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However, gradually all these religious sects began to succumb to fanaticism. The followers of Siva and Vishnu
began to quarrel for precedence and superiority. The Tantric worship became midnight orgy with women and liquor. Some of the sects took to murder and cannibalism. During the
Kannaki festival a goldsmith was even publicly slaughtered at Tiruvottiyur.
Advent of Sankara
When religion was thus becoming tainted with vice and crime Sankaracharya (788-820), the great Advaita philosopher was born at Kaladi, an obscure village in central Kerala. He
could not bear the sight of people quarrelling in the name of God and indulging in immorality and bloodshed
to propitiate Him. Declining the gold and position offered by King Raja-Sekhara of Kodungallur, this Nambudiri Brahmin left Kerala in his youth and undertook a pilgrimage of
all important centres of Hinduism in the country (See Kaladi-The Birth Place of Adi Sankara, Chapter II for story of the Saint.)
He propounded the philosophy of Advaita or one without a second and convinced the learned everywhere, who acknowledged the superiority of this system based on the teachings of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. According to this philosophy there is nothing real in this world except the One Supreme God, i.e. the Brahman.
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