Eight systems, one canon. Each holds that the Upaniṣads, the Gītā and the Brahma-sūtra teach exactly one doctrine, and each has produced a full commentary on all three to prove that the doctrine is its own.
This page puts them side by side. The individual pages take each on its own terms, in the vocabulary it built for itself.
| Advaita | Viśiṣṭādvaita | Dvaita | Bhedābheda | Dvaitādvaita | Śuddhādvaita | Acintya-bhedābheda | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ācārya | Śaṅkara c. 750 | Rāmānuja 1017–1137 | Madhva 1238–1317 | Bhāskara c. 900 | Nimbārka disputed | Vallabha 1479–1531 | Caitanya · Jīva · Baladeva 16th–18th c. |
| Brahman | Nirguṇa — without attributes, ultimately. Pure being, consciousness, bliss | Saguṇa — with infinite auspicious attributes. Viṣṇu-Nārāyaṇa with Śrī | Viṣṇu, independent, personal, with a real form | With attributes, and really transformed into the world | Kṛṣṇa with Rādhā; personal and with attributes | Kṛṣṇa; being, consciousness and bliss, all three fully manifest | Kṛṣṇa, endowed with inconceivable powers |
| The self | Brahman itself, appearing limited by adjuncts. Not a part, not a mode | A real atomic mode of brahman, eternally distinct and eternally inseparable | Eternally distinct, dependent, and graded — selves differ intrinsically | Both different and non-different, both truly, by adjunct and by nature | A distinct part, naturally both different and non-different | A part of brahman, with bliss obscured but nothing false about it | A marginal power of the Lord — taṭastha-śakti |
| The world | Mithyā: neither real nor unreal, sublated by knowledge | Real; brahman's body, and its transformation | Real, distinct and dependent | Real; brahman's actual modification | Real; a transformation of brahman's power | Real, and brahman unmodified — no māyā needed | Real; a transformation of the Lord's energy, not of himself |
| Causality | Vivarta — apparent transformation | Pariṇāma of the body, brahman as self unchanged | Efficient cause only; matter is a distinct eternal principle | Pariṇāma — real transformation | Pariṇāma of the powers | Avikṛta-pariṇāma — transformation without alteration | Śakti-pariṇāma — the energy transforms, the Lord does not |
| Means | Knowledge alone; works purify but do not liberate | Bhakti as constant loving meditation, and prapatti, surrender | Bhakti, and the Lord's uncompelled grace | Knowledge and works together — samuccaya | Bhakti and self-surrender to the divine couple | Grace alone — puṣṭi-mārga, the way of nourishing | Bhakti as relished relation; the name, chanted |
| Liberation is | Being brahman; nothing gained that was not always so | Enjoying brahman in Vaikuṇṭha, the self intact | Eternal service, and bliss graded by capacity | Non-difference regained, the adjunct removed | Likeness of nature, without loss of distinctness | Entry into the Lord's eternal play | Eternal participation in relationship — rasa |
| Its page | Advaita → | Viśiṣṭādvaita → | Dvaita → | Bhedābheda → | Dvaitādvaita → | Śuddhādvaita → | Acintya → |
Because its columns would duplicate Viśiṣṭādvaita's with one substitution — Śiva for Viṣṇu — which is precisely the interesting fact about it, and would be invisible if the row values were simply copied across. Its page takes up what changes and what does not when the same structure is built around a different deity.
One sentence, seven readings. If you want to know what a school of Vedānta actually holds, this is the fastest way to find out — every commentator treats Chāndogya 6.8.7 at length, and the treatment is a fingerprint.
Non-duality. Superimposition as the root of the whole problem, the three levels of being, the two brahmans, and liberation as the removal of an error that was never a fact.
adhyāsamāyāvivartajīvanmuktianirvacanīya Bhāskara · c. 900 · and beforeDifference and non-difference, both real and neither reduced. The oldest position in the field, the one Śaṅkara was arguing against, and arguably what the sūtra says.
aupādhikasvābhāvikasamuccayaYādavaprakāśa Rāmānuja · 1017–1137One reality with real internal distinctions. The body–soul relation as a metaphysical category, the seven objections to Advaita, and surrender as an alternative to a discipline few can complete.
apṛthak-siddhiśarīra-śarīrisaptavidha-anupapattiprapatti Madhva · 1238–1317Five eternal differences, a theory of the particular invented to make them work, the inner witness as the ground of certainty, and the most controversial doctrine in Vedānta: that souls are intrinsically graded.
pañca-bhedaviśeṣasākṣintāratamyasvarūpa-yogyatā Nimbārka · date disputedNatural difference-and-non-difference: both relations belong to the thing itself, neither is produced by an adjunct, and neither is more ultimate than the other.
svābhāvika-bhedābhedaRādhā-KṛṣṇaVedānta-pārijāta Vallabha · 1479–1531Pure non-dualism — pure because it dispenses with māyā altogether. The world is brahman with a quality withdrawn, and the path is grace, with nothing for the aspirant to earn.
avikṛta-pariṇāmaāvirbhāvatirobhāvapuṣṭi-mārga Caitanya · Jīva Gosvāmī · BaladevaInconceivable difference-and-non-difference. Three divine energies, a theology of relationship as the goal, and a defence of why “inconceivable” is a philosophical claim rather than a retreat from one.
acintya-śaktisvarūpa-śaktitaṭastharasaGovinda-bhāṣya Śrīkaṇṭha · Śrīpati · c. 1300–1400The same three texts, with Śiva as brahman. What changes when the deity changes, what does not, and why this corner of the field is the least studied.
Śiva-viśiṣṭādvaitaśakti-viśiṣṭādvaitaAppayya DīkṣitaAdvaita then Viśiṣṭādvaita, in that order. Rāmānuja's seven objections are aimed at a position you will then already hold in your head, and the exchange is the best philosophy in the tradition.
Dvaita. Madhva's theory of the particular, his account of the inner witness, and his doctrine of intrinsic gradation are unlike anything else in Indian philosophy, and the last of them is genuinely uncomfortable.
Bhedābheda. It is the oldest of the eight, it needs no interpretive machinery, and the case that Bādarāyaṇa himself held something like it is stronger than the case for any other school.
Acintya-bhedābheda or Śuddhādvaita. Both put relation and grace where the others put knowledge, and both develop an aesthetics of devotion the analytic schools never attempt.
Each school is a package, not a menu. Its account of brahman forces its account of the self; that forces its reading of the world; and that forces what liberation can be and how it is reached. When a page states a doctrine, the useful question is not whether you find it plausible but what else in the column would have to change if it were dropped. Read the columns of §1 downward, not the rows across.