The life and work of Sri Sankara Part 5

Meanwhile, Sri Sankara's mother was on the point of death. True to his promise to her, Sankara hastened to her bedside and invoked the grace of Vishnu to take her to Vaikuntha. As a sannyasin should not engage in any kind of ritual, his kinsmen refused to permit him to perform the lady's obsequies himself. Upon his insisting that the duty to one's mother overrode all rules and that he would himself perform his mother's cremation, they all to a man withheld their co-operation. Sri Sankara carried the dead body to the backyard of his house unaided by anybody and lighted the funeral pyre by invoking his spiritual prowess. Sri Sankara went thence to Tirupati where he established the Dhanakarshana Yantra which, to this day, draws vast sums of wealth from pious devotees. Reaching Jambukeswaram in modern Tiruchirapalli, he tempered the ferocity of Akhilandeswari, the presiding Goddess by installing a shrine to Sri Vighneswara in front of Her, and fixing on the ears of Her person two rings known as Tatankas in the mystically designed Srichakra pattern. He then went to the land's end in Rameswaram to worship Lord Ramanatha in the Linga that he celebrated in his Dvadasalingstotra. in praise of the Lingas installed in the twelve (dvadasa) foremost temples of Siva. Returning, he visited Chidambaram and left the Mokshalinga, another of those he got in Kailas, to be worshipped there.

Traveling through the length and breadth of the country over, Sri Sankara ultimately reached Kancheepuram near Madras. Kanchi is known as one of the seven Mokshapuris of our sacred land (places that confer Liberation) and has had, through the ages, a memorable political, literary, cultural, and religious history. Scholars and saints of all denominations and sects have either visited it in their time or taken permanent residence there. It has been the venue of philosophical disputations of all schools of thought. No religious leader considered his mission fulfilled or his victory complete unless he vanquished rivals of other faiths in that famous city. As its name signifies, Kanchi is the waistline of the earth and its central spot. It was but appropriate that Sri Sankara also should go to this place to proclaim the Advaita Vedanta vindicating it against other schools of religion and philosophy. Acclaimed by everyone as the supreme master of all that is to know, Sri Sankara ascended before a large assembly the throne of omniscience known as the Sarvajna Pitha at Kanchi.

He then mitigated the ugrakala, the fierce aspect of the Goddess Kamakshi drawing it into a Srichakra which he placed in front of Her and consecrated it. After renovating the temple to Lord Vishnu in the person of Sri Varadaraja, he asked the reigning king of Kanchi to fashion the city in the form of a Srichakra giving the central place to the shrine of Sri Kamakshi.

A few things are noteworthy in this connection. Kanchi is famous for its numerous temples in honor of Vishnu and Siva. But the main tower of all of them, howsoever distant they may be from the temple of Sri Kamakshi, face it without exception. The processional idols of all these shrines are taken around this Kamakshi temple when their annual festivals are celebrated. In none of the Siva temples of Kanchi is there a shrine for Siva's Consort, that of Kamakshi doing service for all of them. The city is famous as the place where Brahma himself performed a yajna attended by all the celestials.