Shankara (“auspicious”) The deity Shiva's epithet.
With the honorary suffix acharya ("teacher"), it
is also the name of Shankaracharya, the most important person in the Advaita
Vedanta intellectual system, who is widely regarded as Shiva inincarnate.
As previously stated, the name Shankara has overwhelmingly
good connotations, yet the word shank, from which this name is very definitely
derived, is associated with doubt, uncertainty, and uneasiness.
This type of ambivalence has a long history with Shiva; the
Shvetashvatara Upan ishad, for example, discusses both his death-dealing arrows
and his benevolence to his believers (bhakta).
Knowing that Shiva possesses immense and unpredictable
power, the traditional meaning of this name may be a sort of
propitiation—describing him as "auspicious" in the hopes that he
would exhibit his softer side.
