Adi Shankara is a deeply revered acharya (scholar) of the Vedas from 8th-century India. The sculpture of Shankara that you see on this page is, historically, how the great teacher has been visualised. Fair and gentle, exuding equanimity and wisdom and tenderness.Not much by way of clothing, a strip or two of unstitched fabric in the sacred colours of peeta and gerua; a staff for assistance, symbolic of all the roads He had traversed in His short lifetime; and, of course, a pothi (Vedic manuscript).Carved from marble, Shankara here is seated on a tigerskin spread upon a quantum of bare mountainous earth. This conforms to His ascetic nature. Note the overall stance of Shankara, expressive of a generous propensity to teach.
