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Tradition

Vedānta

The schools of Indian philosophy that interpret the Upaniṣads, the Brahma Sūtras and the Bhagavad Gītā.

Also called Vedanta, Uttara Mīmāṃsā

Introduction

Vedānta, “the end of the Veda”, names the family of schools that take the Upaniṣads, the philosophical final portion of the Vedic literature, as their highest authority. Its central questions are the nature of Brahman, the ultimate reality; the nature of the self; the relation of both to the world; and the way to liberation. It is also called Uttara Mīmāṃsā, “the later enquiry”, to distinguish it from the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, “the earlier enquiry”, which interprets the ritual portions of the Veda.

Every school of Vedānta grounds itself in three texts, the “triple foundation” (prasthāna-traya): the principal Upaniṣads, the Brahma Sūtras, and the Bhagavad Gītā. Because the Brahma Sūtras are terse to the point of obscurity, a school of Vedānta is in practice defined by its commentary on them. The schools agree that the Upaniṣads reveal Brahman, that the self is conscious and eternal, and that liberation from rebirth is the highest goal. They disagree about almost everything else.

The best-known schools are Advaita, which teaches the non-difference of the self and Brahman; Viśiṣṭādvaita, which teaches one Brahman qualified by real selves and matter; and Dvaita, which teaches the eternal difference of God, selves and the world. Others include the Bhedābheda schools of “difference and non-difference”, Nimbārka’s Dvaitādvaita, Vallabha’s Śuddhādvaita and the Acintya-bhedābheda of the Caitanya tradition. In the modern period, teachers such as Vivekananda made Vedānta the most widely known Indian philosophy outside India.

History

Historical

The principal Upaniṣads were composed over several centuries in the first millennium BCE, the oldest, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya, perhaps around the seventh or sixth century BCE. The Bhagavad Gītā, part of the epic Mahābhārata, is usually dated between the second century BCE and the second century CE. The Brahma Sūtras, attributed to Bādarāyaṇa, organized Upaniṣadic teaching into some five hundred aphorisms in the early centuries CE, and refer to earlier teachers whose works are lost.

The earliest surviving systematic work of Vedānta is Gauḍapāda’s verse treatise on the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad, around the sixth century. Śaṅkara’s commentaries in the eighth century made Advaita the dominant reading for several centuries. From the eleventh century, the Vaiṣṇava teachers of South India answered him: Rāmānuja with Viśiṣṭādvaita, and in the thirteenth century Madhva with Dvaita. Their debates, carried on by commentators in each school, are among the longest-running in the history of philosophy.

In the nineteenth century, reformers such as Rammohun Roy, and above all Vivekananda, presented Vedānta as the philosophical core of Hinduism and as a universal religion. Vivekananda’s address to the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893 and the Vedanta Societies he founded carried it to the West, where it shaped modern ideas of a perennial philosophy.

  1. c. 7th–6th c. BCEThe oldest principal Upaniṣads, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya
  2. c. 2nd c. BCE–2nd c. CEThe Bhagavad Gītā takes its present form
  3. early centuries CEThe Brahma Sūtras, attributed to Bādarāyaṇa
  4. c. 6th c.Gauḍapāda’s Kārikā on the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad
  5. c. 8th c.Śaṅkara’s commentaries establish Advaita
  6. 11th–12th c.Rāmānuja’s Śrībhāṣya: Viśiṣṭādvaita
  7. 13th–14th c.Madhva founds Dvaita
  8. 1893Vivekananda at the World’s Parliament of Religions, Chicago

Major thinkers

Key concepts

Important texts

Convergence and divergence

Resemblance and difference, given equal room. Each note is marked with the kind of statement it makes.

Areas of convergence

  • Unity, with Neoplatonism

    Scholarship

    Like Neoplatonism, Vedānta describes a single ultimate principle on which the manifold world depends, and a spiritual path in which the self turns inward to find that principle at its own depth.

  • Knowledge, with Christian Mysticism

    Scholarship

    Both hold that the highest knowledge of the ultimate is not knowledge of an object, and both use negation (“not this, not this”; the via negativa) to point beyond every concept.

Areas of divergence

  • with Advaita Vedānta

    Historical

    The Vedānta schools disagree sharply among themselves: Advaita teaches strict non-difference of self and Brahman, while Dvaita holds that they are eternally distinct, and Viśiṣṭādvaita holds a unity of Brahman with its real body.

  • Ātman, with Buddhism

    Scholarship

    Every school of Vedānta affirms an eternal self; Buddhism denies it. The two traditions argued over this for more than a thousand years.

In Metanoia

Cite this entry
Chicago (bibliography)

“Vedānta.” Tradition. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/vedanta.

Chicago (note)

“Vedānta,” tradition, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/vedanta.

MLA

“Vedānta.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/vedanta.

BibTeX
@misc{traditions-vedanta,
  title = {{Vedānta}},
  howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society},
  note = {Tradition. Last modified November 7, 2026},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/traditions/vedanta}
}

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