Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF), the Academia of Sanskrit Research and Indology, is the research wing of the Chinmaya Mission Worldwide. It is a centre of excellence for the study, research and dissemination of knowledge in the areas of Indian philosophy, culture, art and science, business management, both modern and ancient.
Established in the year 1989, CIF is housed in Adi Sankara Nilayam, the hallowed maternal birth home of the great saint, savant and philosopher Sri Adi Sankara. Located in a small hamlet, Veliyanad, in Ernakulam District, Kerala, India, CIF stands in a 10-acre plot of land amidst luxuriant sun-blessed greenery, temple shrines and lotus ponds. It offers an ambience of peace and solitude for study, research and contemplation to aspirants from all over the world.
Various research activities, academic workshops and seminars, home study courses, publication of research works and preservation of manuscripts, are taken up at CIF. All these are aimed at unravelling India’s hidden and lost knowledge-traditions, taking it to the modern world and preserving it for posterity.
The property, despite the passage of time, continues to exude the same old-world charm and grandeur of the era to which it belongs. Time has not diminished the splendour of its architecture or the stone work. What makes Adi Sankara Nilayam grand and heart-warming is its temple complex from the era of Sri Sankara (where he likely worshipped with his mother, the noble Aryamba), built in that inimitable style, typical of the ancient era of yore. To know and behold the great seer’s childhood home, and to have and maintain the property of that era makes CIF proud as a committed torchbearer of Sanskrit and Indology.
