indian cinema heritage foundation

Jagadguru Shankaracharya (1955)

  • Release Date1955
  • GenreDrama
  • FormatB-W
  • LanguageHindi
  • Gauge35 mm
  • Censor RatingU
  • Censor Certificate NumberU-14623-MUM
  • Certificate Date12/11/1955
  • Shooting LocationFamous Cine Lab & Studios Ltd.
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Shankara was born in a Brahmin family in the village of Kalti in Malabar. Before he was eight, Shankara completed the study of the vedas and the Shastras ! After leaving the Gurukul, Shankara found that all around him was spread the heresy and hypocrisy in the grab of religion ! Shankara vowed to destroy the heresy and hypocrisy and to receive the ancient vedic religion. These revolutionary ideas of Shankara frighten his mother Sati, and to bring him to his senses, she decided to get him married. For the wedding she started to go across the Purna river with her son. What Divine intervention, what miracles forced the mother to give her unwilling permission to her son to become a Sanyasin, you will see on the screen ! She wept and she sobbed, but Shankara was firm: and the delicate child of eight left his mother for the good of Humanity. Facing innumerable dangers of the way he reached Narmada followed by an immense flood treatening to was away even the Ashram of the Guru Govindpada. Shankara prayes to mother Narmada, and the flood goes down, Guru Vovindpada then ordains him a sanyasin, teaches the 8 'sidhis' and sends him out ! Watch the miracle Shankara performs in the religious Conference in Benares, and proved God's existence. For years he stayed in the Vyas-Gupha at Badri Naryan and wrote those wonderful books which have made him one of the foremost philosophers of the world ! An additional 16 years' lease of life is given to him for revival and propagation of religion. Follows the historical debate with Mandanmisra who is vanquished by Shankara. But his wife Bharti heckles Shankara about Kamashastra, and Shankara has to ask for time in which he enters a king's dead body, and masters the love-lore, returns and defeats Bharthi, and makes Mandan his Shishya. Going home he meets his dying mother, whose funeral rites are denied to him by the village folk. Again his prayers force the sun-God to set fire to the funeral pyre, and people realising the divinity of Shankara fall at his feet. The task and triumphal Mrch (Digvijaya) is over, and Shankara desiring to leave the world is lead to the Sinhdwara of the Sharda Madir in Kashmir ! Watch on the screen the stirring sequence.... and the Avatara becoming one with the elements.

(From the official press booklet)