I am curious to find what events are being planned for commemorating this really historic occasion, and by whom. Would appreciate any info. you can provide. I do not find much by googling.
Considering that April 22nd is just 3 weeks or so away, it does not look like there has been much planning or at least publicity behind this effort.
Personally, I am filled with pride and wonder re. this millennium date, and on reflection, the sense of pride is due, in no small measure, to how Amarar Kalki has made Arulmozhi Varman come to life in such an endearing fashion in Ponniyin Selvan.
By the way, if RRC ascended his throne on July 18th 985 AD, then his 25th year of rule started on July 18th 1009 AD, and taking that as day 1, the 275th day would have been on April 18th 1010 AD, according to my calculation. So the 1000 year commemoration should fall on April 18, 2010, unless some other conventions are being used. Would welcome any comments on this. Thanks.
I'd suspect that we have to use the Indian calendar to count. the 25th year needn't start on July 18th 1009, because the Indian calendar doesn't always (aka, never) match up to the Western one.
So, which calendar should we use?
And does it really matter if we get the actual day off by one or two in a thousand years? In the time it took to build the temple, a day wouldn't have mattered - it was probably either complete a while before, and they picked an auspicious date to declare it complete and consecrate it, or it _wasn't_ complete, and they consecrated anyway, because it was a particularly auspicious day.
Just like any of our grihapravesams, actually...
In my opinion, what matters is that it's been a thousand years. If we declare that April 18th is the day, it's the day, and in any case, we're celebrating this whole year...
Thank you for your response. I was not arguing for any specific date like April 18th, nor was I trying to be nitpicking. I was merely trying to reconcile in my mind why three very specific statements made did not appear to jive and to understand if I was missing anything: (1) RRC ascended the throne on July 18, 985 AD; (2) the cheppukkalasham was placed on the 275th day of the 25th year of RRC's rule; (3) April 22, 2010 corresponds to the 1000th year of the consecration.
There can surely be lots of reasons: a year may not always have used 365 or 366 days coinciding with Gregorian calendar; some days may have been bypassed as happened when Pope Gregory's reform took into effect and 4th October 1582 was followed next day by 15th October 1582; and so on.
Of course the exact date of the consecration of a temple (or for that matter any event) does not matter, and as historical facts go, particularly in India, I am amazed at how precise we seem to be getting to dates of events that are 1000 years old.
To put things in perspective, let me mention that recently I was browsing for something at the Kanchi Kamakoti website and stumbled upon a page called the History of Acharyaparamapara (http://www.kamakoti.org/peeth/origin.html#appendix2) that lists all the acharyas of Kanchi Sankaracharya Math, starting from Adi Sankara, whose life time is given to be 509 BC to 477 BC. The age of Adi Sankara in many history books is given as being in 7th Century AD; some article within past few days in our group mail also mentioned similar date; the divergence between these two dates is almost 11 centuries!
So I am mightily happy that we can nail down some of these dates in Chola history to a few decades this way or that way.
The records of Kanchi, Dwaraka and Puri Mutts - All denote to 6th BC.
Sringeri record is different but again it isnoth 6th AD.
Joshimutt records - not available as for the past 200years it was w.o a head and in between for 20 years had a head. Now dwaraka acharya heads that mutt also.
There were great heads in these mutts like Mooka Sankara of Kanchi, Abinava sankara of kanchi and Vidyaranaya of sringeri to name a few. The Kambodian epigraph period and the period of abinava sankara ( the meaning of that name is current sankara) corresponds to that epigraph. Many of the tales, srichakra stapanas of temples areactually to be atributed to Abhinava sankara.Infact he is the one who is supposed to have ascended the sarvagjna throne in Kashmir.
The Kanchi Mutt has copper plates fromGanda Gopalan onwards. The recent stone inscription mentioning a great sitsukanandain chola period and there is a sitsukananda saraswathi in kanchi mutt at that period. Their list of madatipatis tally with these proofs.
The Indian scholars put Adisankara to 6th BC , Bhudha and Mahaveera to further back and the timings of Veda further further back.
In Gupta Period itself - Hinduism was in peak ( 4th AD).So telling that sankara reestablishing in 7th AD is not right.
You may ask then Ashoka period is supposed to be a peak in Bhudhism and Appar /sambandar/mahendra period of TN - Bhudhism and jainism were at their peak.
These religions were never wiped out but started reemerging then and there with the patronage of kings.
The Hindu scholars argue that these religions were never followed by not even 20%+ population. They had the patronage of Kings and were very influential but Hindus were still majority.Most of the foriegn bhudhist visitors confirms the existence of both the religions.. Sangam perioddose not have any influence of these cultures. ( what ever time you put for sangam 3rd BC to 2nd AD or even 5 Bc to 4th AD)
Sambandar and Appar clearly record the presence of Hindu religion and pujas continuing every where. Ofcourse some tempels were closed and even pandimadevi had to wear vibhudi clandestinely but still the population ofBhudhist/Jains were less but were influential..But the presence of Adisankara afterAppar and sambandarwiping out the ( resurrgent) bhudhism and jainism from southern country is debatable.
Karnataka had jain kings even in sri ramanuja's period and sravanabelakola is post 10AD, which means these religions kept on coming back with the support of kings and still continued to present and never wiped out fully.
