The Great Acharyas

The teachers who turned scripture into schools — their lives as historians reconstruct them and as devotees remember them, and the monasteries and lineages that still carry their names.

The philosophy pages of this guide set out what the great teachers taught. This page is about the teachers themselves: where they were born, whom they learned from, what their followers remember of them, and how their lineages survive. An ācārya is more than a guru. He — almost always he, in the classical record — is a teacher who founds or renews a tradition: he explains the scriptures in commentary, lives what he teaches, and leaves behind a line of successors. A well-known verse defines him by a play on the word:

आचिनोति हि शास्त्रार्थान् आचारे स्थापयत्यपि । स्वयमाचरते यस्मात् तस्मादाचार्य उच्यते ॥ ācinoti hi śāstrārthān ācāre sthāpayaty api, svayam ācarate yasmāt tasmād ācārya ucyate He gathers the meaning of the scriptures, establishes others in right conduct, and practises it himself — that is why he is called an ācārya. Traditional definition, often ascribed to the Vāyu Purāṇa (wording varies between sources)

Two lines, one pattern

Every tradition remembers its ācāryas as links in a chain, a paramparā that begins with God and runs down to the teacher in front of you. Two lineages express this in almost the same verse. Compare them:

सदाशिवसमारम्भां शङ्कराचार्यमध्यमाम् । अस्मदाचार्यपर्यन्तां वन्दे गुरुपरम्पराम् ॥ sadāśiva-samārambhāṃ śaṅkarācārya-madhyamām, asmad-ācārya-paryantāṃ vande guru-paramparām Beginning with Sadāśiva, with Śaṅkarācārya in the middle, reaching down to my own teacher — I bow to the lineage of gurus. Invocation recited in the Śaṅkara lineage (traditional)

The pattern is the same: divine source, great teacher, living guru. Behind it lie three things that make an ācārya’s lineage last — a bhāṣya on the shared scriptures (see Vedanta and its Schools), a rite of initiation (dīkṣā) that passes the teaching on, and an institution, usually a maṭha, that keeps the books, the image and the succession.

Shankara and the renunciant order

Gauḍapāda (perhaps 6th century), whose verses on the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad are the oldest Advaita work to survive, stands at the head of the human line; tradition makes him the teacher of Govinda Bhagavatpāda, Shankara’s guru. His teaching is set out on Advaita Vedānta, which recalls the best-loved stories of Shankara — the crocodile, the outcaste at Kāśī — and on Vāda, which tells his debate with Maṇḍana Miśra.

What can historians say? That a teacher of genius, probably around 700, wrote the oldest surviving complete commentary on the Brahmasūtra, commentaries on the principal Upanishads and the Gītā, and an independent work, the Upadeśasāhasrī. Hundreds of other works bear his name, including beloved hymns such as the Bhaja Govindam; scholars doubt that many of them are his, though devotees sing them as his still. The life-stories come from the digvijaya literature — “conquests of the quarters” — composed many centuries later, which pictures him walking the length of India, defeating rivals in debate and founding monasteries.

Tradition credits him with four disciples — Padmapāda, Sureśvara, Toṭaka and Hastāmalaka — and four seats, one at each quarter of India, each guarding a Veda and a great saying (see The Four Great Sayings). Tap each:

Those ten names make up the Daśanāmī (“ten-named”) order of renunciants, the largest monastic order in Hinduism; a swami’s surname — Sarasvatī, Giri, Purī — tells you which seat he belongs to. Scholarly view Many historians think the tidy four-seat system took shape centuries after Shankara, with Śṛṅgerī rising to prominence in the 14th century alongside the Vijayanagara empire and the scholar Vidyāraṇya. The Kāñcī maṭha in Tamil Nadu claims to be a seat founded by Shankara himself, a claim the other seats dispute. Each of these seats is headed by a Shankaracharya, and their pronouncements still carry weight, especially among Smārta families who follow Advaita while worshipping several deities at home.

