Dasanāmi Sampradaya

The Dasanami Sampradaya, known as the Order of Swamis, is a Hindu monastic tradition of single-staff renunciation whose roots reach back to wandering ascetics called Ekadandis active in India from roughly 320 to 650 CE. Traditional accounts composed between the 9th and 17th centuries credit the philosopher Adi Shankaracharya with reorganizing and formalizing the order in the 9th century, structuring it around ten traditional monastic names and four cardinal mathas of the Advaita Vedanta tradition, each overseen by one of his four principal disciples, Padmapada in the east, Sureshvara in the south, Hastamalakacarya in the west and Totakacarya in the north, with each matha assigned its own Veda and philosophical principle. Modern historians note that the order's actual association with these Shankara mathas remained largely nominal, and many Hindu monastic groups carrying the Dasanami names operated independently outside this framework. Monks who take vows in the tradition adopt one of the ten names, Giri, Puri, Bharati, Vana, Aranya, Sagara, Ashrama, Sarasvati, Tirtha or Parvata. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/