Q1.
Śhankarāchārya taught that brahman is the ultimate reality or the pure consciousness, and that the world as we perceive it is māyā or illusion. He established four maṭhas (monasteries and centres of learning) at Badrinath, Puri, Dwarka, and Sringeri. Mark the location of these cities on a map; why do you think he chose four different corners of India rather than more central locations?
Answer
Mark them and the answer draws itself: the four maṭhas sit at the four extremes of India, so together they enclose the whole country.
| Maṭha | Present-day State | Direction | What it stands at the edge of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Badrinath | Uttarakhand | North | High in the Himalayas, near the source of the Ganga |
| Puri | Odisha | East | On the Bay of Bengal |
| Dwarka | Gujarat | West | On the Arabian Sea, at the tip of Saurashtra |
| Sringeri | Karnataka | South | In the Western Ghats, the southern peninsula |
Why the corners and not the centre — four reasons
- To bind the whole land together. Four centres at four extremes make a single frame that includes everything in between. One central maṭha would have been convenient for people nearby and useless to everyone else.
- Because pilgrimage already ran that way. Badrinath, Puri and Dwarka were already great pilgrimage places. Placing a centre of learning where pilgrims already came meant the teaching would spread by itself, carried home by people from every region. (You met this idea in Part 1, in ‘How the Land Becomes Sacred’.)
- Because he taught one reality behind many appearances. Śhankarāchārya taught that brahman is the one ultimate reality and the world as we see it is māyā. A tradition saying “the many are really one” is well expressed by four widely-separated maṭhas teaching one philosophy.
- Because a distant centre survives a local disaster. Four independent maṭhas in four regions cannot all be destroyed by one invasion, one famine or one hostile king. Vikramaśhilā, standing alone, was plundered and destroyed in the 12th century; the four maṭhas are still functioning.
About Fig. 3.14 — the 19th-century sketch shows the Shankaracharya Hill (also called Takht-i-Sulaiman, anciently Gopādri Hill) above Srinagar, with the Jhelum meandering below and Himalayan peaks behind. Tradition says the 8th-century teacher of advaita vedānta visited it, and the stone temple on top is known as the Shankaracharya or Jyeshteshwara temple. Its presence in Kashmir is the chapter’s point on the very next page: “despite Kashmir’s mountainous geography, throughout history the kingdom remained well connected to the political and cultural developments elsewhere in India.”