Vedic Religion & Six Schools of Philosophy

• Vedic Religion is the belief system, ritual practice and cosmology recorded in the four Vedas, composed across roughly 1500–600 BCE.
• It is the bedrock on which the later edifice of Hinduism was raised.
• The Six Schools of Philosophy, called the Shad-Darshanas, are the six systematic traditions that later grew up to interpret this Vedic inheritance through reason, logic and metaphysics.
• To read this chapter properly, four words must be fixed at the outset. Dharma is duty, righteousness and the moral order that holds society and cosmos together. Rita is the still older idea of a cosmic-and-moral order — the rhythm by which the sun rises and the seasons turn and by which truth ought to govern conduct; dharma is essentially rita brought down to the level of human life. Yajna is the sacrificial fire-ritual, the central act of Vedic worship, in which offerings are poured into fire and carried to the gods. Darshana literally means a "seeing" or "viewpoint", and in philosophy it denotes a school or system of thought.
• The single thread that runs through the whole chapter is a movement of emphasis: from the external ritual (yajna) of the early Vedic age, to the internal knowledge (jnana) of the Upanishads, and finally to the rigorous systems (darshanas) that organised that knowledge into argument.

1. Chronology & Context

• Vedic civilisation did not stand still; its religion changed character over a thousand years, and understanding those phases is the key to the whole topic. In the Rigvedic or Early Vedic period (c. 1500–1000 BCE), the Aryans lived as a semi-nomadic, pastoral, tribal people for whom cattle were wealth.
• Their religion was a joyful nature worship: the forces of the natural world — storm, fire, dawn, river — were personified as gods (devas) and praised in hymns sung around the sacrificial fire.
• There were as yet no temples, no images and no powerful priesthood; worship was direct and the mood was this-worldly, asking the gods for cattle, sons, rain and victory.

• In the Later Vedic period (c. 1000–600 BCE), society became settled and agricultural, kingdoms grew, and the simple sacrifice swelled into an enormously elaborate, technically exacting ritual.
• Because only specialists could perform these rites correctly, the Brahmin class acquired a near-monopoly over religion and rose to the top of the social order.
• Ritual (yajna) now seemed almost more powerful than the gods themselves.
• It was precisely against this mechanical, priest-dominated ritualism that the first stirrings of philosophical reaction appeared.
• The Post-Vedic or Upanishadic period (c. 800–300 BCE) carried that reaction to its height: thinkers turned inward, declaring that knowledge (jnana) of the self and the absolute, not the performance of ritual (karma/yajna), was the true road to liberation.
• Finally, between about 200 BCE and 500 CE, this accumulated philosophical thought was codified into the six darshanas, each compressed into terse aphorisms called sutras.

• Why did formal philosophy arise at all?
• Three pressures combined: a genuine intellectual revolt against ritual that had become an end in itself; the competition of the Shramana (renouncer) traditions — above all Buddhism and Jainism — which rejected the Vedas outright and offered their own paths to liberation; and the lively culture of public debate in which Brahmins, Kshatriyas and renouncers argued over the nature of the self, the world and salvation.
• The darshanas were, in part, orthodoxy's rigorous, reasoned answer to these challengers.

2. Vedic Religion — Foundational Texts

• The Vedic corpus is arranged in a strict order of authority.
• At the summit stands Shruti ("that which was heard") — revelation believed to be eternal and not of human authorship, and therefore the highest scriptural authority.
• Below it stands Smriti ("that which was remembered") — texts of human composition that derive their authority from Shruti.

• The heart of Shruti is the four Vedas.
• The Rigveda is the oldest and most important: a collection of 1,028 hymns (suktas) arranged in 10 books (mandalas), addressed to the various gods; it is reckoned the oldest religious text in the world still in continuous liturgical use.
• The Samaveda sets many Rigvedic verses to melody for chanting, and is therefore honoured as the fountainhead of Indian classical music. The Yajurveda is the priest's handbook of sacrificial formulae, partly in prose and partly in verse, and survives in two recensions, the Shukla (White) and the Krishna (Black).
• The Atharvaveda, added last, is the most "folk" of the four: a treasury of spells, charms, healing remedies and everyday magic, and an invaluable window into popular belief.

• Each Veda then grew a body of prose, still counted as Shruti.
• The Brahmanas are detailed prose manuals explaining the meaning and exact procedure of the sacrifices (the Shatapatha Brahmana, attached to the Yajurveda, is the most famous).
• The Aranyakas or "forest texts" are transitional works, composed by hermits who had withdrawn to the forest and begun to interpret ritual symbolically rather than literally.
• Out of this interpretive impulse grew the Upanishads — the name means "sitting down near" a teacher to receive secret wisdom.
• These are the philosophical climax of the Vedas; tradition counts 108, of which 13 are regarded as principal (Brihadaranyaka, Chandogya, Katha, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Kena, Isha, Prashna, Shvetashvatara, Kaushitaki and Maitri).
• Because they form the concluding portion of the Vedic literature, they are also called Vedanta, "the end of the Veda".

• Supporting the Vedas are the six Vedangas ("limbs of the Veda"), auxiliary sciences needed to preserve and use the texts correctly: Shiksha (phonetics, correct pronunciation), Chhanda (metre), Vyakarana (grammar — whose supreme text is Panini's Ashtadhyayi), Nirukta (etymology — associated with Yaska), Jyotisha (astronomy, to fix the right times for ritual), and Kalpa (ritual procedure, which includes the Shrauta, Grihya, Dharma and Sulba Sutras).
• Finally, the great body of Smriti includes the law-books or Dharmashastras (Manusmriti, Yajnavalkya Smriti), the two epics (the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which contains the Bhagavad Gita) and the eighteen Mahapuranas (such as the Bhagavata, Vishnu and Shiva Puranas).
• These were the texts through which Vedic religion actually reached the common people.

