Swami Brahmānanda Saraswatī

The man

For about a century and a half the northern one of the four seats that the tradition traces to Sri Śaṅkara had no one on it. The Jyotir Maṭha at Joshimath, on the pilgrim road to Badrinath, kept its name, and pilgrims kept passing, but there was no Śaṅkarācārya of the north; the other three seats went on unbroken while this one stood empty. The man who was finally persuaded to fill it, in 1941, was a monk of seventy who had spent most of his life alone in forests and caves, who had refused every earlier approach, and who, two days before the appointed day, walked out of his ashram and could not be found. He held the seat for twelve years, refused money to the end, taught in plain Hindi to crowds that his followers counted in thousands, and died in Calcutta in 1953 seated cross-legged with his eyes closed.

The Jyotir Maṭha's own page introduces him in a sentence: “From a young age, he was drawn to deep meditation and renunciation. He left home at 9 years old to pursue the spiritual path and eventually became a profound master of Advaita Vedanta.” It gives his birth as “21 December 1871 in Surhurpur, near Ayodhya”, his name in the world as Rajaram Mishra, his death as “20 May 1953 (at the age of 81) in Calcutta”, and it says of his coming to the seat: “For over 150 years, Jyotir Math had no recognized Shankaracharya due to various historical and other factors. In 1941, Swami Brahmananda Saraswati was appointed as the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math, restoring this sacred seat to its rightful spiritual prominence.”

His followers called him Guru Dev, and through one of them, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, his name travelled further than that of any other Śaṅkarācārya of the twentieth century. This page is not about that pupil. It is about the teacher: what can be established of his life from the Jyotir Maṭha itself, from a court that spent decades weighing evidence about him, and from a biography compiled from the recollections of those who knew him; and what he actually said, in the Hindi collection of his discourses that his own ashram printed.

The sources for this page, and what each can bear

The materials for this life are of four kinds, and they are not equally reliable in the same ways.

• The Jyotir Maṭha's own page on him, on the seat's website, linked below. It is the tradition's official summary: dates, places, his teacher, his successor. It is short and it is the anchor for the card.
• The Allahabad High Court's judgment of 22 September 2017 in the long-running dispute over the succession to the seat, which is public record and is linked below. Courts are not historians, and most of what the judgment records about him is what the parties pleaded, not what the court found; but it preserves documents — the 1941 trust deed, the 1952 will, the dates of the installations — and where the court itself made a finding this page says so. Nothing on this page takes a side in that dispute.
• A Short Biography of Guru Dev by Robert C. Sanders, published by the Guru Dev Legacy Trust in 2020, a body formed in 2014 to collect and archive materials about him. It draws, its preface says, on the Hindi life by Rameshwar Prasad Tiwari (1965) and on followers' recollections. It is the fullest account in English and it is a devotee's account, which is not a fault but a fact; it is in copyright and is cited here by name without a link.
• Śrī Śaṅkarācārya Upadeśāmṛta, the Hindi collection of his discourses compiled by Rameshwar Prasad Tiwari and published by the Śrī Śaṅkarācārya Sevak Samiti from Brahma-Nivās, Alopibagh, Allahabad, with a foreword by his successor Swami Śāntānanda Sarasvatī. This is the one source in which his own words survive at length, and the section on his teaching is taken from it, in the original Hindi with this site's translations beside it. It too is cited by name only.
• Sringeri's page on the four seats, for the place of the Jyotir Maṭha among them.

Every quotation is word for word from one of these and was checked by machine against its text; where the Hindi scan was misread by the machine that copied it, the printed word has been restored and each restoration is listed in the closing note. Where the sources disagree — and on his birthplace, his installation date and the year the seat fell empty they do — the page gives both and does not choose. Living persons and their institutions are mentioned only as the official sources mention them.

Where the life was lived

The life runs from the Ganges plain to the high Himalaya and back, with a long detour into the forests of central India. It begins near Ayodhya, in what is now Uttar Pradesh: the Jyotir Maṭha names “Surhurpur, near Ayodhya” as the birthplace, the Trust's biography “the village of Gana, near Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh”; the two may be the same place under two names, or two villages of the same district, and the page cannot say which. Then Benares, where he was sent to study at eight; then, running away, the road up the Ganges — Prayag, Hardwar, Rishikesh — and at last Uttarkashi, deep in the mountains on the way to Gangotri, where at fourteen he found his teacher. After his teacher released him he lived, the Trust says, “in seclusion in remote places in north and central India”, and in particular in the Amarkantak hills where the Narmadā rises, in what was then Rewa State and is now Madhya Pradesh; Jabalpur, in the same country, remained a place he returned to for months at a time.

From 1930 he came down to the towns of the plain — Benares, Prayag, Ayodhya — and from 1936 the Brahma Niwas ashram was his base. As Śaṅkarācārya, from 1941, his seat was Joshimath, in the Garhwal Himalaya on the road to Badrinath, where the court record says “Entire land and site of Jyotirmath/Jyotishpeeth, Pauri Garhwal, including land and Ashram at Banaras (Varanasi) was placed under Trust”; but the pleadings recorded by the same court say he “mostly lived at Brahma Niwas, Alopi Bagh at Allahabad, and toured whole of Northern India frequently”. Calcutta saw him in December 1950 and again in May 1953, when he died there; Delhi in December 1952. His body was carried back to Benares, and the Ganges at Benares is where the life ends.

The names: Rajaram, Brahma Chaitanya, Brahmānanda, Guru Dev

He had four names, one for each stage of the life. Rajaram Mishra was the boy's: the Jyotir Maṭha gives “(Sri Rajaram Mishra)” as his name before renunciation, and the Trust says “His family named him Rajaram.” Brahma Chaitanya Brahmachari was the name his teacher gave him as a celibate student: the Trust records that Swami Kṛṣṇānanda “accepted the boy as a disciple, giving him the monastic name Brahma Chaitanya Brahmachari”. Brahmānanda Sarasvatī, “the bliss of Brahman,” of the Sarasvatī order of the ten-named monks, was the name of his full renunciation in 1906. And Guru Dev, “the divine teacher,” is what his followers called him and still call him; the Trust's biography is titled with it.

