The Original ˛a∫karåcårya - Eastern Tradition

1 The Original a kar c ryaThe once universal Wisdom Tradition , whose existencewas made known to the modern world by H. P. Blavatsky, hadbeen preserved for long ages in the utmost secrecy . So whenBlavatsky brought out a portion of it, she was faced with theproblem of making these now unheard of teachings address this, she attempted to establish the probability of theexistence of such a Tradition , and to support the correctness ofits teachings, by reference to known authors. For this supportshe drew heavily on the teachings of a kar c rya.

2 But it wouldseem that the a kar c rya referred to by Blavatsky and the a kar c rya whose writings have conditioned Indian thoughtfor the last dozen centuries or so are not the same person. a kar c rya, the preceptor ( c rya) a kara, is regardedby Blavatsky as a great teacher of the Wisdom Tradition , or theEsoteric Philosophy. In her primary work, The Secret Doctrine, heis referred to as the greatest Initiate living in the historicalages, 1 and as the greatest of the Esoteric masters of India.

3 2 The philosophy promulgated by him, the advaita or non-dualschool of Ved nta, is there called the nearest exponent of theEsoteric This is because the Esoteric Philosophy,the Wisdom Tradition , is non-dual like a kar c rya s advaitaschool,4 as opposed to the qualified non-dualism of R m nuja svi i dvaita school, or the dualism of Madhva s dvaita school, ofVed nta. So we are led to believe that a kar c rya, as a greatInitiate, was fully versed in the Wisdom Tradition ; and that evenhis public teachings, the non-dual advaita school of Ved nta,provide the best available support for its assumption is further strengthened by the amount ofattention given to the question of a kar c rya s date in theimportant series of articles called, Some Inquiries Suggestedby Mr.

4 Sinnett s Esoteric Buddhism. 5 This series is believed to2 The Original a kar c ryahave been written (or caused to be written) by three Mahatmas,or adepts in the Wisdom Its importance is that itpurports to give replies based on the definite information heldby the Mahatmas rather than on speculation. But despite thisrare opportunity for direct knowledge, and as predicted byBlavatsky who thought this lengthy series was a colossal waste ofthe Mahatmas time,7 the answers given were not accepted then,nor are they then prevailing opinion, accepted by both Westernscholars and their Indian counterparts, was that a kar c ryalived in the eighth century An article in this series, afterexamining the various speculations of European orientalists onthis question.

5 Gives the true date of a kar c rya s birth fromthe secret records:We may perhaps now venture to place before the public theexact date assigned to Sankaracharya by Tibetan and IndianInitiates. According to the historical information in their posses-sion he was born in the year 510 (51 years and 2 monthsafter the date of Buddha s nirvana), ..9 This was published in The Theosophist for 1883. The next articleto appear in The Theosophist on a kar c rya s date, a detailedthree-part study by the Pandit of the Adyar Library published sixyears later, consciously ignored this information and concludedthat we may not be far from truth if we say that he lived some-where about the 5th century 10 Other articles followed inThe Theosophist, proposing other , discussion of a kar c rya s date continuedin earnest in the orientalist journals.

6 From 1882 to 2000 morethan forty articles and books on this question K. had in 1882 published a chronogram from an obscuremanuscript giving dates corresponding to 788 for a kara sbirth and 820 for his Most of the writings that followedalso favored dates in the eighth century , many arguing for700 or 750 rather than 788 A few, however, proposed509 ,14 in remarkable agreement with the date put forwardby the Tibetan and Indian Initiates. This date of 509 ,3 The Original a kar c ryamoreover, comes from the very sources that one would mostexpect to find a kar c rya s date preserved in: the records ofthe ma has or monastic centers established by him.

7 A kar c rya is said to have founded ma has at the fourcardinal points of India: the Jyotir ma ha near Badrinath in theNorth; the Govardhana ma ha at Puri (Jagannath) in the East;the K lik ma ha ( rad p ha) at Dwaraka in the West; and the ger ma ha (again, rad p ha) at Sringeri in the South. Inaddition to these four, he is said to have founded the rad ma ha (K mako i p ha) at Kanchi, also in the South. Each ofthese ma has has had a succession of pontiffs, who hold thetitle a kar c rya, from the time of the Original or first ( di) a kar c rya.

8 Their traditional lineage lists (guru-parampar )give the names and usually the dates of each successive pontiffof that particular ma ha. The list of the K lik ma ha in the Westgives for the birth of a kara the date 2631 of the Yudhi hiraera, corresponding to 509 The list of the rad ma ha(at Kanchi) in the South gives the date 2593 of the Kali Yugaera, also corresponding to 509 It is significant that twodifferent lineage lists from two widely separated ma has, having77 and 68 successors respectively, both go back in an unbrokenline to 509 list of the Govardhana ma ha in the East does not givedates, but has 144 successors.

9 About twice as many as the abovetwo ma has This is due to the circumstance that at thisma ha the successors are normally those who have gone throughthe householder stage of life before becoming renunciants(rather than doing so immediately after the student stage), soare older when they are chosen to become a kar c Sothis list, too, supports the date of 509 The list of the Jyotirma ha in the North has not yet been recovered (except for somerecent centuries), since it was lost when this ma ha ceased tofunction between 1776 and 1941 Even so, this ma ha in itscurrent publications accepts the traditional date of 509 list of the ger ma ha in the South gives for the birth of a kara the date 3058 of the Kali Yuga era, corresponding to44 This list, however, having only 35 successors, gives animprobable reign of 785 years for the second It does4 The Original a kar c ryanot seem to be regarded as reliable by this ma ha.

10 Since theircurrent publications give instead of 44 for a kara s birththe commonly accepted later date of 788 Thus the Jyotirma ha, whose lineage list is incomplete, accepts the traditionaldate of 509 , while the ger ma ha, whose lineage list isimperfect, accepts the later date of 788 The other threema has, in accordance with the lineage lists preserved by them,all give the date of a kara s birth as 509 are also other traditional sources that confirm thedate of 509 One would next expect to find the date of a kara in the various biographies of him preserved in the available biographies, written in Sanskrit, have provedto be of little help on this, sometimes giving astrological aspectsof his birth, yet strangely, not the There are, however, afew inaccessible but more informative ones.