Ramanuja: the temple and the tower

Śrīvaiṣṇava hagiography The Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition remembers Ramanuja (by tradition 1017–1137) through the Guruparamparāprabhāvam chronicles, written in the 13th century and later. They tell how the young man of Sriperumbudur studied Advaita under Yādavaprakāśa at Kanchipuram and broke with him over the meaning of the Upanishads; how he hurried to Srirangam to meet the aged Yāmuna and found him dead, three fingers of his hand folded; and how the fingers unfolded as Ramanuja vowed to fulfil Yāmuna’s three wishes — above all, a Vaishnava commentary on the Brahmasūtra. They tell how he walked to Tirukkōṣṭiyūr eighteen times before the teacher there gave him the secret meaning of the sacred mantra under a vow of silence — and how he climbed the temple tower and shouted it to everyone below, saying he would gladly go to hell if all of them were saved.

They also tell of exile. A Chola king hostile to Vaishnavas demanded his submission; his disciple Kūrattāḻvāṉ went in his place and was blinded, while Ramanuja fled to Karnataka and spent some twelve years at Melkote. There, the story goes, he won the Hoysala king Viṣṇuvardhana from Jainism, and allowed outcaste devotees, whom he called tirukkulattār, “people of the holy clan,” into the temple on certain days. Historians confirm the Hoysala king’s Vaishnava patronage but cannot verify most of the details; Ramanuja’s dates themselves are probably too early by some decades.

What is beyond doubt is the work: the Śrībhāṣya on the Brahmasūtra, the Vedārthasaṅgraha, a Gītā commentary and three prose hymns of surrender. The Śrībhāṣya opens with a prayer that is also a theology:

अखिलभुवनजन्मस्थेमभङ्गादिलीले विनतविविधभूतव्रातरक्षैकदीक्षे । श्रुतिशिरसि विदीप्ते ब्रह्मणि श्रीनिवासे भवतु मम परस्मिन् शेमुषी भक्तिरूपा ॥ akhila-bhuvana-janma-sthema-bhaṅgādi-līle vinata-vividha-bhūta-vrāta-rakṣaika-dīkṣe, śruti-śirasi vidīpte brahmaṇi śrīnivāse bhavatu mama parasmin śemuṣī bhakti-rūpā To the highest Brahman, Śrīnivāsa — whose play is the birth, keeping and ending of all the worlds, whose one vow is to protect the many beings who bow to him, who shines at the head of the Veda — may my understanding take the form of devotion. Rāmānuja, Śrībhāṣya, opening verse

Notice the last line: for Ramanuja, knowledge of Brahman is devotion (see Viśiṣṭādvaita). He is said to have appointed seventy-four lineage-holders to carry the teaching, and his successors later divided into the Vaḍakalai of Vedānta Deśika and the Teṉkalai of Maṇavāḷa Māmuni, over the place of human effort in surrender (prapatti). Community At Srirangam devotees venerate a seated form of Ramanuja in his shrine which they believe to be his own body, preserved.

Madhva and the Krishna Vedāntas

Madhva (1238–1317; an older reckoning gives 1199–1278) is known to his followers through the Sumadhvavijaya of Nārāyaṇa Paṇḍitācārya, son of one of his disciples, which presents him as Vāyu come to earth. His thought, the Udupi Krishna and the eight maṭhas with their paryāya are on Dvaita. Mādhva tradition The story of his end is that in 1317, while teaching the Aitareya Upaniṣad at Udupi, he vanished in a shower of flowers, to live on with Vyāsa in the Himalaya; his followers keep the day as Madhva Navamī.

Three later ācāryas made Krishna himself the Brahman of the Upanishads (their philosophies are on Other Vedantas):

निम्बार्कNimbārkaDate much debated · Vrindavan

A Telugu Brahmin who settled near Govardhan. His followers count him in the Kumāra sampradāya and place him in remote antiquity; historians propose anything from the 7th to the 13th century. Little is securely known of his life, but his tradition was among the first to worship Rādhā and Krishna together.

वल्लभVallabha1479–1531 · householder ācārya

Born to a Telugu Brahmin family travelling in central India, he spent his life on pilgrimage and teaching. His tradition says Krishna appeared to him at Gokul and gave him the initiation of brahma-sambandha, “relation with Brahman,” which his lineage still gives. Unusually, he married and his lineage is hereditary: his son Viṭṭhalanātha shaped the Puṣṭimārga’s temple worship and music, and his seven sons founded its seven “houses”, and the poet Sūrdās is counted among its singers — though scholars such as John Stratton Hawley find no trace of the sect in his earliest poems and think the link was made later.