After 1941 he carried a fifth, which is a title rather than a name: Jagadguru Śaṅkarācārya, Jyotiṣpīṭhādhīśvara, world-teacher in the line of Śaṅkara and lord of the seat of Jyotiṣ. Justice Radhabinod Pal, addressing him in Calcutta in 1950, used the full form, “his Holiness, Shri Jagadguru Shankaracharya Ananta Sri Vibhushit Swami Brahmananda Saraswati of Jyotirmath, Badarikasram”. The Hindi collection of his discourses gives the same on its title-page, with the honorific Anantaśrīvibhūṣita, “adorned with infinite glory,” that the seats use of their heads. This site calls him Swami Brahmānanda Saraswatī, as the Jyotir Maṭha does, and distinguishes him from the Swami Brahmananda of the Ramakrishna Order, Sri Ramakrishna's disciple, who has his own page here, and from the later Advaita commentator Sri Brahmānanda Sarasvatī of the Advaitasiddhi tradition, whom the Kanchi volume treats in its chapter 52 and places around the turn of the nineteenth century. Three men, one name, no connection.

The seat, and the empty years

Sringeri's page on the four seats lists the northern one as the “Northern Amnaya — Uttaramnaya”, the “Jyotir Math”, with “Acharya: Sri Totakacharya” and “Location: Jyotirdhama (Badrinath), Uttarakhand”, and this site's page on Sri Toṭaka tells the story of its founding. What matters here is what happened to it afterwards. All the sources agree that the line of its heads broke and that the seat stood empty into the twentieth century; they do not agree on when the break came or how long it lasted.

The plaint recorded by the High Court puts it this way: “For a period of about 165 years (prior to 1941) i.e. since around 1776 A.D., Jyotirmath/Jyotishpeeth remained without a Head.” The 1941 trust deed, as the court's translation of it runs, tells the story from the seat's side: after a long line of heads, “41 Shankaracharyas were installed upto Shri Ramkrishna Swami whose period came to end in 1833 Vikram Samwat. ... After Ramkirhna Swami, the matha was destroyed in a natural disaster. Ramkrishna Swami was out of the Math for propounding Dharma. He also left for the heavenly abode (Brahmleen) and he could not appoint anyone as his successor... as a result of which, Jyotrimatha remained extirpated from 1833 to 1998 vikram Samwat, for 165 years for there being no Acharya.” The Vikram year 1833 is roughly 1776 of the common era and 1998 is 1941; the deed's “165 years” is therefore the same figure as the plaint's, and the Hindi preface to his discourses uses it too: “किन्तु इधर १६५ वर्ष से उत्तर के “ज्योतिमठ’ में कोई धर्माचार्य नहीं हुये ।” — “but for these 165 years there has been no teacher of dharma in the Jyotir Maṭha of the north” (our translation).

The Trust's biography gives a different year: “The seat of the northern math, Jyotirmath had been vacant since 1833, there being no person deemed qualified.” That “1833” is almost certainly the Vikram year of the trust deed read as a year of the common era; taken literally it would make the vacancy 108 years, and the same biography says elsewhere that the seat “was vacant for almost 150 years”. The Jyotir Maṭha's own page says “For over 150 years”. The page reports all three; the weight of the sources is with about 165 years, from the 1770s, and the exact year is not recoverable from them.

Why it stood empty so long the sources barely say. The deed speaks of a natural disaster and a head who died away from the maṭha without naming a successor; the Jyotir Maṭha's page speaks of “various historical and other factors”. The Trust adds that the question had been raised at least since 1908: “The subject was discussed in 1908 at the Bharat Dharma Mandal (Congregation of Religious Leaders of India) and given renewed attention in the 1930s.” It was that body, the Bharat Dharma Mahāmaṇḍala of Benares, that in 1941 finally acted, and the court record says by what authority: “In 1941, three Shankaracharya of Shringeri, Sharda and Govardhan Math/Peeth, Rulers of various States, learned people and Sanyasis etc., authorised a registered institution known as ‘Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, Banaras’ (now Varanasi)” to search for a monk fit to fill the seat. The other three seats, in other words, joined in restoring the fourth.

Boyhood: a village near Ayodhya, and Benares at eight

The Trust's biography, drawing on Tiwari's Hindi life, is the only source for the childhood, and it should be read as the tradition's own memory of it. “Swami Brahmanand Saraswati was born in 1871 into a respected Mishra Brahman family in the village of Gana, near Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh. His family named him Rajaram. As a child, he displayed unusual maturity and serenity. At age eight, his family sent him to study at Benares, an ancient center of learning. There he immersed himself in the study of Sanskrit and the Vedic scriptures.” The Jyotir Maṭha gives the exact day, 21 December 1871, and the village as Surhurpur; the Trust gives no day and the village as Gana. The page has already said it cannot reconcile the two names.

The Jyotir Maṭha says he “left home at 9 years old”, and the Trust's account of how agrees on the age and supplies the reason: word reached the boy in Benares that his family was arranging his marriage. “Confronted with having to obey his family or follow his heart, he chose the latter. He resolved to leave school and go to the Himalayas in search of a guru and spiritual enlightenment.” He got as far as Prayag, where a policeman recognised him from his family's notice and, the story goes, let him pass and bought him a ticket to Hardwar; at Hardwar a second policeman sent him home. The family tried persuasion and then their family priest, who, the Trust says, took the boy's side. The last word was his mother's:

“Turning to the boy, she said, “jaao bhajana karo,” meaning “go do bhajan” (sing God’s name; live in worship). With this blessing, the boy departed never to return.”

A nine-year-old who leaves home for good with his mother's blessing is a figure the tradition knows — Sri Śaṅkara himself, in the tradition's telling, won his mother's consent to renunciation as a boy — and the reader should know that this is the tradition's telling here too, preserved by his followers and published by a trust devoted to his memory. This site has no independent record of his childhood and does not pretend to one.

The search for a teacher: Rishikesh to Uttarkashi

The boy went to Rishikesh, where the Ganges leaves the mountains, and began to look for a teacher. The Trust's account preserves the conditions he set, and they are worth recording because they are the conditions the tradition itself sets. “The Vedic texts state that one’s teacher should be shrotriyam brahmanishtham (versed in the Vedas and fully realised). Rajaram added two more requirements: his teacher must be free of krodha (anger) and a bal brahmachari (life celibate).” The first pair is the Upaniṣadic definition of a guru: learned in the scripture and established in Brahman. The second pair is a child's addition, and a shrewd one.

