Hindu tradition credits the philosopher Adi Shankara with establishing four monastic centers, or mathas, at the four cardinal extremities of the Indian subcontinent: Sringeri in the south, Dwarka in the west, Puri in the east and Jyotirmath, near Badrinath, in the north. Each matha is traditionally paired with one of the four Vedas, one Mahavakya or great saying drawn from the Upanishads, and a lineage of teachers, the Shankaracharyas, who continue to hold the seat.
The traditional dating places Shankara, and so the founding of the mathas, in the eighth century CE, though the philosopher's own dates are disputed among historians, with some placing his life a century or more earlier. The mathas were structured to train renunciate monks, transmit Advaita Vedanta, and coordinate teaching across a subcontinent where travel and communication were slow. Each institution developed its own manuscript tradition, ritual calendar and regional following, while all four continued to recognize a shared philosophical lineage traced to their founder.
The four mathas remain active monastic institutions, and their heads continue to be addressed as Shankaracharya, a title that has at times been claimed by more than one lineage or contested between rival claimants to a single seat, particularly at Dwarka and Puri in the modern period.