a to Cape Comorin.
This is a monstrous exaggeration but he was doubtless a determined
enemy of the Buddhists, as can be seen from his philosophical
works.[512] He taught little about metaphysics or the nature of God,
but he insisted on the necessity and efficacy of Vedic rites.

More important both as a thinker and an organizer was Sankara. There
is some discrepancy in the traditions of his birth, but he was
probably born about 788 A.D.[513] in a family of Nambuthiri Brahmans
at Kaladi[514] in the Cochin state. Kaladi occupies a healthy position
at some height above the sea level and the neighbourhood is now used
as a sanatorium. The cocoanut trees and towered temples which mark
many south Indian landscapes are absent, and paddy fields alternate
with a jungle of flowering plants studded with clumps of bamboos. A
broad river broken by sandbanks winds through the district and near
the villages there are often beautiful avenues of great trees. Not far
distant is Trichur which possesses a Vedic college and a large temple,
forbidden to Europeans but like most edifices in Malabar modest in
architecture. This is not the land of giant gopurams and multitudinous
sculpture, but of lives dedicated to the acquisition of traditional
learning and the daily performance of complicated but inconspicuous
rites.

The accounts of Sankara's life are little but a collection of legends,
in which, however, the following facts stand out. He was the pupil of
Govinda, who was himself the pupil of Gaudapada and this connection
would be important could we be certain that this Gaudapada was the
author of the metrical treatise on philosophy bearing his name. He
wrote popular hymns as well as commentaries on the Upanishads, Vedanta
Sutras and Bhagavad-gita, thus recognizing both Vedic and post-Vedic
literature: he resided for some time on the Narbudda and at Benares,
and in the course of the journeys in which like Paul he gave vent to
his activity, he founded four maths or monasteries, at Sringeri,
Puri, Dwaraka and Badrinath in the Himalaya. Near the latter he died
before he was an old man. On his deathbed he is said to have asked
forgiveness for going on pilgrimages and frequenting temples, because
by so doing he had seemed to forget that God is everywhere.

It is clear that his work both as an author and organizer was
considerable and permanent, and that much of his career was spent
outside Dravidian lands. His greatest achievement was his expos