Missionary tours, disciples and key compositions
Sankara then travelled with his disciples to Maharashtra and Srisailam. In Srisailam, he composed Sivananda Lahari, a devotional hymn to Lord Shiva. On another occasion, when Sankara was about to be sacrificed by a Kapalika, Lord Narasimha appeared, on Padmapada’s prayer to save Sankara. Sankara then composed the Lakshmi Narasimha-stotra.
He then travelled to Gokarna, the temple of Hari-Sankara and the Mookambika temple at Kollur. At Kollur, he accepted as his disciple a boy believed to be dumb by his parents. He gave him the name, Hastaamalaka. Next, he visited Sringeri to establish the Sarada-pitham. It was here that Totakacharya met him and went on to become another of his important disciples.
After this, Sankara began a Dig-vijaya (missionary tour) for the propagation of the Advaita philosophy by winning over all philosophies opposed to it. He travelled throughout India, from the South to Kashmir and Nepal, preaching to the local populace and debating philosophy with Hindu, Buddhist, and other scholars and monks along the way. With the Kerala King Sudhanva as companion, Sankara passed through Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Vidarbha. He passed through Karnataka and reached Gokarna where Sankara defeated in debate the noted Saiva scholar, Nilakantha. Proceeding to Gujarat he humbled Bhatta Bhaskara, the proponent of Bhedabheda philosophy in Dvaraka.
The Jains were also defeated in philosophical debates at a place called Bahlika. Thereafter, the Acharya established his victory over several philosophers and ascetics in the region of North Kashmir, Darada (Dabistan) . Later, he had an encounter with a Tantrika, Navagupta, at Kamarupa (present day Assam), and he too accepted the supremacy of Sankara’s vedantic teachings.
Missionary tours, disciples and key compositions
Sankara visited Sarada-pitham (that houses the Sarvajna-pitham or Throne of Omniscience) in Kashmir (now in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir). This temple had four doors for scholars from the four cardinal directions. The southern door (representing South India) had never been opened, indicating that no scholar from South India had ascended the Sarvajna-pitham. Sankara opened the southern door by defeating in debate all the scholars there in all the various scholastic disciplines, such as Mimamsa, Nyaya, Vedanta and other branches of Hindu philosophy. He then ascended the Sarvajna-pitham (Throne of Omniscience).
Toward the end of his life, Sankara travelled to the Himalayan area of Kedarnath-Badarinath, and attained Videha-mukti (freedom from embodiment). There is a samadhi-shrine dedicated to Sankara behind the Kedarnath temple. However, there are variant traditions on the location of his last days — some opining that it was Kanchi in Tamilnadu and others saying Trichur in Kerala.
Mathas
Sankara founded four Mathas to guide the Hindu religion: Sringeri in Karnataka in the south, Dvaraka in Gujarat in the west, Puri in Orissa in the east, and Jyotirmath (Joshimath) in Uttarakhand in the north. Tradition states that he put in charge of these mathas his four main disciples: Suresvaracharya, Hastamalakacharya, Padmapadacharya and Totakacharya respectively. The present heads of the mathas trace their authority back to these figures. Each of the heads of these four mathas takes the title of Sankaracharya (the teacher Sankara) after the first Sankaracharya.