Gaudapada

Gaudapada, also known as Gaudapadacarya, was an Indian philosopher of the Advaita Vedanta tradition whose exact dates are uncertain, with most scholars placing him around the sixth or early seventh century CE; nothing reliable is known of his life beyond his authorship of a major philosophical text. He is remembered as the author of the Mandukya Karika, also called the Gaudapada Karika, a verse commentary on the ancient Mandukya Upanishad that offers a sustained rational argument for non-dualism, the doctrine that only a single undivided reality, Brahman, ultimately exists and that the ordinary world of multiplicity is an appearance rather than an independently real plurality of things. Gaudapada's Karika is traditionally regarded as a foundational text of Advaita Vedanta and as a formative influence on Adi Shankara, who is described in the tradition as a student of Gaudapada's own pupil Govinda Bhagavatpada, making Gaudapada one of the earliest systematic philosophical voices behind the non-dual Vedanta later developed and popularized by Shankara.