Sorry, I believe you are off by 1 year. July 985 to June 986 would be the first year, July 986-June 987 is year 2, and so on; July 1009-June 1010 would be 25th year, i.e., June 1010 would mark the end of the 25th year. Since 275th day of 25th year is about 3 months before end of the year, we can cou010. Thanks.
I was totally unaware of this controversy re. the age of Sankara until I accidentally came across the acharya parampara info. at the Kanchi Kamakoti website, but I see now that this controversy about the two dates diverging by over a millennium even finds mention in the wikipedia account on Adi Shankara, although wikipedia characterizes the 8th century CE date as the "mainstream" view. I find it perplexing that we do not know for certain the age of one of the greatest philosophers of Hinduism (if not the greatest) to an accuracy of a 1000 years!
The controversy between "aryan migration" and "aryans are native to India" theories is another example of an even more important unsettled issue in Indian history. When did Kalidasa live is another example, and the list goes on. There are people who claim that actually Alexander came to India during the time of Chandragupta of the Gupta period and not the Chandragupta Maurya, thus pushing Gupta period and everything before that back by a 1000 years! Things like that make my head spin :).
So it seems to me that even though ancient India may have had great astronomers, good calendars, highly developed mathematical knowledge (talking of which when did Aryabhatta live is another unsettled question), concepts of very small and very large magnitudes, katapayadi system for converting numbers to names etc., India by and large did not use the right infrastructure for record keeping. This is in contrast to China which has an almost unbroken recorded history and a tradition of keeping records going back to 1000 BC. There are much fewer controversies about Chinese history because of this.
47) Sri Chandrasekharendra Saraswati - otherwise known as Chandrachuda. He was the son of Suka Deva, a native of Kundini riverside. He was a Dravida Brahmin and his pre-sannyasa name was Srikantha. He went on tours of digvijaya and defeated in argument Hemacharya, a great Jain teacher in the court of Vidyalola Kumarapala, and author of Kumarapala Charita. This Acharya was also held in considerable veneration by Mankha, the author of Srikantha Charita, by Krishna Misra, the author of Prabhoda Chandrodaya and Guruvijaya, and Jayadeva, author of Prasanna Raghavan, Chandraloka and Bhakti Kalpa Latika, and Suhala, and also by a physician of Kashmir and author of a medical lexicon, known as Vaidyabhidhana Chintamani. Jayadeva has celebrated the victory of Chandrasekhara over Hemacharya in his Bhakti Kalpalatika. Jayasimha, King of Kashmir, considered himself blessed in the service of this great Acharya. He attained mukti at Arunachala Kshetra on Amavasya in the month of Chaitra, in the year Parthiva (1166 AD). The Telugu Chola King Sri Gandagopala, in the 16th year after his coronation, is said to have made a grant of the village Ambikapuram to this Acharya. This information is available in the copper plate inscriptions of Sri Sankaracharya Mattham.
veera narasimha copper plate grant to 54th acahrya:
54) Sri Vyasachala Mahadevendra Saraswati - He was the son of Kamesvara and Kamalamba who belonged to Kanchi. His pre-sannyasa name was Kuppanna. He is the author of a Sankara Vijaya. He attained mukti at Vyasachala in the month of Ashada, in the year Akshaya - 1507 AD. King Viranarasimha Deva of Vijayanagar Empire is said to have granted the villages of Elichur, Venpakkam and Kudiyantandalam to the Acharya. The Acharya has been described as a great tapasvi, as wearing rudraksha, besmeared with holy ashes and as one who resembles Lord Shiva.
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Thank you for taking the time to provide these detailed references; I will try to explore them further. But, since all of these relate to 10th century AD or so, I am a little mystified as to the relevance of these evidences in establishing that Adi Sankara dates back to the 5th century BC. Best regards.
These scholars mostly place their theory on 2 things
1. By 8th Century the Bhudhism and Jainism have lost their sheen
2. The period is post Sundarar in south and Big Hindu dynasties were established not only in India but in the far east too.
3. The Only epigraph on Sankara available in kambodia is assigned to Abhinava Sankara by these scholars.
4. The records of Puri, Dwaraka and Kanchi are simillar.
5. The Chronology of kanchi mutt has both copper plates proof and some of the epigraph can be assigned to them. There are Literary bhashyas where these swamijis were referred and these bashyas can be assigned from 10th AD.
With these proof , they base their arguments.
regards.
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Today while speaking to a respected Scholar re Rajarajecharam,
he shared a rare piece of information ::
KAN Sastry joined Madras University after serving in Annamalai University. During his tenure, even the Professors from Britain used to respect him so much.
After Independence / after his retirement, his 80th Birthday was celebrated. He was living close to Dr. Radhakrishnan's ( opp to yellow pages) house in Dr. RK Salai - then known as Edward Elliot's Road. (We may recall this Elliot was respecting Thiruvalluvar and organised a proto-coin in his memory - one such avl in Kolkatta museum :: ref our archieves)
Our Honble CM Dr. Kalaignar was then (also) a member of the TN Legislative assembly. Himself and Dr. Nedunchezhian were invited for the felicitation function conducted at Vivekanda college. Though politically they were not in line with KAN Sastry in certain issues - both of them attended the function.
Dr. Kalaignar observed :: Though We do not align ourselves with KAN Sastri - WE CANNOT DISPUTE THE FACT THAT THE TAMILNADU IS NOW KNOWN WORLD-WIDE BECAUSE OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF KAN AND HIS MAGNUM OPUS " THE CHOLAS " !!