Born in Kerala, Shankara is acknowledged as the leader of the Hindu revival after the Buddhist period, and a founder of religious orders on the Buddhist model. He led a peripatetic life and wrote a number of treatises, particularly a commentary on the 4th-century Brahma-sutra (‘power aphorisms’), and one on the Vedas. Philosophically he was a founder of the doctrine of advaita, or nondualism, having affinities with both Buddhism and idealism.