Adi Shankara lived closer to our time than to the hymns he expounded
Adi Shankara, whose commentaries shaped how the Vedas are read, worked around 800 CE — some 1,200 years before us. But the Rigveda he drew upon was composed roughly 1,500–1,200 BCE, more than two thousand years before Shankara himself. He is nearer in time to the smartphone than to the oldest hymns of the tradition he interpreted.
How we know
Shankara fl. c. 800 CE → ~1,226 yrs to 2026. Rigveda composed c. 1500–1200 BCE → gap to Shankara ~2,300–2,000 yrs (1,500 BCE to 800 CE = 2,300 yrs; 1,200 BCE to 800 CE = 2,000 yrs). 2,000 > 1,226, so Shankara is closer to today than to the Rigveda (holds even at the latest Rigveda date and earliest Shankara date: c. 1000 BCE → c. 700 CE = 1,700 yrs vs. 2026 − 700 = 1,326 yrs).
One of many fact-checked wonders across eight traditions at The Spring of Wisdom.