Vedanta is one of the six systems (darshanas) of Indian philosophy. In Sanskrit the name means the “conclusion” (anta) of the Vedas. It names both the Upanishads, which close the Vedic collections, and the later schools that interpret those texts.
The schools share a set of books and some beliefs. They do not share one account of the self, the world, or liberation. This page states only what the cited sources say, and it marks dates that those sources treat as disputed.
What Vedanta is
Encyclopaedia Britannica defines Vedanta as one of the six systems of Indian philosophy. The word applies to the Upanishads, which were elaborations of the Vedas, and to the school that arose from the study (mimamsa) of the Upanishads. The same article lists the other names Vedanta Mimamsa (“Reflection on Vedanta”), Uttara Mimamsa (“Reflection on the Latter Part of the Vedas”), and Brahma Mimamsa (“Reflection on Brahman”).
Patrick Olivelle, writing in Britannica’s Upanishad article, says the Upanishads are called vedanta (“the conclusion of the Vedas”) because they are the concluding portions of the Vedas, and that they are the foundational texts of the later traditions also known as Vedanta. He also notes that the Sanskrit title originally meant “connection” or “equivalence,” not “sitting near a teacher.”
No single reading of those books became standard. Britannica names three fundamental Vedanta texts: the Upanishads (especially longer, older ones such as the Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya, Taittiriya, and Katha); the Brahma-sutras, also called Vedanta-sutras, which are very brief interpretations of Upanishadic doctrine; and the Bhagavadgita (“Song of the Lord”), used because of its popularity to support doctrines found in the Upanishads.
In Britannica’s survey of Indian philosophy, Jitendra N. Mohanty calls these the three prasthanas, the basic scriptures of Vedanta. Founders of the schools argued their positions by commenting on all three. The disputes he lists are the nature of brahman, the status of the phenomenal world, the relation of finite individuals to brahman, and the nature of moksha (liberation) and the means to it.
In plain terms, the texts keep returning to three ideas. Brahman is the reality the Upanishads inquire into: Olivelle describes it as the single unifying principle behind the apparent diversity of the cosmos. Atman is the unchanging core of a person. Moksha is release from samsara, the cycle of rebirth.
Olivelle writes that the Upanishads teach that brahman resides in the atman, and that many later Indian theologies treated the equation of brahman with atman as the Upanishads’ core teaching. That equation is not a point on which every Vedanta school agrees. Ramanuja and Madhva, below, reject Shankara’s reading of it.
Britannica does list beliefs the Vedanta schools hold in common: transmigration of the self and the desirability of release from rebirth; the authority of the Veda on the means of release; that brahman is both the material and the instrumental cause of the world; and that the self is the agent of its own acts (karma) and so receives their consequences. The same article says the schools reject Buddhism and Jainism, and also the conclusions of the other Vedic systems (Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Samkhya, Yoga, and, to some extent, Purva Mimamsa).
Britannica’s Vedanta article says the schools are differentiated by how they conceive the relationship, and the degree of identity, between the eternal core of the individual (atman) and the absolute (brahman). It names three main positions, and warns that a Western habit of equating “Vedanta” with Advaita is a mistake: Advaita is one school among others.
Advaita, associated with Shankara, is non-dualism. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy describes classical Advaita as the view that the essential core of the self (atman) is brahman: pure non-intentional consciousness, one without a second, and numerically identical with brahman. Liberation (moksha), on that account, is the recognition of that nonduality. Britannica’s biography of Shankara says he affirmed one eternal unchanging reality (brahman), treated plurality and differentiation as illusion, and regarded knowledge of brahman as the means to final release.
Vishishtadvaita, Ramanuja’s “qualified non-dualism,” does not treat the world as unreal. Britannica says Ramanuja accepted a nonduality, but of God as modified (vishishta) by the orders of matter and soul, which constitute God’s “body.” Release, in his teaching, is not the loss of individuality. It is the joy of contemplating God, reached through devotion (bhakti).
Dvaita, Madhva’s dualism, is the view of a basic difference in kind between God and individual souls. Britannica’s Vedanta article places him in the 13th century and lists his school beside Shankara’s and Ramanuja’s as a distinct conception of how far atman and brahman are the same.
Olivelle dates the earliest extant Upanishads roughly to the middle of the 1st millennium BCE. He adds that they are not a single system: they neither contain systematic philosophical reflections nor present a unified doctrine, and some of what they contain is ritual rather than argument. Texts modeled on them and also called “Upanishad” continued to be composed through the centuries up to about 1400 CE.
Within Vedanta, these books are the shruti prasthana, the “heard” starting point. Later commentators do not treat every sentence in them as saying the same thing.
The Bhagavad Gita is an episode of the Mahabharata: a dialogue between Prince Arjuna and Krishna. Britannica says it was composed perhaps in the 1st or 2nd century CE. Krishna’s argument, the same article says, incorporates many basic teachings of the Upanishads, which Britannica there describes as speculative texts compiled between 1000 and 600 BCE.
Vedanta schools treat the Gita as the smriti prasthana, the remembered text, and Shankara, Ramanuja, and Madhva each commented on it.
