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At the beginning, we must touch briefly on the subject of the authenticity of the many works attributed to Samkara. Anyone who reads on the problem of bhakti in Advaita will invariably learn of the many devotional hymns (stotras), such as the Bhaja Govindam, the Govindastaka, the Sivanandalahari, and others that are said to have been written by this teacher and are commonly presented as evidence that he was a great devotee. 8 Unfortunately, critical scholarship suggests that it is highly improbable that these works were written by Samkara himself. It is likely, instead, that they were composed by later followers,

55 perhaps heads of the monasteries of his order of samnyasins, each of whom had the title "Samkaracarya." The same seems to be true of almost all of the independent treatises (prakarannas) attributed to Sankara, 9 especially those, such as the Prabodhasudhakara, that give considerable attention to devotion and are, like the stotras, frequently cited by the proponents of Advaita-bhakti. To enter into a detailed consideration of the problem of the authorship of the hymns and "minor-works" attributed to Sankara and the various, often conflicting views contained in them would be, for obvious reasons, beyond the scope of this paper. I can here only bring to the reader's attention that Sankara's authorship of these works is highly dubious. Of course, this conclusion of historical criticism does not take away from the fact that these devotional poems and treatises were indeed attributed to Sankara and were accepted and preserved in his order. This in itself is evidence that devotion has historically been recognized as an essential component of the practical spiritual life of the Advaita tradition.10 But it does not tell us much about the views of Samkara himself. Given that the hymns and most of the independent treatises referred to cannot be safely ascribed to Sankara, the following evaluation of his position on bhakti must be based on a consideration of the so-called "major-works," his

56 commentaries on the three prastanas ("foundation-texts") of Vedanta: the Upanisads, the Brahmasutras, and the Bhagavad Gita The authorship of these works is undisputed.11 As a commentary is by nature limited to the subject matter of the primary text, and as the Upanisads and the Brahmasutras say almost nothing about bhakti, we find explicit discussion of this discipline only in the Gitabhasya (Samkara-gita-bhasya). The following discussion will therefore rely heavily on that work, though it will become apparent that Samkara's commentaries on the other two prasthanas also provide material that is pertinent to the present inquiry. By way of introduction to the whole problem, I will begin with a consideration of some aspects of Samkara's thought which, taken together, show that he does actually make a place for bhakti in his system. We will find that he has much to say about ordinary religious life and especially about the personal God, the individual soul, and their relationship.