Guest guest Posted June 10, 2003 Report Share Posted June 10, 2003 praNAm prabhujis Hare Krishna Is there any reference in shankara's prasthAna trayi bhAshya regarding 6 mathas formed by sri shankara. & Where in his works, he advised his followers to do ShivapanchAyatana pUja. Hari Hari Hari Bol!!! bhaskar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 10, 2003 Report Share Posted June 10, 2003 advaitin, bhaskar.yr@i... wrote: > > praNAm prabhujis > Hare Krishna > > Is there any reference in shankara's prasthAna trayi bhAshya regarding 6 > mathas formed by sri shankara. & Where in his works, he advised his > followers to do ShivapanchAyatana pUja. > > Hari Hari Hari Bol!!! > bhaskar Namaste, Kanchi Paramacharya (1895-1994) has a 4 part essay at this URL, which may answer your question: http://www.kamakoti.org/miscl/namoh1.html Regards, Sunder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted June 11, 2003 Report Share Posted June 11, 2003 Pranam Bhaskarji, > Is there any reference in shankara's prasthAna trayi bhAshya regarding 6 mathas formed by sri shankara No. There are no such indications anywhere in the genuine works of Shankara. Further, there are no indications in the works by Shankara´s direct disciple Sureshvara, nor in the Panchapadika attributed to Shankara´s disciple Padmapada. According to Paul Hacker (a famous scholar in the field of Advaita Vedanta), the oldest existing sources about the mathas are as recent as the 14th century. In one of his papers ("On Sankara and Advaitism") he writes: "I went through a large number of publications of South Indian inscriptions with a view to finding out references to cloisters (matha) of Advaitists. I found, so far as I can recollect, no mention of cloisters before the fourteenth century." In other words: If Hacker is correct, then there are no sources mentioning the mathas until about 500 years after the lifetime of Adi Shankara! However, from this it does not necessarily follow that Shankara never founded any mathas in Sringeri, Dwaraka etc. Of course they could have been founded in Shankara´s lifetime anyway, even though there are no existing sources or evidences from that time available today. > & Where in his works, he advised his followers to do ShivapanchAyatana pUja. I have never found any such advices or injuctions in his works. Panchayatana puja is performed among traditional smarthas, particularly in South India. In Tamil Nadu within the Iyer community there is a widespread custom to include also Lord Subramanian in the puja, hence the so-called Shanmatha puja. Panchayatana puja includes the following gods: Ganesha, Shiva, Shakti, Visnu and Surya. In the Shanmatha puja Subramanian is added to these five gods. Shivapanchayatana puja means that Shiva is placed in the middle of the five gods (generally represented by five specific stones, placed upon a metal plate). Whether this custom was actually invented by Adi Shankara himself remains an open question. But it is a part of the smartha tradition, and perhaps Panchayatana puja was performed by the smarthas also before the advent of Shankara. Warm regards Stig Lundgren Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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