kaladi itself. Later
Paramacharya asked him to use the technique of carbon dating to find
out the age of the sand from these two locations. The geologist
performed the exercise as instructed by the Paramacharya and provided
the results which was that the sand from the first location yielded an
age of being more than 100,000 years old whereas the age of the sand
from the second location in Kaladi was close to about 2500 years.
The Age of the River sand at Kaladi confirmed that the River got
diverted about 2,500 years back and thus again, Adi Sankara was indeed
born in BC, which should be 509BC as per majority of the Sankaracharya
mutts.
Even now, some of the ignorant people say that Hindu religion has fabricated the history to establish their religion. They have even gone to the extent of making propaganda that our great epics Mahabharatha and Ramayana were written from Bible!! Sri Adhi Sankaracharya's life history is known to our ancesters long back. That time there was no scientific methods to prove the truth. Now Kanchi Acharya has established the truth once again. Pranams to Him.
with regards,
Lakshmanan Ramachandran.
