Vivekacūḍāmaṇi

The text discusses key concepts such as the viveka (discrimination or discernment) between real (unchanging, eternal) and unreal (changing, temporal), Prakriti and Atman, the oneness of Atman and Brahman, and self-knowledge as the central task of spiritual life and for Moksha. It expounds the Advaita Vedanta philosophy in the form of a self-teaching manual, with many verses in the form of a dialogue between a student and a spiritual teacher.

Author

While the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi is traditionally attributed to Shankara, this attribution has been questioned and mostly rejected by modern scholarship.

According to Michael Comans, a scholar of Advaita Vedanta, though the Hindu tradition popularly believes that Adi Shankara authored the Vivekachudamani, this is "most probably erroneous". Comans gives the following reasons for his doubts: the highly poetic style of the Vivekachudamani is not found in other genuine works of Adi Shankara; there is a lack of extensive commentaries (bhasya) on the Vivekachudamani which is unusual given the extensive commentaries on his other works; and unlike Shankara's other genuine works which give minimal importance to nirvikalpa samadhi practices, the Vivekachudamani gives special importance to it. Though the Vivekachudamani is a popular manual on Vedanta, it is probably the work of a later Shankara, and not Adi Shankara, states Comans.

According to Natalia Isayeva, a scholar of Advaita Vedanta, it is "far less probable" that Adi Shankara authored the Vivekachudamani. Sengaku Mayeda, another scholar of Indian Philosophy and Advaita Vedanta, states that though widely accepted as Shankara's work, the Vivekachudamani is likely not his work.

Paul Hacker, an Indologist and scholar of Advaita, set out a methodology for ascertaining authorship of Advaita texts and he concluded that though the Vivekachudmani is unusual in parts, it was likely authored by Adi Shankara. Hacker stated that the definitions of the key concepts, premises and ideas found in the Vivekachudmani match with those in Shankara's established authentic works. Daniel H. H. Ingalls Sr., another influential Indologist, rejected Hacker's conclusion by accepting Hacker's methodology and presenting evidence from its manuscripts that some of the ideas in the text do not fully agree with those of Adi Shankara.

John Grimes, who translated the Vivekachudamani, acknowledges that "modern scholars tend to reject that Adi Shankara composed Vivekachudamani", noting that "traditionalists tend to accept it", and there is an unending "arguments and counter-arguments" about its authorship. Nevertheless, Grimes defends the idea that "there is still a likelihood that Śaṅkara is the author of the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi," arguing that "a strong case can be made that the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi is a genuine work of Shankara's and that it differs in certain respects from his other works in that it addresses itself to a different audience and has a different emphasis and purpose."

Berger proposes that "rather than simply having been written or not written by [Adi] Shankara, the Crown Jewel of Discrimination may be a corporately authored work [of Advaita monasteries] that went through revisions".

Irrespective of the attribution, the Vivekachudmani is a significant work of Advaita. According to Swami Dayananda Saraswati, a Vedanta teacher, "I do not think we lose anything even if the authorship is attributed to any other Sankaracharya of one of the various Sankara-mathas." According to Shah-Kazemi it is "so closely interwoven into the spiritual heritage of Shankara that any analysis of his perspective which fails to consider [this work] would be incomplete".