“Finding no teacher at Rishikesh that met these four stringent requirements, the boy pressed on. He travelled from place to place meeting many teachers, but none met his qualifications. Finally, at age fourteen, he found his teacher in the remote Himalayan valley of Uttarkashi. This teacher was Swami Krishnanand Saraswati.” The Jyotir Maṭha confirms the teacher's name and the order: he “took Paramahamsa Parivrajaka Sanyasa Deeksha from Poojya Swami Sri Krsnānanda Sarasvatī Ji Maharaj”. Of Swami Kṛṣṇānanda Sarasvatī himself nothing more is recorded in the sources used here than his name, his ashram at Uttarkashi and his order; he is one of the many teachers of the Himalaya who are remembered only through a pupil.

The Trust's account of the training has a detail that the tradition tells with evident pleasure. The boy was the youngest in the ashram and advanced quickly, and when the time came for the teacher to give him the practices of meditation that lead to realisation, “Knowing the older students would be jealous if they knew the boy was receiving advanced instruction, Krishnanand devised a way to teach the boy without the others knowing. He told him that he would feign anger and expel him from the ashram, order him to relocate to an area of caves nearby, but allow him to return once a week for provisions. During these visits he would provide further instructions.” The story cannot be checked and is not offered as history; it is offered as what his followers were told and remembered. What follows is the Trust's summary: “By age twenty-five he became atmanishsth (self-contained, fully realised). With his master’s blessing, he left the ashram. From that time on he lived in seclusion in remote places in north and central India, fully immersed in atmananda (the bliss of Self).” Twenty-five would be 1896. From then until 1930 — more than thirty years — he is almost invisible.

Sannyāsa at the Kumbh Mela, 1906

He was a brahmacārī, a celibate student, for more than twenty years before he took the formal vows of renunciation, and he took them from the same teacher. The Trust: “In 1906, when Brahma Chaitanya was thirty-six, he reunited with Krishnanand at the Kumbh Mela, the great spiritual gathering held every twelve years at the sangam (confluence) of the Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswati rivers at Prayag. There Brahmanand asked Krishnanand to initiate him into sanyas, the renounced order of life. Krishnanand granted the request, giving him the sanyasi name Swami Brahmanand Saraswati.” A small arithmetic point: a man born in December 1871 was thirty-four, not thirty-six, in the early months of 1906, when the Prayag Kumbh is held; the biography's ages run a year or two high here and in one or two other places, and this page keeps to the dates rather than the ages.

The Kumbh at Prayag is the natural place for it. Every twelve years the monks of the ten orders gather there, initiations are given in numbers, and a wandering ascetic could find his old teacher without either having a fixed address. The Jyotir Maṭha's phrase for what he received, “Paramahamsa Parivrajaka Sanyasa Deeksha”, names the highest of the four grades of renunciant, the paramahaṁsa, and the wandering life, parivrājaka, that goes with it. He would return to the Kumbh at Prayag in 1930, and the meeting then would change the direction of the life.

Amarkantak and the forest years

After sannyāsa he went south into the hills of central India. “This time he went to the Amarkantakas mountains, the source of the holy Narmada river in Rewa State (now part of Madhya Pradesh).” The Narmadā rises at Amarkantak and flows west across the whole width of the peninsula; the country around the source is Sāl forest and tribal villages, and a monk who wished not to be found could stay unfound there for years.

One visitor found him, and the Trust prints his account. Swami Rama, an Indian teacher who later wrote in English of his travels among the monks of India, came looking for a swami he had heard was living in the jungle near Satna. He found the hillock, the cave, the pool, and for four days nothing else; the ascetic “used to live only on germinated gram seeds mixed with a little bit of salt”, and left only the prints of wooden sandals at the water's edge. On the fifth morning:

“I greeted him, saying “Namo Narayan,” which is a commonly used salutation among swamis meaning “I bow to the divinity in you.” He was observing silence so he motioned for me to follow him to his small cave and I did so gladly. Swami Brahmananda’s authoritative knowledge of the Upanishads, and especially Shankara’s commentaries, was superb. Among all the swamis of India, I only met a few who radiated such brilliance.”

The passage is the only outsider's description of him from the forest years that the sources preserve, and it tells the reader two things the rest of the record confirms: that he was a scholar of the commentaries, not only a contemplative, and that he kept silence. It is quoted at second hand and the page marks it as such.

1930: “stay near the towns”; Brahma Niwas, 1936

At the Kumbh of 1930 he met his teacher again, and the teacher gave him an order. “Krishnanand said to him, “You have stayed long enough in the jungles and mountains. Now you should stay near the towns so that the people may benefit.” Thereafter Brahmanand became more accessible, visiting towns such as Benares, Prayag and Ayodhya for religious festivals. He would often remain for a few more days so that people could have his darshan (sight) and hear his upadesha (teaching).” He was fifty-eight. Everything the public knows of him dates from after this order; the first fifty-eight years are the tradition's memory, the last twenty-three are documented.

Six years later he acquired a fixed base. The Trust: “In 1936, at age 64, Brahmanand arranged for the construction of an ashram in Benares. This ashram, named Brahma Niwas, became his principal seat.” Here the sources diverge on geography in a way the reader should know about. The Trust places Brahma Niwas in Benares throughout, and says his body was brought there in 1953; the trust deed recorded by the court mentions “land and Ashram at Banaras (Varanasi)”. But the pleadings recorded by the same court say that as Śaṅkarācārya “He mostly lived at Brahma Niwas, Alopi Bagh at Allahabad”, and the Hindi collection of his discourses was published from ““ब्रह्म-निवास” अलोपीबाग इलाहाबाद” — Brahma-Nivās, Alopibagh, Allahabad. The Trust itself records that “in 1950 Brahmanand established an ashram at Prayag, the Shri Shankaracharya Niwas Ashram at Alopibagh”. The likeliest reading is that there were two houses of the same or similar name, the first at Benares from 1936 and the second at Alopibagh in Allahabad from 1950, and that the Allahabad house became the headquarters in his last years; but the page reports the sources as they stand rather than settling it for them.