The Brahma Sutras, also called the Vedanta Sutras, are credited to Badarayana. Britannica describes him as a key interpreter of Vedic thought and a contemporary of Jaimini, and describes the sutras as four books: reconciling scriptural statements on Brahman, answering other schools, setting out a discipline, and discussing liberation. It does not give a composition century.
The date is disputed, and this page does not pick one. The English Wikipedia article on the Brahma Sutras summarizes the published debate as follows: Daniel Ingalls argued the sutras could not have been composed later than the start of the Common Era; Hermann Jacobi suggested about 200 to 450 CE; Hajime Nakamura held that the text was likely complete in its current form between 400 and 450 CE; Sengaku Mayeda has treated the surviving sutras as the work of more than one author, from about 300 BCE through about 400–450 CE. Those are reports of scholars, not a settled fact.
Shankara (also Shankaracharya) is the classical exponent of Advaita. His dates are disputed. Britannica’s biography, by Sengaku Mayeda, says it was once customary to assign him 788–820, but that the dates 700–750, grounded in modern scholarship, are more acceptable. The Stanford Encyclopedia records the same spread: early scholars used 788–820; Hajime Nakamura argued for 700–750; Karl Potter placed him from the late seventh to the early eighth century. Both sources say the later biographies are not dependable history. Tradition places his birth at Kaladi in what is now Kerala. The question marks in Britannica’s own dates (born 700?, died 750?, Kedarnath) mark that uncertainty.
His masterpiece is the Brahma-sutra-bhashya. Britannica also credits him with commentaries on the principal Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita, and treats the Upadeshasahasri as his one certainly authentic non-commentarial work. He names Gaudapada, author of the Mandukya-karika, as the teacher of his own teacher Govinda. Britannica does not give Gaudapada a firm year.
Britannica dates Ramanuja to about 1017–1137: born at Shriperumbudur, died at Shrirangam. It warns that the life stories are legendary biographies in which pious imagination has embroidered the details. He wrote three major commentaries: the Vedartha-samgraha, the Shri-bhashya on the Brahma-sutras, and the Bhagavadgita-bhashya. J. A. B. van Buitenen’s Britannica article presents his Vishishtadvaita as a deliberate rejection of Shankara’s illusionism: the world is real, and God, identified with Vishnu, is brahman.
Madhva’s dates are given by Britannica as alternatives, not as a single pair: born about 1199 or 1238 near Udupi (Udipi) in Karnataka, died about 1278 or 1317 at Udupi. He is also called Anandatirtha and Purnaprajna. Britannica describes him as the exponent of Dvaita, dualism: a basic difference in kind between God and individual souls. The Vedanta overview places that school in the 13th century, beside Shankara’s non-dualism and Ramanuja’s qualified non-dualism.
That which is the subtlest of all is the Self of all this. It is the Truth. It is the Self. That thou art, O Śvetaketu.
Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7, in the teaching of Uddalaka to his son Shvetaketu. English translation by Swami Lokeswarananda. The Sanskrit sentence includes tat tvam asi (also written tattvamasi). “That thou art” is his English for those words, not a second source.
Verily in the beginning this was Brahman, that Brahman knew (its) Self only, saying, ‘I am Brahman.’
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10. English translation by Max Müller, in The Upanishads, Part 2, Sacred Books of the East, volume 15. The parentheses around “its” are Müller’s. The quoted words translate the Sanskrit aham brahmāsmi.
All this is verily Brahman. This Ātman is Brahman. This Ātman has four quarters.
Mandukya Upanishad, verse 2. English translation by Swami Nikhilananda (1949), in his edition of the Upanishad with Gaudapada’s karika and Shankara’s commentary. On the same page, Nikhilananda’s rendering of Shankara’s comment glosses the middle sentence as “This Self is Brahman.”
It is not born, nor does it ever die, nor, having existed, does it exist no more. Unborn, everlasting, unchangeable, and primeval, it is not killed when the body is killed.
Bhagavad Gita 2.20. English translation by Kashinath Trimbak Telang, Sacred Books of the East, volume 8 (1882). The Wisdom Library page of that translation does not print the verse number beside the sentence; the wording is the standard verse 2.20, which follows Telang’s rendering of 2.19 (“It kills not, is not killed”).
brahma satyam jagan mithya; jīvo brahmaiva na aparah
Brahman is alone True, and this world of plurality is an error; the individual self is not different from Brahman.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy presents this as an anonymous verse that represents Advaita’s cardinal doctrines. It is not quoted there as a sentence from a named work of Shankara. The English line is the encyclopedia’s translation. This is an Advaita formula, not a claim the other Vedanta schools accept.
The Vedanta philosophy, as it is generally called at the present day, really comprises all the various sects that now exist in India.
Swami Vivekananda, in the lecture “The Vedanta Philosophy,” delivered to the Graduate Philosophical Society of Harvard University on 25 March 1896, as printed in The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda, volume 1. This sentence is his English, not a translation. In the same lecture he goes on to separate Dvaita, Vishishtadvaita, and Advaita, so the line is about the breadth of the name, not a claim that the sects agree.