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Adi Shankara

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Adi Shankara (traditionally dated to the 8th century CE) was an Indian Vedic scholar-monk and philosopher who became the foremost systematizer of Advaita Vedanta, the nondualist school of Hindu philosophy. He is credited with influential commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and with founding monastic centers across the Indian subcontinent that helped consolidate a unified tradition of Vedic Hindu thought. Though reliable biographical details are scarce, he is widely revered as one of the most important philosophers in Indian history and credited with a lasting revival of traditional Hindu intellectual life.

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