The routine of those years is described by the Trust in a passage that shows the man more than any list of dates. When he stayed in a town, crowds gathered in the street below his rooms. “At about nine o’clock each evening, a brahmachari would bring Brahmanand a list of the names of those waiting. After reviewing the list, Brahmanand would often say: “aaj nahin milenge” (“there will be no meeting today”). An hour or so later he would ask the brahmachari if any darshan seekers remained. When told two or three remained, he would say, “these are true seekers” and allow them to enter.”

“Offer your defects”: the refusal of money

The one thing every source insists on is that he would not take money. The Trust: “Brahmanand had a strict policy against accepting money or gifts.” The story it tells to illustrate it concerns a merchant of Prayag who, having won a lawsuit he had mentioned to the swami, hid gold coins under a leaf-bowl of jasmine among the offered flowers. When the coins were found the merchant was barred from the door, made to wait for hours on his return, and then told:

“Why do you offer us money? You withhold it from those who are eager for it, but offer it to us who have no need. Give this to those who desire it. If you wish to make an offering here, then give up your durguna (defects, faults).”

He said the same thing in general terms, and the Trust preserves it as a saying: “We see that of all the things beloved by man, the most coveted are the durguna (defects, faults). Man is not ready to let go of them. Wealth he expends, disgrace he bears, but these defects he holds dear. Offer your best loved flaws. These are gifts we will receive.” A Śaṅkarācārya who would accept ceremony — the Trust notes that he “accepted these greetings, as they were in accord with custom and tradition” — but not a rupee is an unusual figure, and the court record, from the other side of the argument, confirms the substance: it records that property came to the seat in his time and that “People made generous donations of moveables and immovables so that there may not be any financial scarcity in management of Jyotirmath” — to the maṭha, that is, held in trust, which is exactly the distinction his refusal drew.

The saying about defects is also the nearest thing to a summary of his teaching. A man's faults are the one possession he will not part with; the whole of the spiritual life, on this account, is learning to part with them; and a teacher's job is to ask for them. The section on his teaching below shows the same thought in his own Hindi.

The call to the seat: a lion in the jungle

By the end of the 1930s the Bharat Dharma Mahāmaṇḍala had a candidate, and it was not him. The Trust: “By the end of that decade, there was a consensus that the seat should be offered to Swami Hariharananda (popularly known as Swami Karpatri). Karpatri was a respected Sanskrit scholar and the founder of the Ram Rajya Parishad, a Hindu political party. Karpatri declined, however, wishing to continue his political activities. He recommended that the seat be occupied by Brahmanand, who had been his guru since 1927.” Swami Karpātrī, one of the most learned and most public monks of twentieth-century Benares, was therefore his disciple, and it was the disciple who was sent to ask the teacher. The Trust quotes the answer from B. D. Tripathi's Sadhus of India:

“You want to chain a lion who moves freely about the jungle. But if you so like, I will honour your words and shoulder the responsibilities of the peeth (center) management. By shouldering this responsibility, I would be serving the cause for which Adi Shankaracharya stood.”

Then he disappeared. “The date of Brahmanand’s installation was set for March 8, 1941 in Benares. If Brahmanand had agreed to accept the seat, it appears he changed his mind. On March 6, 1941, two days before the installation was to occur, word came that” “Brahmanand had left the Brahma Niwas and was nowhere to be found.” The organisers debated installing someone else and were talked out of it; telegrams cancelled the ceremony; a watch was kept. “Three weeks later, word came that he had returned to Brahma Niwas. Within the hour, the religious leaders arrived as a group and implored him to accept the position. Brahmanand listened, but remained silent. Taking his silence to be assent, and guided by the proverb “Do good quickly,” they moved swiftly.”

The reader may make of the silence what he likes. The tradition's reading is that a man who has spent fifty years avoiding the world does not want a throne, and that his consent, when it came, was consent to a duty rather than an honour; the lion sentence says as much. The Hindi preface to his discourses, written from inside the seat, records only the outcome: “अनन्त श्री विभूषित स्वामी ब्रह्मानन्द सरस्वती जी महाराज को सब प्रकार से सुयोग्य और समर्थ जानकर उन्हें शंकराचार्य के पद पर सन्‌ १९४१ में अभिषिक्त किया” — “knowing Anantaśrīvibhūṣita Swami Brahmānanda Sarasvatī Jī Mahārāj to be fit and capable in every way, they consecrated him to the office of Śaṅkarācārya in the year 1941” (our translation).

The installation: two dates in the record

The Trust gives the day: “The next morning, April 1, 1941, Brahmanand was installed as the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath at the age of 70.” The court record gives two other things. The pleadings recorded by the High Court say that the Mahāmaṇḍala “installed Swami Brahmanand Saraswati as Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath/Jyotishpeeth on 11.05.1941”, and that the same body “also executed a deed of declaration of trust, dated 11th May, 1941 (Baisakh Sudi 15 Samvat 1998)” placing the land at Joshimath and the Benares ashram under his trust as Śaṅkarācārya, the choice having been “approved by aforesaid three Shankaracharyas of other three Peeths”. But the deed itself, in the court's translation, dates the enthronement differently: “On 4th day of the first fortnight of Chaitra month in 1998 Virkram Samwat, Bharat Dharma Mahamandal, Kashi, all princes and nobles, Dashnam Akharas etc. together while enthroning (abhishikt) Swami Brahmanand Sarswati Ji Maharaj as Jyotishpeethadhishwar on the seat of Shankaracharya, prayed for the restoration of tradition initiated by Adya Guru Shankaracharya at the Jyotishpeetha once again.”

The fourth day of the bright fortnight of Caitra in the Vikram year 1998 fell, in the common calendar, around the turn of March and April 1941 — which is the Trust's date. The 11th of May, Vaiśākha full moon, is the date of the deed that recorded and endowed what had been done six weeks before. The two dates in the court record are therefore not in conflict with each other or with the Trust; one is the enthronement and the other its paperwork, and the pleading that gives 11 May as the installation has most likely run the two together. The page gives the enthronement as the beginning of April 1941 and the deed as 11 May 1941, and the reader has seen the evidence for both.

