The Founders Who Gave Vedanta Its Rival Schools

The three classical schools of Vedanta each take their definitive form from a single acharya whose commentaries fixed the school's doctrine for everyone who followed: Shankara, in the eighth century, gave non-dualist Advaita Vedanta its authoritative statement; Ramanuja, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, founded the qualified non-dualism of Vishishtadvaita in direct argument against Shankara's reading of the same texts; and Madhva, in the thirteenth century, founded the fully dualist Dvaita school in argument against both. Each of these founding acharyas established a lineage of teaching acharyas who transmitted and defended his specific interpretation, so that the same foundational texts of Vedanta produced three enduring and mutually disagreeing schools, each anchored in the authority of its own founding acharya.

The title has also drifted into entirely secular use in modern India, where acharya is a formal academic title roughly equivalent to professor at some universities and a standard element of degree names in traditional Sanskrit and Ayurvedic education, a usage that keeps the word's sense of mastery and authority to teach while dropping any specifically religious content at all.