It is unnecessary for us to say anything about the Madhwa traditions or the opinion of the Vaishnava Brahmins of Madurah regarding Sankara’s date.  It is, in our humble opinion, hopeless to expect anything but falsehood regarding Sankara’s history and his philosophy from the Madhwas and the Vaishnavas.  They are always very anxious to show to the world at large that their doctrines existed before the time of Sankara, and that the Adwaitee doctrine was a deviation from their preexisting orthodox Hinduism.  And consequently they have assigned to him an antiquity of less than 1,500 years.

It does not appear why Dr. Taylor thinks that he can allow Sankara about 900 years, or on what grounds Mr. Colebrooke is inclined to give him an antiquity of about 1,000 years.  No reliance can be placed on such statements before the reasons assigned therefore are thoroughly sifted.

Fortunately, Mr. Wilson gives us the reason for Ram Mohun Roy’s opinion.  We are inclined to believe that Ram Mohun Roy’s calculation was made with reference to the Sringeri list of Teachers or Gurus, as that was the only list published up to this time; and as no other Matham, except perhaps the Cumbaconum Matham, has a list of Gurus coming up to the present time in uninterrupted succession.  There is no necessity for depending upon his calculation (which from its very nature cannot be anything more than mere guesswork) when the old list preserved at Sringeri contains the dates assigned to the various teachers.  As these dates have not been published up to the present time, and as Ram Mohun Roy had merely a string of names before him, he was obliged to ascertain Sankara’s date by assigning a certain number of years on the average to every teacher.  Consequently, his opinion is of no importance whatever when we have the statement of the Sringeri Matham which, as we have already said, places Sankara some centuries before the Christian era.  The same remarks will apply to the calculation in question even if it were made on the basis of the number of teachers contained in the list preserved in the Cumbaconum Matham.

Very little importance can be attached to the oral evidence adduced by some unknown persons before Dr. Buchanan in his travels through Malabar; and we have only to consider the inferences that may be drawn from the accounts contained in Kerala Utpatti.  The various manuscript copies of this work seem to differ in the date they assign to Sankaracharya; even if the ease were otherwise, we cannot place any reliance upon this work, for the following among other reasons:—­