Two more facts from the record fix what the installation meant. It was approved by the other three seats — Sringeri, Śāradā and Govardhana are named — so that the restored northern seat took its place among the four by the consent of the three; and the deed itself, in the court's translation, closes with a prayer “for the restoration of tradition initiated by Adya Guru Shankaracharya at the Jyotishpeetha once again”. The men who did it understood themselves to be mending a break of a century and a half, and said so.

At work: Allahabad, the tours, the ashrams

What a Śaṅkarācārya does is not obvious to a modern reader, and the sources describe it from two angles. The pleadings recorded by the court give the institutional view: “He mostly lived at Brahma Niwas, Alopi Bagh at Allahabad, and toured whole of Northern India frequently. He delivered lectures, gave Darshan to general public and initiated individual persons as his Chelas. He propagated Adwait Vedant Philosophy and advanced cause of Hindu Sanatan Dharam. A weekly magazine ‘Shankaracharya Upadesh’ was published from Lucknow in his life time, concerning his teachings, tour program and others important matters. Mahesh Brahmchari was In-charge of Publicity Department of Swami Brahmanand Saraswati and he was editor also of the magazine.” The Mahesh Brahmachari of that sentence is the man the world later knew as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi; the Trust confirms that after 1941 he “joined Brahmanand’s ashram in Benares. In time, he became Brahmanand’s secretary, handling all correspondence and scheduling.”

The Trust gives the builder's view: “As Shankaracharya, Brahmanand oversaw the construction of an ashram on the site believed to be the location of Adi Shankara’s ashram at Jyotirmath.” and “in 1950 Brahmanand established an ashram at Prayag, the Shri Shankaracharya Niwas Ashram at Alopibagh”. The court record adds, from the pleadings, that “immovable property was acquired by Jyotirmath/Jyotishpeeth at Allahabad, Jabalpur and Chhindawara. New constructions were also made on existing property of Jyotirmath/Jyotishpeeth.” A seat that had had no head for a century and a half had also had no buildings worth the name at Joshimath; the deed speaks of the maṭha destroyed in a natural disaster. He rebuilt it, and he built the houses on the plain from which it could be run, since Joshimath lies high in the mountains, hundreds of miles from the people he was teaching.

And the publishing. The Trust records that “In 1947, the ashram published some of these discourses in a book titled Shri Shankaracharya Vaksudha. During the years 1951-1953, the ashram published approximately seventy twice-monthly newsletters titled Shri Shankaracharya Upadesha that included additional discourses. Shortly before Brahmanand’s passing in 1953, the ashram published a selection of 108 discourses titled Amrita Kana.” The Hindi preface describes how the discourses were taken down: “प्रायः ऐसा देखा जाता था कि उपदेश के समय भीड़ में जहाँ-तहां बैठे हुए कुछ व्यक्ति आपके उपदेशामृत नोट करते रहते थे, क्योंकि वे दिव्य शब्द फिर सुनने को नहीं मिलेंगे ।” — “it was commonly seen that at the time of a discourse some people sitting here and there in the crowd would keep noting down the nectar of your teaching, because those divine words would not be heard again” (our translation). The collection this page quotes below was assembled from such notes.

Calcutta, December 1950, and Delhi, December 1952

Two public occasions near the end of the life show the standing he had come to hold. In December 1950 he attended what the Trust calls “the convention of the Assembly of the Society of Indian Philosophers in Kolkata”, and was welcomed there in an address by Justice Radhabinod Pal of the Calcutta High Court. The Trust quotes it:

“Today we are here to do homage to his Holiness, Shri Jagadguru Shankaracharya Ananta Sri Vibhushit Swami Brahmananda Saraswati of Jyotirmath, Badarikasram” — “the Superman, the seer, the sage, who is one of the few rare individuals amongst the billions of citizens of the world whom we would unhesitatingly choose if and when we would be called upon to describe the spiritual and cultural capital of the nation.”

During the same visit, the Trust records, three delegates asked to see him on the terrace of the house where he was staying: “These visitors were Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan, later president of India and two western philosophers.” They asked how the vision of Vedānta is gained, and then whether the practices the scriptures prescribe are therefore useless. His answer, as the Trust gives it, is the clearest short statement of his position that survives in English:

“Those sadhana are not for making Brahman (the Supreme Reality) apparent. Their role is only to dispel avidya (ignorance). The sadhana diminishes the avidya, it does not bring the light of Brahman. That light is spontaneous. No other light is needed to see it. No light is needed to see that which is spontaneously radiant. Before the sunrise the dawn rises, but daybreak is only to drive away the darkness of the night. It is not to make the sun evident. The sun is lighted by itself. However much sadhana is done, that much the avidya is diminished. The Atma (soul) is not lighted. The Atma is light itself.”

That is Sri Śaṅkara's teaching exactly: practice removes the obstruction, it does not produce the Self, which was never absent; the dawn does not light the sun. It is also, as the tradition tells it, the answer of a man who had spent forty years in practice to a philosopher who asked whether practice was necessary — yes, and it does not do what you think it does.

Two years later, in December 1952, he went to Delhi. The Trust records that “The President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, requested a meeting and visited Brahmanand at 7 Canning Lane, where Brahmanand was housed. The two conversed for an hour and a half, with Brahmanand explaining how the life of the individual and society could be improved for the mutual benefit of both the ruler and the ruled.” The Trust dates the photograph of the two men to 4 December 1952. He was eighty. Within six months he would be dead, and the will that would divide his followers for the next seventy years was signed, the Trust says, in Delhi on that same visit.

The teaching, in his own Hindi

He taught in Hindi, to crowds, without notes, and what survives of the teaching is what listeners wrote down. The Hindi preface describes the manner: “आपके उपदेश सरल, मार्मिक, आकर्षक, हृदयग्राही और मधुर थे । उनमें विलक्षणता थी, क्‍योंकि वे महाराज श्री के अनुभूत सिद्धान्त थे।” — “your discourses were simple, penetrating, attractive, heart-reaching and sweet. There was a distinctiveness in them, because they were principles Mahārāj Śrī had himself experienced” (our translation). Each of the collection's discourses carries a title, and the titles are maxims: the teaching in its shortest form. Some, with this site's translations:

• “जो सुखी है वही दूसरों को सुखी बना सकता है।” — Only one who is happy can make others happy.
• “मनुष्य कर्म करने में स्वतन्त्र हैं परन्तु फल भोगने में परतंत्र है।” — A man is free in doing his actions, but bound in experiencing their fruit.
• “साकार-निराकार के झगड़े में न पड़ो ।” — Do not fall into the quarrel between God with form and God without form.
• “प्रारब्ध से पुरुषार्थ बलवान है।” — Effort is stronger than destiny.
• “दूसरे में नहीं, अपने में दोष देखो ।” — See the fault not in another, but in yourself.

