his preface to the first edition of his Sanskrit Dictionary. We shall
now reproduce here such passages from this preface as are connected with
the subject under consideration and comment upon them. Mr. Wilson
writes as follows:--

"The birth of Sankara presents the same discordance as every other
remarkable incident amongst the Hindus. The Kadali (it ought to be
Koodali) Brahmins, who form an establishment following and teaching his
system, assert his appearance about 2,000 years since; some accounts
place him about the beginning of the Christian era, others in the third
or fourth century after; a manuscript history of the kings of Konga, in
Colonel Mackenzie's Collection, makes him contemporary with Tiru Vikrama
Deva Chakravarti, sovereign of Skandapura in the Dekkan, AD. 178; at
Sringeri, on the edge of the Western Ghauts, and now in the Mysore
Territory, at which place he is said to have founded a College that
still exists, and assumes the supreme control of the Smarta Brahmins of
the Peninsula, an antiquity of 1,600 years is attributed to him, and
common tradition makes him about 1,200 years old. The Bhoja Prabandha
enumerates Sankara among its worthies, and as contemporary with that
prince; his antiquity will then be between eight and nine centuries.
The followers of Madhwacharya in Tuluva seem to have attempted to
reconcile these contradictory accounts by supposing him to have been
born three times; first at Sivuli in Tuluva about 1,500 years ago,
again in Malabar some centuries later, and finally at Padukachaytra in
Tuluva, no more than 600 years since; the latter assertion being
intended evidently to do honour to their own founder, whose date that
was, by enabling him to triumph over Sankara in a supposititious
controversy. The Vaishnava Brahmins of Madura say that Sankara appeared
in the ninth century of Salivahana, or tenth of our era. Dr. Taylor
thinks that, if we allow him about 900 years, we shall not be far from
the truth, and Mr. Colebroke is inclined to give him an antiquity of
about 1,000 years. This last is the age which my friend Ram Mohun Roy,
a diligent student of Sankara's works, and philosophical teacher of his
doctrines, is disposed to concur in, and he infers that 'from a
calculation of the spiritual generations of the followers of Sankara
Swami from his time up to this date, he seems to have lived between the
seventh and eighth centuries of the Christian era,' a distance of time
agr