Shankara (ca. 788-820) was an Indian philosopher and reformer. He founded the advaita, or nondual, school of vedanta philosophy.

Shankara, also called Shankaracharya, "Master Shankara," was born of Brahman parentage in southern India. His intellectual powers were soon evident, and he mastered a wide range of religious and philosophical materials. His major goal was to synthesize the immensely diverse spectrum of Hindu philosophical and theistic symbolism into a single coherent system. He was quite orthodox in his commitment to the Veda--the most ancient body of Hindu religious literature; but he tried to harmonize its many paradoxical and often contradictory teachings by centering on the last Vedic section, the Upanishads ("esoteric" teachings, also called the Vedanta," end of the Veda").

Shankara ascribed the founding of the Vedanta school to the sage Badarayana (ca. 400 B.C.), whose writings formed the basis for some of shankara's most important treatises. But...