The first guards of time

Narayana Shastry(1869-1918) A great scholar from erstwhile Madras with a keen interest in learning the truth of the Vedas and scriptures decided to find out, study and transcribe an extensively well researched work on the life of Shankaracharya and the history of the kings of Kaliyug. Having spent 20 years of his life searching, studying and collecting material(evidence) from maTh's(spiritual centers), libraries and other places of archaeological importance, he ended up collecting ~50,000 manuscripts, magazines and book for his personal library. (Ref: page 1 - intro - Age of Sankara.) His research was primarily directed towards establishing accurate chronological order of the dynasties/kings/satraps/jhagir's and forever lay to rest the dispute between western and eastern scholars on the matter of who ruled when, in the Indian subcontinent. He wrote a book of 800 pages in two volumes, detailing the sequence of events of 'All' the kings/major rulers, ascending to and descending from the thrones, since., guess what? 3102 BC! He also established the year of birth of Shankaracharya as 509 BC. Of course, all this was written along with material, circumstantial and archaeological evidence. The volumes could not be published at one go, in those times due to lack of funds and hence it was to be released in eight parts. The first book - The Age of Sankara, was published in 1916. A year later, in 1917, his other book - The kings of Magada, was published. It extensively quoted verses from - Bhavishotter puran aka Kaliyug Rajvrittant. Both these books along with 20 years of written material along with the huge personal library disappeared mysteriously ~8 months after being published! Less than a year after this incident, even Mr. Narayana Sastry died.

Coincidence? I think not!

Eventually, his son, T. N. Kumaraswamy collected some leftover material and published the second episode of 'The Age of Sankara' in 1971 with some additional information. It was printed by B. G. Paul & Company, Madras. In the preface, he directly states "as was originally promised by my father, all the supplements could not be brought to fore. The manuscripts containing all the valuable matter simply vanished, leaving no trace behind."

In the 800 page volumes, 14 chapters and 10 appendixes, there was information along with proof of one of the most contentious issue affecting India and its growth even today. It contained the correct chronology of all the kings of Kashmir.