Śaṅkarācārya

Śaṅkarācārya also known as Adi Shankara, Ādi Śaṅkarācāri, Śaṅkara Bhagavatpādācārya and Ādi Śaṅkarācārya was an Indian philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedānta. Modern scholarship places his life from 780 CE to 820 CE. However, T. Subba Row refuted this claim. He wrote:

There are no reasons for placing Sankara in 8th or 9th century after Christ as some of the European Orientalists have done. . . . We may perhaps now venture to place before the public the exact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and Indian Initiates. According to the historical information in their possession he was born in the year B. C. 510 (51 years and 2 months after the date of Buddha’s nirvana), and we believe that satisfactory evidence in support of this date can be obtained in India if the inscriptions at Conjeeveram, Sringeri, Jagannâtha, Benares, Kashmir and various other places visited by Sankara are properly deciphered.

His works, in Sanskrit, elaborate on ideas found in the Upanishads, discussing the unity of the ātman and Nirguna Brahman, the "brahman without attributes". He wrote copious commentaries on the Vedic canon (Brahma Sutras, Principal Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita) and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in support of his thesis. Shankara's publications criticised the ritually-oriented Mīmāṃsā school of Hinduism.