Books Written by Adi Shankara

More than 300 works in Sanskrit are attributed to him, but scholars think most were written by followers or by later heads of his monasteries who also bore the name Shankaracharya. Those widely accepted as his are the Brahma Sutra Bhashya, the commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, the commentaries on the principal Upanishads and the Upadesasahasri. This page lists 13 key works in English translation.

The order in which he wrote is unknown. In order of their first English translation, the 13 on this page are: Thibaut’s Vedanta-Sutras (1890); Sastry’s Gita (1897); Madhavananda’s Vivekachudamani (1921) and Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1934); Vimuktananda’s Aparokshanubhuti (1938); Nikhilananda’s Self-Knowledge and Prabhavananda and Isherwood’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination (both 1947); Jagadananda’s Upadesa Sahasri (1949); Gambhirananda’s Eight Upanisads (1957) and Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya (1965); Mayeda’s A Thousand Teachings (1979); Gambhirananda’s Gita (1984); and Grimes’s Vivekacudamani (2004).

With the Upadesasahasri, in Swami Jagadananda’s Upadesa Sahasri (1949) or Sengaku Mayeda’s A Thousand Teachings (1979). It is short, written for pupils, and certainly his. Many readers start instead with the Crest-Jewel of Discrimination (1947), which is easier, but its authorship is doubted.

His most important work is the Brahma Sutra Bhashya, his commentary on the Brahma Sutras, the founding text of Advaita Vedanta. The best known among general readers is the Vivekachudamani, the “Crest-Jewel of Discrimination”, even though most modern scholars doubt he wrote it.

Probably not, in the view of most modern scholars. Sengaku Mayeda thought it was likely not his work, and Michael Comans called the traditional attribution “most probably erroneous”, suggesting a later Shankaracharya. Paul Hacker, on the other hand, concluded it was likely his because its definitions match his authentic works, and John Grimes argues that he may still have written it. Within the tradition it is accepted as his.

No one knows for certain. Most scholars now place him around 700–750 CE, from the earliest and latest limits suggested by the writers he quotes and those who quote him. The dates 788–820 CE, still often repeated, were proposed by scholars in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and have since been questioned. Some of the monasteries linked to him, such as Sringeri, place him much earlier, in the fifth century BCE.

Advaita means “non-dual”, and Vedanta is the school of Indian philosophy based on the Upanishads. In Shankara’s version, the individual self (ātman) is not different from Brahman, the one unchanging reality; the world of many separate things is an appearance, and liberation (mokṣa) comes from knowledge that removes the mistake of taking oneself to be the body and mind.

For a readable version, Swami Prabhavananda and Christopher Isherwood’s Shankara’s Crest-Jewel of Discrimination (1947). For the Sanskrit beside the English, Swami Madhavananda’s Vivekachudamani (1921). For a scholarly translation that discusses the authorship question, John Grimes (2004).

Tradition says he founded four: Sringeri in the south, Puri in the east, Dwarka in the west and Badrinath (Jyotirmath) in the north, each headed by a pupil, and the heads of these monasteries still carry the title Shankaracharya. Historians are less sure; the scholar Paul Hacker suggested that at least one may have been founded in the 14th century and credited to Shankara.

Not directly, but Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) taught a closely related non-dual teaching and translated the Vivekachudamani into Tamil. Readers often come to Shankara from Ramana Maharshi or Nisargadatta Maharaj, or the other way round.