ajAti vAda

names, araNya, ASrama, parvata, vana and sAgara are quite rarely seen nowadays. All
daSanAmI monks belong to the tradition of ekadaNDI sam.nyAsa. They carry a staff
consisting of a single wooden stick, symbolizing the essential identity of brahman and
Atman.
It is important to remember that the advaita sampradAya is not a Saiva sect. The fact that
both the prominent non-advaita schools of vedAnta are vaishNava leads to a confusion
among many modern researchers, who uncritically talk of all daSanAmI sannyAsIs as
being Saiva ascetics. In reality, advaitins are non-sectarian, and they advocate worship of
Siva and vishNu equally with that of the other deities of Hinduism, like Sakti, gaNapati
and others. Modern neo-vedAntins, who are most strongly influenced by advaita
vedAnta, have no trouble accepting Moses, Christ and Muhammad also. Philosophically,
classical advaita would disagree as much with the Saiva siddhAnta and the Saiva
vedAnta schools, as with the vaishNava schools of vedAnta. On the other hand, the God
Siva is the archetype of the ascetic, and advaita vedAnta lays great emphasis on
sam.nyAsa. Saiva schools also tend to be more non-dualistic in outlook than vaishNava
schools, and SankarAcArya himself is venerated as an incarnation of Siva. Hence, the
contemporary SankarAcAryas do wield a larger degree of influence among Saiva
communities than among vaishNava communities, but that does not necessarily make
them exclusively Saiva ascetics. The famous madhusUdana sarasvatI was an ardent
devotee of kRshNa, while prakASAnanda was a Sakti-worshipper.
The major following of the gurus of the advaita tradition has been mostly among the
smArtas, who integrate the domestic Vedic ritual with devotional aspects of Hinduism.
The traditional pancAyatana pUjA scheme of smArta worship is offered to Siva, vishNu,
Sakti, gaNeSa and sUrya, as aspects of saguNa brahman. skanda is sometimes added as
the sixth important deity who is worshipped, especially in the south. The smArtas also
regard themselves as followers of SankarAcArya and his successors at the various
maThas, but there is a lot of regional variation in this regard.
The AmnAya maThas: The four maThas established by Sankara are known in the
tradition as the AmnAya maThas. Sankara is said to have assigned one of the four vedas
to each of these maThas, and the AcAryas and paNDitas of these four maThas continue
the tradition to this day. Accordingly, the Puri maTha is associated with the Rg veda,
Sringeri with yajurveda, Dvaraka with sAma veda and Jyotirmath with atharva veda.
The ten daSanAmI suffixes are distributed among these four maThas - according to most
traditions, purI, bhAratI and sarasvatI with Sringeri; tIrtha and ASrama with Dvaraka;
sAgara, parvata and giri with Jyotirmath, and vana and araNya with Puri. Many notable
post-Sankaran authors, including sureSvara, jnAnaghana, jnAnottama, Anandagiri,
bhAratI tIrtha, vidyAraNya and others, can be found among the heads of these maThas.
Of these four, Sringeri is the only institution that has had an unbroken line of succession
from Sankara. Among the other three maThas, the succession has been interrupted at one
time or the other, for a variety of historical reasons. The longest hiatus in the line of
succession was in the case of Jyotirmath, where the seat lay vacant for around 165 years.
In the recent past, the Sringeri maTha has been involved, directly or indirectly, in
stabilizing the line of succession in the other three maThas.