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Adi Shankara, also called Adi Shankaracharya, was an Indian Vedic scholar-monk, philosopher, and teacher of Advaita Vedanta. He wrote influential commentaries on the Brahma sutras and other texts, and in recent times is often revered as the most important Indian philosopher. Reliable information on Shankara's actual life is scant, and the historical influence of his works on Hindu intellectual thought has been questioned. The historical Shankara was probably relatively unknown and Vaishnava-oriented and his true impact lies in the popular perception of him as a heroic religious leader who re-established traditional Hinduism. Until the 10th century Shankara was overshadowed by his older contemporary Maṇḍana Miśra, and there is no mention of him in concurrent Hindu, Buddhist or Jain sources until the 11th century. The legendary Shankara was created in the 14th century, centuries after his death, when Sringeri maṭha started to receive patronage from the emperors of the Vijayanagara Empire and shifted their allegiance from Advaitic Agamic Shaivism to Brahmanical Advaita orthodoxy. From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adi_Sha...) under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b...)