The first is expanded in the first discourse, and the expansion shows how he argued: from the ordinary to the absolute in three steps. “जिसके पास जो कुछ होता है, वही वह दूसरों को दे सकता है। किसी कंगाल से कोई धन की याचना करे तो मूर्खता ही तो है।” — “Whatever a person has, that alone he can give to others. If someone begs wealth from a pauper, it is simply foolishness.” Then: “संसार में कोई सुखी नहीं देखा जाता। जिसके पास जो वस्तु नहीं होती वह दूसरे को उसके द्वारा सुखी मानता है।” — “No one in the world is seen to be happy. Whoever lacks a thing supposes another to be made happy by it.” And the conclusion: “सुखस्वरूप तो सच्चिदानन्द-रूप परमात्मा ही है और उसी के सम्पर्क में आने से जीव भी सुखी हो सकता है और सुखी होने का दूसरा मार्ग नहीं है।” — “Happiness itself is only the supreme Self whose nature is being, consciousness and bliss; by coming into contact with that alone can the living being also become happy, and there is no other way to become happy.” (All translations ours.) The argument is Sri Śaṅkara's, that finite things cannot yield the unlimited happiness we seek in them, put in the language of a bazaar: he goes on, a few lines later, to call God the one ““जनरल मर्चेन्ट””, general merchant, whose shop is never out of stock.

On destiny and effort he is at his most characteristic, and the passage should be read whole:

“पिछला किया हुआ पुरुषार्थ ही आज तुम्हारे सामने प्रारब्ध बनकर आ रहा है । बासी पुरुषार्थ ही ताजा प्रारब्ध है । यदि आज कुछ बनाकर रख लोगे तभी तो कल के लिये वह बासी होगा। जो चीज आज बनाओगे वही कल तुम्हारे सामने आयेगी; जो पहले बनाया है वही आज सामने आ रहा है और जो आज बनाओगे वही भविष्य में सामने आयेगा।”
“It is effort made in the past that is coming before you today, having become destiny. Stale effort is fresh destiny. Only if you make and store something today will it be stale for tomorrow. Whatever you make today will come before you tomorrow; what was made earlier is coming before you today, and what you make today will come before you in the future.” (Our translation.)

“Stale effort is fresh destiny” is the kind of sentence that made him famous: a doctrine of karma that has been taught for three thousand years, delivered as a remark about leftovers. It is also, one notes, exactly the doctrine, and not a softening of it.

On the quarrel between the worshippers of form and formlessness — a quarrel that in northern India of his day set Vaiṣṇava against Vedāntin and sect against sect — he refused to take a side, and gave the Advaita reason for refusing:

“काष्ठ में अग्नि सर्वत्र है, यह तभी प्रत्यक्ष रूप से सिद्ध होता है जब किसी स्थल को रगड़ने से वहाँ अग्नि प्रकट हो जाता है। सिद्धान्त यही है कि निर्गुण निराकार ही सगुण साकार होता है और सगुण साकार से ही निर्गुण निराकार की प्रत्यक्ष सिद्ध होती है ।” “अत: निराकार-साकार के झगड़ों में न पड़कर कहीं भी अपने मन को जमाओ । निष्ठा जमाने से ही कल्याण होगा ।”
“Fire is everywhere in wood; that is proved to the eye only when, by rubbing some spot, fire appears there. The principle is just this: it is the attributeless and formless that becomes the qualified and formed, and it is through the qualified and formed that the attributeless and formless is proved to the eye. So do not fall into the quarrels of formless and formed; settle your mind anywhere. Only by settling your faith will there be welfare.” (Our translation.)

This is the classical Advaita position on devotion, and it is why this site, following him, describes the devotional schools with respect: the worshipper of a form is not wrong, because the form is the formless made visible, as the flame is the fire that was always in the wood. What he would not allow was the quarrel. A reader who has followed the Other Schools page will recognise the position; a reader who has followed the Ramakrishna pages will recognise the tone.

Wonders, and his own warning against them

Stories of powers gather round any Himalayan ascetic, and they gathered round him. The Trust reports them with a scholar's hedge, quoting William Cenkner's study of the Śaṅkarācāryas: “The Shankaracharyas are not public wonder-workers and are not sought out for the manifestation of yogic powers. The only exception to this was the previous guru of Jyotirmath [Brahmanand] who displayed wonders, such as lighting ritual fires and producing prasada (food) offerings, which disquieted the priests of the Badrinath temple.” It adds a story of pebbles thrown into the Ganges at Allahabad to settle a dispute between fishermen and their opponents, and says of it only that it “was said to have occurred”. This page says the same. What people said of him is part of his history; whether it happened is not something a website can know.

What can be known is what he told the crowds about such things, because it is printed. One of the 108 discourses is headed “सिद्धियों के चक्कर में ठगाये मत जाओ” — “do not be cheated by the whirl of powers” — and it runs: “सिद्धि तो कम लोगों को होती है, परन्तु सिद्धि के लालच में ठगाये अधिक लोग जाते हैं । हमारा काम तो सचेत करने का है।” — “Powers come to few people, but many more people are cheated through greed for powers. Our work is to put people on their guard” (our translation). He compares himself to the village watchman who calls out through the night that the people should stay awake. A teacher to whom powers were attributed, warning his hearers against anyone who trades on powers, is exactly what the Advaita tradition would expect; the Self is not a power and does not need one.

The end: Calcutta, 20 May 1953

He went to Calcutta in the spring of 1953 and fell ill there. The Trust's account of the death is brief and has become the tradition's: “After a doctor’s visit in the early afternoon of May 20, 1953, Brahmanand rested for several minutes, then opened his eyes and said, “Lift me up.” Seated cross legged, he closed his eyes and, at 1:15 p.m., abandoned his body and entered Mahasamadhi.” The Jyotir Maṭha gives the same day and place, “20 May 1953 (at the age of 81) in Calcutta”, and the court record, from a party with no reason to embroider, the same: “Late Brahmanand Saraswati breathed his last on 20.5.1953.” It is one of the few dates in this life on which every source agrees.

