Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham

Sri Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham, also called the Sri Kanchi Matham or the Moolamnaya Sarvagnya Peetham, is a Hindu religious center of Vedic learning, located in Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu. It is located near the Kamakshi Amman Temple of the Shaktism tradition, which also contains a shrine dedicated to the final resting place of the Advaita Vedanta teacher Adi Shankara.

The matha-tradition attributes its founding to Adi Shankara, but this and the reliability of the matha's succession list has been questioned. According to the Sri Kanchi math tradition, the matha was founded at Kanchipuram, and shifted south to the temple city of Kumbakonam in the mid-18th century due to the on-going wars, when there was warfare in the region, and returned to Kanchipuram in the 19th century.

Historically, the Kanchi Math was established as the Kumbakonam Mutt in 1821 as a branch of the Sringeri Mutt, and became involved with the Kamakshi temple in Kanchipuram in 1839, "set[ing] up shop in Kanchipuram at the turn of the last [19th] century."

The peetham gained a good reputation under the charismatic leadership of Sri Chandrashekharendra Saraswati VIII (born 20 May 1894; 68th Shankaracharya 1907 – 8 January 1994), who was regarded as an avatara purusha, a realised seer. The peetham lost authority and standing under the leadership of Sri Jayendra Saraswati (born 1935; appointed successor 1954; 69th Shankaracharya 3 January 1994 - 28 February 2018), who favoured an outreach to a broader audience beyond the Brahmins, but was implicated and later given a clean chit by the courts in a murder-trial. He was succeeded in February 2018 by Vijayendra Saraswathi Shankaracharya Swamigal.