The schools of Vedānta

वेदान्त सम्प्रदाय

Also written: advaita · vishishtadvaita · dvaita · shankara ramanuja madhva · vedanta schools · achintya bhedabheda

Six ācāryas commented on the same three texts and reached six different conclusions. Each founded a living lineage; all six survive; none was suppressed. The disagreement is the tradition's intellectual history in concentrated form.

The six schools
School	Ācārya	Brahman and soul	The world	Liberation
Advaita	Śaṅkara, 8th c.	Identical. The apparent difference is superimposition	Not unreal, not independently real; name and form on Brahman (māyā)	Recognition that the self was never separate
Viśiṣṭādvaita	Rāmānuja, 11th c.	Non-dual, but Brahman is qualified by souls and matter as body by soul	Fully real; the body of Brahman	Eternal communion and service in Vaikuṇṭha
Dvaita	Madhva, 13th c.	Eternally distinct. Five differences are real and permanent	Fully real and dependent on Viṣṇu	Eternal enjoyment of God, in a graded order
Dvaitādvaita	Nimbārka, 13th c.	Both different and non-different — as waves and sea	Real, a transformation of Brahman's power	Communion with Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā
Śuddhādvaita	Vallabha, 16th c.	Non-dual without māyā; the soul is a spark of Brahman	Real, a genuine manifestation — no illusion involved	Puṣṭi — grace; the play of Kṛṣṇa entered into
Acintya-bhedābheda	Caitanya / Jīva Gosvāmī, 16th c.	Inconceivably one and different at once	Real, the energy of Kṛṣṇa	Prema — pure love in eternal relationship

Advaita's central move

Śaṅkara's argument turns on adhyāsa — superimposition. We see a rope in dim light and take it for a snake; the snake was never there, and its removal is not the destruction of a snake but the ending of an error. Similarly the world of separate things is superimposed on Brahman. Note carefully: Śaṅkara does not say the world is nothing. It has vyāvahārika satya — empirical reality, fully valid at its own level — and is sublated only by the knowledge of Brahman, not by argument or by wishing.

Rāmānuja's objection

Rāmānuja replies that an undifferentiated Brahman cannot be known at all, that the Upaniṣads describe Brahman with qualities as often as without, and that a doctrine of illusion makes devotion meaningless — one cannot love what one is about to discover does not exist. His alternative keeps non-duality while making the world and souls genuinely real as the body of God.

Madhva's five differences

Madhva takes the opposite pole: difference is not an appearance but the very structure of reality. He names five eternal differences — between God and soul, God and matter, soul and matter, one soul and another, one material thing and another — and argues that the Upaniṣadic identity statements must be read in the light of the difference statements, not the reverse.

The schools of Vedānta

Advaita's central move

Rāmānuja's objection

Madhva's five differences

The six Darśanas — the philosophies

Nyāya — the science of right reasoning

Vaiśeṣika — atoms and the categories of being

Sāṅkhya — the enumeration of the principles

Yoga — Patañjali's system

Pūrva Mīmāṁsā — the philosophy of dharma and of language