The body was taken by train to Benares. The Trust: “All India Radio broadcast the news and announced that his mortal remains would be taken to Benares for final rites.” At Benares it was seated in the courtyard of Brahma Niwas for a last darshan and then carried to Daśāśvamedha Ghāṭ. By custom a sannyāsin is not cremated; his body is given to the river or to the earth. “The body was then placed on a bajara (barge-like boat) filled with sanyasins, pundits and devotees and brought to the Kedareshware Mahadev Mandir, a temple on the riverfront. The body, kamandalu (water pot) and danda (staff) were then placed in a stone casket on a smaller boat. As darkness fell, this boat and a flotilla of others proceeded to the center of the river. As the boats gently rocked and the pundits chanted, the casket was lowered into the river.”

The water-pot and the staff are the two possessions a daṇḍī sannyāsin of the Sarasvatī order carries; they went into the Ganges with him. He had held the seat twelve years and seven weeks.

The succession, stated without taking sides

The question of who should follow him has been before the courts of India for most of the time since, and is a matter on which his followers are divided to this day. This page records what the sources record and draws no conclusion. The Trust says: “Brahmanand executed two wills. The first named Swami Karpatri as his successor. Karpatri, however, told Brahmanand that he wished to continue his political activities. Brahmanand therefore executed a second will in Delhi on December 18, 1952, six months before his death. The second will named Swami Shantanand as his successor, with three alternates.” The court record agrees on the date of the will and the four names: it was “nominating four persons as successors, namely, (a) Ramji Triapthi (subsequently known as Shanta Nand Saraswati) (b) Dwarika Prasad Shastri (c) Swami Vishnu Deva Nand Saraswati (d) Swami Parmanand Saraswati. According to ‘Will’, they were to succeed, one after another”, and records that “On 25.05.1953, ‘Will’ dated 18.12.1952 was opened before District Registrar, Allahabad”.

On the installation of the first-named the High Court, in 2017, made a finding of its own, which this page quotes because it is a finding and not a pleading: “We, therefore, find no difficulty in holding that on 12.06.1953 after death of Swami Brahmanand Saraswati, following nomination made by him” in the will of 18 December 1952, “his first choice, namely, Ramji Tripathi, i.e., Swami Shanta Nand Saraswati was installed as Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath/Jyotishpeeth on 12.06.1953”. The Trust gives the same day and place: “On June 12, 1953, three weeks after Brahmanand’s passing, Shantanand was installed as the Shankarachraya of Jyotirmath at the Brahma Niwas ashram in Benares.”

The will was contested from the first. The record shows that another monk, Swami Kṛṣṇabodhāśrama, was put forward by other parties in the same month — one of the points the court framed for itself was “Whether Swami Krishna Bodhashram was installed as Shankaracharya on 25.06.1953 validly” — and that suits over the seat were filed in 1953, 1954, 1963, 1965 and 1974, one of them reaching the Supreme Court of India, whose decision is reported as “Swami Parmatmanand Saraswati and another Vs. Ramji Tripathi, 1974 (2) SCC 695”. Swami Kṛṣṇabodhāśrama “died on 10.9.1973”; Swami Śāntānanda died in 1997. The 2017 judgment, which arose from a suit filed in 1989 and runs to several hundred paragraphs, is linked below as public record; it is not summarised here, its outcome is not stated here, and the arguments the parties made against one another are not repeated here. A reader who wants to know who holds the seat today should ask the seat.

What this page will say is what the record shows about the man himself: that he named his successor in writing, that he named alternates, that the first name was a monk who had been his disciple, and that his own installation, twelve years before, had been made by the consent of the other three seats. The disputes that followed were about his followers, not about him; every party to them claimed him.

What came after: Śāntānanda, Maharishi, Swaroopananda

Three men carried what he had begun, in three directions, and the sources used here speak of each. Of Swami Śāntānanda Sarasvatī the Trust says he was “chosen by Brahmanand to succeed him as the Shankaracharya of Jyotir Math”, and gives his years as 1913 to 1997; it was he who wrote the foreword to the Hindi collection of his teacher's discourses, signing it as “शान्तानन्द सरस्वती वर्तमान जगद्गुरु शंकराचार्य, ज्योतिर्मठ” — “Śāntānanda Sarasvatī, present Jagadguru Śaṅkarācārya, Jyotir Maṭha” (our translation).

Of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi the Trust says that he was one of the two “principal disciples” and that he “spread Brahmanand’s teaching throughout the world for over sixty years”; his own words about his teacher, as the Trust quotes them, are about unity rather than method: “He was never a leader of any one party. All parties found a common leader in Him.” This site does not describe the movement Maharishi founded or take a view of it; what it records is that one of the most widely known teachers of meditation of the late twentieth century called this man Guru Dev and said so wherever he spoke.

And of Swami Swaroopananda Saraswatī the Jyotir Maṭha's page records that Swami Brahmānanda “Gave Sanyasa Deeksha to Swami Sri Swaroopanand Saraswati Ji Maharaj in Kolkatta”; this site has a page on him, linked below, and his own life belongs there. The three lines — the seat, the world mission, and the initiation — all descend from the twelve years, and all three, whatever else divides them, claim him as their source.

The Jyotir Maṭha's own estimate of him is a single line, and it is the line this page would choose: “Was widely respected as a realized master — a jivanmukta (liberated while living).”

