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Articles: Devotion | Journey into Adi Sankara
- Prof. venkata ramanamurty mallajosyula
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“Brahma satyam jaganmitya.”
The allegory here is simple but contains the quintessence of entire Advaita philosophy of Adi Sankara. He admits that as long as the person perceived the rope as snake his mind accepts the rope as snake. In other words in the rope actual snake was there till the moment he perceived it as rope. Once the real knowledge emerges the transcendental nature of the object suddenly disappears and the empirical reality emerges. Thus the aspirant getting the real jnana understands that what he had perceived was maya or illusion and attains the real knowledge of the Paramatman or the Truth of the Atman. In fact the prime importance of Advaita surrounds this theory of Illusion (Maya) and certainly Adi Sankara placed an example popular in nature so that even an ordinary aspirant can understand it clearly. As already stated elsewhere in the part I, Adi Sankara always place the allegories to establish his Doctrines with very popular well known objects or materials.
It is pertinent to note here that the Advaita philosophy is based on the Veda texts and they also provide sufficient allegories here and there to clarify the thoughts of the Vedic Seers, but with out reciting them Adi Sankara placed the noble experience with the allegories or examples of the contemporary period in which he lived.
In the above context, he had snake as a revered object which could draw the attention of even common man. In India the snake was considered as the holy of the holiest thing and together with tree formed the object of worship in early period or even can be placed earlier than the earliest temple reported so far. This worship of natural objects or Forces is reported in Vedic texts and also other heterodox school of thoughts accepted them. The earliest Naga temple so far discovered in India is at Sonkh near Mathura. In the archaeological excavations Dr.H.Haertel from Germany had discovered the earliest brick temple dedicated to Naga. The practice of worshiping snake as the main deity is authenticated here. It is interesting to note that the excavator had dated the site, on stratigraphical grounds at least 100 years earlier than the beginning of the Common Era**.
In Kerala, the birth place of Adi Sankara the tradition of worshipping Naga was very popular and the practice of having Sarpa Kavu (MiniTempleof Snake)continues even to day. This popular material had made him to place this as the allegory so that even a common man can understand the same. Thus his period may be earlier than the beginning of the Common Era. This is tom be further probed with other archaeological materials from Kerala.
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