The life and work of Sri Sankara Part 3

Then began the triumphant digvijaya of Sri Sankara. The first opponent of Advaita which is the philosophy of the Upanishads (known as the Uttaramimamsa) was the Purvamimamsaka who believed in the primacy and the immediacy of the Vedic Karmic rituals as the means to Moksha. One of the staunchest protagonists of this school was Kumarila Bhatta who lay on the banks of the Ganga at Prayag (modern Allahabad) at the point of death, having immolated himself by fire for the sin of gurudroha (being a traitor to one's Guru), which he acquired by furtively learning the tenets of Buddhism from a Buddhist savant in order to controvert them later. Kumarila, according to the legend, was an incarnation of Kumara, son of Lord Siva. He told Sri Sankara of his predicament which disabled him from debating with him. He bade him go to his own disciple, Mandana Misra living in Mahishmati, saying that he (Mandana) was a more uncompromising ritualist than himself.

Sri Sankara hastened to Mandana's place. On arriving at the city, he was at a loss to discover Mandana's house. He enquired of a woman who was passing by and was told that in the verandah of a house two parrots would be chirping between themselves whether the Vedas were true in their own right or if their truth was derived. That, she said, was Mandana's house. Arriving there, Sri Sankara found the door closed against intruders as a sraddha ceremony was being then performed by Mandana. The story is that Sri Sankara let himself in by his yogic powers. Parrying the abuses of the householder who was wroth at a sannyasin interposing himself in a sraddha ceremony, Sri Sankara said that he did not come there for anna bhiksha (alms of food) but made him agree to a vada bhiksha, (alms of knowledge) after the sraddha ceremony was over. The disputants agreed that Mandana's wife Sarasavani who was said to be an incarnation of the Goddess Sarasvati, (Mandana being Brahma himself), should act as umpire to the debate. The wager was that if either was defeated, he should adopt the asrama of the other, that is, either Sri Sankara should become a householder or Mandana should take to monastic discipline. Leaving them to debate between themselves, Sarasavani went to attend to her domestic chores. Before doing so, she adorned each disputant with a garland of flowers saying that the person whose garland showed signs of fading must be considered to have been defeated.

The debate went on for a number of days. At the conclusion of the sessions on a particular day, Sarasavani invited both of them together for bhiksha signifying that her lord Mandana had become eligible for alms as only a monk is, in other words, that he had been defeated and should, according to the wager, become a sannyasin. This he did, adopting the name Suresvara and thence forward accepted the supremacy of Advaita. He became one of the foremost disciples of Sri Sankara who had earlier, when he was in Kasi acquired a disciple in the person of Sanandana. This disciple came to be known as Padmapada because the river Ganga caused lotuses (padma) to bloom at every step of his foot (pada) to give support to him, when once in his ecstatic devotion to Sri Sankara, he walked right on the stream to fulfil a command of the master on the other bank.