A timeline

• 1871 — Born Rajaram Mishra near Ayodhya: 21 December, at Surhurpur (Jyotir Maṭha); the village of Gana (Trust).
• c. 1879 — Sent to Benares to study at eight (Trust).
• c. 1880–81 — Leaves home at nine (Jyotir Maṭha, Trust) with his mother's blessing; searches for a teacher at Rishikesh and beyond.
• c. 1885–86 — Finds Swami Kṛṣṇānanda Sarasvatī at Uttarkashi at fourteen; named Brahma Chaitanya Brahmachari (Trust).
• c. 1896 — Released by his teacher at about twenty-five; the forest years begin (Trust).
• 1906 — Sannyāsa from Swami Kṛṣṇānanda at the Prayag Kumbh; named Brahmānanda Sarasvatī (Trust, Jyotir Maṭha). Then Amarkantak.
• 1908 — The Bharat Dharma Mahāmaṇḍala discusses the vacant northern seat (Trust).
• 1927 — Swami Karpātrī becomes his disciple (Trust).
• 1930 — At the Prayag Kumbh his teacher tells him to “stay near the towns” (Trust).
• 1936 — Brahma Niwas ashram built at Benares (Trust).
• 1941 — Installation set for 8 March; disappears 6 March; enthroned as Śaṅkarācārya of the Jyotir Maṭha at the turn of March and April (Trust: 1 April; deed: Caitra śukla 4, VS 1998); trust deed executed 11 May (court record).
• 1947 — Śrī Śaṅkarācārya Vāksudhā published (Trust).
• 1950 — Śrī Śaṅkarācārya Niwas ashram at Alopibagh, Prayag (Trust). December: Calcutta; Justice Pal's address; the exchange with Dr Radhakrishnan (Trust).
• 1951–53 — Fortnightly Śrī Śaṅkarācārya Upadeśa (Trust); a weekly “Shankaracharya Upadesh” from Lucknow (court record).
• 1952 — December: meets the President of India, Dr Rajendra Prasad, in Delhi (Trust); will of 18 December (Trust, court record).
• 1953 — 20 May: dies in Calcutta at 1:15 p.m. (Trust; Jyotir Maṭha; court record). Body given to the Ganges at Benares. 12 June: Swami Śāntānanda installed (court finding, Trust); the succession contested from June 1953 onward.
• 1965 — Tiwari's Hindi life published (Trust).
• 2017 — Allahabad High Court judgment in the succession case, preserving the 1941 deed and the 1952 will in translation.

Questions a reader may have

Is he the Swami Brahmananda of the Ramakrishna Order? No. That Swami Brahmananda (1863–1922), Sri Ramakrishna's disciple and first president of the Ramakrishna Math, has his own page on this site. The two were contemporaries and shared a monastic name, and nothing else.

Was he really the first Śaṅkarācārya of the north in 165 years? The trust deed of 1941, the plaint recorded by the court and the Hindi preface all say 165 years, which puts the break in the 1770s. The Trust's biography says “since 1833,” which appears to be the deed's Vikram year read as a common-era year. The Jyotir Maṭha says “over 150 years.” That the seat had stood empty for well over a century and that he was the first to fill it is not in dispute among any of them.

What did he teach? Advaita Vedānta as Sri Śaṅkara taught it, in Hindi for ordinary people: that happiness is the nature of the Self and cannot be had from objects; that action is free and its fruit is not; that effort today is destiny tomorrow; that God with form is the formless made visible, so the quarrel between their worshippers is pointless; that one's faults are the offering worth making; and that practice removes ignorance but does not produce the Self, which is self-luminous. Every one of those is quoted above from his own words.

Why did he vanish two days before his installation? The sources do not say and this page does not guess. The Trust records the disappearance, the three-week absence and the silent return; the tradition reads the silence as reluctant consent to a duty.

Who is Śaṅkarācārya of the Jyotir Maṭha now? This page does not answer that, because the answer has been litigated for seventy years and it is not this site's place to adjudicate. The Jyotir Maṭha's own website, linked below, speaks for the seat.

Where can I read him? In Hindi, in the Śrī Śaṅkarācārya Upadeśāmṛta, 108 discourses compiled from his followers' notes, and in the earlier Vāksudhā and Amṛta Kaṇa the Trust lists. The Trust's biography gives English renderings of a few; there is no complete English translation known to this site.

A note on the picture, the names and the dates

The photograph at the head of this page is a copy of a portrait of him made in about 1950, released under a Creative Commons Attribution licence by Paul Mason; the original photographer is not recorded, and the file as released is mirrored left-to-right, which this site has not altered. The licence is the releaser's declaration and this site relies on it; if any rights-holder objects the picture will be removed. No other picture of him that this site could verify as freely licensed was found. His name is given here as the Jyotir Maṭha gives it, Swami Brahmānanda Saraswatī, with the Sanskrit spelling Brahmānanda Sarasvatī used in running text where the sources use it. All dates before 1930 rest on the tradition's own memory as preserved by his followers; all dates from 1941 are corroborated by the court record. Where the sources disagree — the birthplace, the year the seat fell vacant, the day of his installation, the location of Brahma Niwas — the disagreement has been reported above rather than resolved. The Hindi passages are given in the original with this site's own translations, which are marked as such; they are not the Trust's renderings and not authorised by the Jyotir Maṭha. One page number that the scan of the Hindi book interleaved in the middle of a sentence has been removed from the quotation, and is listed below with the other restorations.

Quotations. Every quotation on this page is verbatim from the source named beside it, and each was checked by machine against the text of the source before publication. Spacing around punctuation, apostrophes and hyphens, as it appears in the sources' web pages and scans, has been regularised (6 places in the Jyotir Maṭha's page, 3 places in the 2017 High Court judgment) and nothing else changed by it. The scanned books were copied by machine, and where the machine misread the printed word it has been restored, as follows: “धर्माचाय॑” to “धर्माचार्य” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “जातकर” to “जानकर” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “शद्धुराच्रार्य” to “शंकराचार्य” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “१६४१” to “१९४१” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “भोड़” to “भीड़” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “माभिक'” to “मार्मिक,” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “भगड़े” to “झगड़े” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “प्रारव्ध बतकर” to “प्रारब्ध बनकर” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “अग्ति” to “अग्नि” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “निगुण लिराकार” to “निर्गुण निराकार” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “ही निगुण निराकार” to “ही निर्गुण निराकार” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “न ( ४८ ) पड़कर” to “न पड़कर” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “जगदुगुरु” to “जगद्गुरु” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “शंकराचायं” to “शंकराचार्य” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta); “ज्योतिमंठ” to “ज्योतिर्मठ” (the Hindi Upadeśāmṛta). Nothing else has been altered, including the sources' own spelling, capitalisation and punctuation; where a source misprint would have fallen inside a quotation, the quotation has been cut short instead.