|| III. Biography ||

Sankaradeva was born to Kusumvar Barbhuyan and Satyasandhaa Devi in Asvina-Kartika, 1371 Saka (1449 AD), at Aali-pukhuri, about 8 miles to the west-north-west of Bardowa situated in the Nagaon district of Assam.

Sankara lost his parents at an early age-in fact,in his very childhood, and the responsibility of bringing him up fell on his grandmother.

• Contents

  • Conditions Before the Advent
  • A Saint is Born
  • At the 'tol'
  • The Staging of the Cihna Yatra
  • Administrator, Religious Teacher and Householder
    • Bardowa - where the Saint was born
    • The Predecessors of the Saint
    • The Ancestors of the Saint- The 'Bara Bhuyans'
    • Bara Bhuyans - Polity and Society

During the first days of Sankara's coming to school, the teacher asked the senior students, by whom Sankara was sitting, to compose a few verses by themselves at home on the deities whom they adored. Sankara, who now knew the consonants alone and not the vowels except the first, and was yet to be acquainted with them, taking it to be an injunction on himself too, composed a beautiful poem on Hari with only the consonants and the first vowel.

Sankaradeva through his deep studies of the chief scriptures of Hinduism realized that the path of unqualified devotion (Bhakti) to Lord Krishna, the Supreme Being, was the only true path. To establish his new faith of love and devotion, hitherto unknown in Assam and indeed in a nascent stage in the whole of India, he began to compose many scriptures with a view to making the masses aware of the Supreme Truth he had realized.