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RELIGIOUS SECTS
controversial victories over various sects; in most cases, no doubt, the fictions of the writers. Of the two principal works of the class one attributed to ANANDAGIRI, a pupil of Sankara, has already been noticed'. The other is the work of MÁDHAVA ÁcháryA *, the minister of some of the earliest chiefs of Vijayanagar, and who dates, accordingly, in the fourteenth century. This is a composition of high literary and polemical pretension, but not equally high biographical value. Some particulars of SANKARA's birth and early life are to be found in the Kerala Utpatti **, or political and statistical description of Malabar, although the work is sometimes said to have been composed by SANKARA himself.
With regard to the place of SANKARA's birth, and the tribe of which he was a member, most accounts agree to make him a native of Kerala, or Malabar, of the tribe of Nambúri Brahmans, and in the mythological language of the sect an incarnation of Siva. According to other traditions, he was born as Chidambaram, although he transferred his residence to Malabar, whilst the Kerala Utpatti recognises Malabar as his native place, and calls him the offspring of adultery, for which his mother Sri MAHÁDevi was expelled her caste.
Supra p. 14. * [See Bhagav. Purána ed. Burnouf, I, p. LVII. Lassen, Ind. Alt. IV, p. 173, Note.]
** [Mackenzie Coll. II, 73 ff. F. H. H. Windischmann, Sancara. Bonn, 1833, pp. 39 – 48.]