चैतन्यCaitanya1486–1534 · Navadvīpa and Purī

Born Viśvambhara Miśra, a brilliant young scholar of logic, he was transformed after initiation at Gayā (c. 1508), took renunciation in 1510 and spent his last years at Purī, absorbed in Krishna. He wrote almost nothing; the six Gosvāmīs of Vrindavan built the theology, and hagiographies such as the Caitanya-caritāmṛta tell the life. After him a woman, Jāhnavā Devī, wife of his companion Nityānanda, became one of the community’s leaders.

For Caitanya’s saṅkīrtana and the saints of north India, see Bhakti Saints.

The Śaiva ācāryas

Shaivism has its own ācāryas, in three very different worlds:

Abhinavagupta (c. 950–1016)

In his own writings he tells us that his ancestor was brought to Kashmir from the Gangetic plain by King Lalitāditya, and names his many teachers — Lakṣmaṇagupta for the philosophy of recognition, Śambhunātha for the Kaula rites. He never married and lived in a household of disciples and relatives. Kashmiri tradition At the end, it is said, he walked into a cave near Beerwah with twelve hundred disciples, chanting a hymn to Bhairava, and was never seen again. His teaching is on Kashmir Shaivism.

Who could teach, and who could learn

It is worth stating plainly. Nearly every classical ācārya was a man, and most were Brahmins; most maṭhas admitted only men, and the Advaita orders long restricted full renunciation to the upper varṇas. Yet the lineages also carried protests against those walls: the story of Ramanuja’s tower and his reverence for his non-Brahmin mentor Tirukkacci Nambi, Umāpati’s outcaste devotee, Basava’s whole movement, Jāhnavā Devī’s leadership. Both belong to the story, and both are part of the story of Varna & Jati.

How the lineages judged one another
  • Viśiṣṭādvaitins and Dvaitins saw Shankara as a teacher who, in denying a real world and a personal God, came close to Buddhism — “a Buddhist in disguise” was the old taunt. Advaitins reply that his Brahman is the fullness the Buddhists denied.
  • Advaitins honoured Ramanuja and Madhva as devotees but held that devotion ripens into knowledge, not the reverse.
  • Shaiva Siddhāntins often see Vedāntic ācāryas as reading the Veda without the Āgamas that complete it; Vīraśaivas questioned the need for any priest at all.
  • Every tradition, meanwhile, claims that its own lineage reaches back unbroken to God — a claim of faith, not of history, and none the poorer for that.

Community In Malaysia these lineages arrive in person: heads of the Tamil Ādhīnams and Shankara maṭhas visit on tours, ISKCON’s Gauḍīya devotees hold Ratha Yātrās in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, and the Ramakrishna Mission, Chinmaya Mission and Divine Life Society carry modern Advaita (see Modern Teachers). Practice and affiliation vary from temple to temple.

Check your knowledge:

Quick check

A swami named “… Giri” belongs to which order?

Giri is one of the ten names of Shankara’s renunciant order, linked with Jyotirmaṭh.

Who, in the story, shouted the secret mantra from a temple tower?

At Tirukkōṣṭiyūr, so that all could hear and be saved.

The four Santāṉa Kuravar belong to…

Meykaṇṭār, Aruḷnanti, Maṟaiñāṉa Sambandar and Umāpati Civācāriyar.

Basava’s devotees wear Shiva on the body as…

The personal liṅga, which replaced the temple for the Vīraśaivas.

Questions people often ask

Are the hagiographies true?

They are true to what the traditions value, and sometimes preserve real memories. But they were mostly written centuries after their heroes, to teach and to inspire, and they sometimes contradict one another. This guide tells them as the traditions’ own memory, beside what historians can confirm.

Is a Shankaracharya the same as Shankara?

No. “Shankaracharya” is the title of the head of each seat in Shankara’s line. There have been many, and several hold office today.

Do I need to belong to a lineage?

Many Hindus never formally do; they follow their family’s temple and customs. Others receive initiation from a teacher in a particular line. Both are long-established ways of being Hindu — see The Guru.

॥ Pause and reflect

  1. The ācārya “practises it himself.” Whose example, rather than whose words, has taught you most?
  2. Ramanuja broke a vow of secrecy so that all could hear. When is sharing a teaching more faithful than guarding it?
  3. Basava said his body was the temple. What would change if you treated your work as worship?

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Key terms on this page

Sources & further reading