In which year was Adi Shankaracharya born? Majority of the people would say Adi Shankara was born in 788 AD at Kaladi in Kerala and died in 820 AD. But the three monasteries among the four set up by Shankaracharya – Dwaraka, Puri and Kanchi – will say it is 509 BC. The fourth Sringeri monastery will say 44 BC. In nutshell, a common birth date of Shankara has not been agreed upon by researchers and the mutts. A good amount of research has been done to know the birth year of Adi Shankara but there is no common agreement. This is the reason why many people might have come across different birth dates of Adi Shankaracharya. But why has majority of the scholars agreed upon 788 AD as the birth year? Shankaracharya in his ‘Brahma Sutra Bhasya’ mentions about the city of Pataliputra . It is believed that the city of Pataliputra was destroyed in 750 AD. In the same Bhasya, Shankara mentions about King Purnavarma. Hiuen Tsang, Chinese pilgrim, mentions about Purnavarma as a Buddhist k