Adi Shankaracharya

Shankara was born at Kalady on the Purna river, which Kerala now calls the Periyar, to Shivaguru and Aryamba. His father died when he was small. The boy wanted sannyasa and his mother would not hear of it, until the day a crocodile caught his foot in the river and he begged her leave to take the vow before he died; she gave it, and the crocodile let go. That is how the Shankara Digvijaya tells it. He walked north to the banks of the Narmada and found his guru, Govinda Bhagavatpada, who taught him the Advaita of Gaudapada's line.

By sixteen, the tradition says, he had written his commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. He then walked the length of Bharat, debating in Kashi, at Mahishmati with Mandana Mishra and his wife Ubhaya Bharati, in Kashmir at the Sharada Peetha. He set up the four Amnaya mathas at Sringeri, Dwarka, Puri and Jyotirmath, and the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham also traces its line to him. He left the body at thirty-two; Kedarnath keeps his samadhi.

The same man who argued that Brahman alone is real wrote stotras for every form of Bhagwan: Ganesha, Shiva, Devi, Vishnu, Annapurna, Kalabhairava. For him there was no quarrel between knowledge and devotion. Bhakti purifies the mind; the purified mind sees the one Self. Every Smarta household that sings Bhaja Govindam at dusk is singing his teaching in its simplest form.