Schools of Vedanta

The Vedas are the oldest scriptural texts relating to ancient India and Hinduism. It is claimed that they are perhaps the oldest surviving scriptures from the ancient world, pre-dating Greek philosophy and relating to the Indo/Aryan philosophy and religion dating back 2,500 to 600 years BCE.

There are four sacred Vedas. These four are called the Rig-Veda, Sama-Veda, Yajur-Veda, and Atharva-Veda. And each of these four Vedas contains four sacred works comprised of, Samhitâs, Brâhmanas, Âranyakas, and Upanishads.

The Jñana kânda section within each of Vedas pertains to knowledge and insight, the term Jñana means knowledge. Whereas the Karma kânda, consists of instruction and ritual, this latter section concentrates deliberately on insight, knowledge and understanding. It comprises the Upanishads, which consist of dialogues and reflections pertaining to the metaphysical nature of life, and being, the cosmos and God. This latter part is known as the uttara mimamsa ("higher inquiry"), or the vedanta, which means, "end of the Vedas." Here can be found the philosophical foundations and explanations for creation itself. Each of the latter schools of Vedanta have basis and grounding in interpretation of this section of the Vedas.

There are six schools, (darshanas), relating to Hindu philosophical thought.

1. Sankhya, (Samkhya), strongly dualist theoretical exposition of mind and matter.
2. Yoga, a school emphasizing meditation closely based on Sankhya
3. Nyaya or logics
4. Vaisheshika, an empiricist school of atomism
5. Mimamsa, an anti-ascetic and anti-mysticist school of orthopraxy
6. Vedanta, opposing Vedic ritualism in favour of mysticism. Vedanta came to be the dominant current of Hinduism in the post-medieval period.

These later schools of Vedanta are further divided into Advaita, Visishtadvaita, Dvaita, Dvaitadvaita, Shuddhadvaita, and Acintya Bheda Abheda.

For an excellent introduction to these later different schools of vedanta see here ~ Schools of Vedanta

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