ABSTRACT
The mission of Shankaracharya has endured and will endure as long as Hinduism as a philosophy of life survives on earth, through the books that he wrote and the monastic orders that trace their origin to him. His life was too short, and that short span was too much filled with touring, disputation, lecturing and writing to allow him time to attend to the thousand and one administrative details and daily problems of a new and growing religious community. It would be more correct to hold that Shankar was the inspirer rather than the actual builder of the Dasnami orders. This latter work is ascribed by learned Dasnamis to Sureshwaracharya, the third in pontifical succession to Shankaracharya at the Sringeri abbey. The ten branches of the Adwaita school of Shaivaism which Shankaracharya organized are known as the Dasanama from the ten words which form the suffixes to the names taken by the monks of these orders after their initiation.