3. Vedic Deities & Cosmology

• Early Vedic religion was polytheistic — many gods were worshipped — but it already carried within it a powerful tendency toward unity, captured in the famous Rigvedic line "Ekam sat, vipra bahudha vadanti" ("Truth is one, the wise call it by many names").
• The gods, traditionally numbered at thirty-three, were distributed across three cosmic realms, and knowing this scheme makes the pantheon easy to remember.

• In the highest realm, the sky (Dyuloka), dwelt Dyaus the sky-father and, far more important, Varuna, the guardian of rita, the cosmic and moral order.
• Varuna is the most ethical of the Vedic gods: omniscient, he watches human conduct, punishes falsehood and upholds the law — he represents the conscience of the universe.
• With him are associated Mitra, Aditi and the Adityas.
• In the middle realm, the atmosphere (Antariksha), reigned Indra, the warrior-king of the gods, wielder of the thunderbolt, slayer of the demon Vritra, and bringer of the monsoon rains; more hymns are addressed to Indra than to any other deity, for he embodied the martial energy the Aryans prized.
• Around him are Rudra (the fearsome god of storms and disease, a forerunner of Shiva), the Maruts (storm-gods), Vayu (wind) and Parjanya (rain).
• In the lowest realm, the earth (Prithviloka), the chief god was Agni, the god of fire, who receives the second-largest number of hymns; because the sacrificial offering was poured into fire, Agni was the indispensable messenger who carried offerings from humans up to the gods.
• With him stand Soma (both a sacred intoxicating ritual drink and the moon), Prithvi (earth) and Sarasvati (a river-goddess later identified with learning).

• The contrast between Varuna and Indra is worth dwelling on, because it captures two faces of the Vedic mind: Varuna is ethical, omniscient and law-bound, the upholder of cosmic order; Indra is martial, exuberant and popular, the god of the victorious warrior.
• Over time, the abstract moral grandeur of Varuna faded and the active, heroic Indra dominated — and then, in the Later Vedic age, Indra in turn was eclipsed.
• New gods rose: Prajapati, "the lord of creatures", became the supreme creator, while Vishnu and Rudra-Shiva, minor in the Rigveda, steadily grew in importance and would dominate later Hinduism.
• In this period ritual became overwhelming: grand public sacrifices such as the ashvamedha (horse sacrifice, to assert imperial sovereignty), the rajasuya (royal consecration) and the agnishtoma were performed, animal sacrifice was common, and the Brahmin priesthood reached the height of its power.
• It was in this age that the fourfold varna order was given divine sanction by the Purusha Sukta (Rigveda X.90), a hymn that describes the four classes — Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra — as emerging from the body of the cosmic primeval being.
• This hymn is the single most-cited textual origin of the caste hierarchy.

• The Upanishadic reaction then transformed everything.
• The thinkers of the forest turned away from outward sacrifice toward inward realisation.
• They taught that behind the changing world lies a single absolute reality, Brahman, and that the innermost self of each person, the Atman, is identical with it.
• They introduced the doctrines that would define all later Indian thought: karma (every action bears moral fruit), samsara (the soul is reborn again and again according to its karma), and moksha (liberation, the release from this cycle through knowledge).
• Religion thus shifted from doing (ritual) to knowing (realisation).

4. Key Vedic & Upanishadic Concepts

• A handful of concepts, all crystallised in the Upanishads, form the philosophical vocabulary of Hinduism and must be understood precisely. Brahman is the ultimate, infinite, universal reality or pure consciousness that underlies everything; Atman is the individual soul or innermost self.
• The supreme teaching of the Upanishads is that these two are one.
• This identity is proclaimed in the "great sayings" or Mahavakyas: "Tat tvam asi" ("That thou art"), from the Chandogya Upanishad, tells the seeker that he himself is that ultimate reality; "Aham Brahmasmi" ("I am Brahman"), from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, is the realisation spoken from within.

• The moral order has its own vocabulary. Rita, the cosmic-moral order of the Rigveda, evolved into dharma, the principle of right duty and conduct that governs each person according to their station and stage of life. Karma is the moral law of cause and effect: good and bad actions produce corresponding consequences, in this life and across future lives. Samsara is the resulting wheel of repeated birth, death and rebirth, and moksha is liberation from that wheel — the highest goal of human life. Yajna remains the term for the sacrificial fire-ritual mediated by Agni, while ahimsa (non-violence), only a minor note in the early Vedas, grew into a central value in the Upanishadic and post-Vedic age under Jain and Buddhist influence.
• Underlying all of this is the cardinal distinction of authority between Shruti (revealed, supreme) and Smriti (remembered, secondary), which determines how much weight any text is given.

5. The Six Schools (Shad-Darshanas) — Overview

• The six classical systems are collectively the Shad-Darshanas.
• What unites them, and sets them apart from rival systems, is that all six are Astika — "orthodox" — meaning they accept the authority of the Vedas.
• This single criterion is the great dividing line of Indian philosophy.
• The Nastika or "heterodox" systems — Buddhism, Jainism and the materialist Charvaka (Lokayata) — reject Vedic authority and therefore fall outside the six. (Note carefully that "Astika/Nastika" here turns on Vedic authority, not on belief in God: Samkhya is Astika yet does not admit a God.)

• For convenience the six are studied as three pairs, each pair being closely related: Nyaya and Vaisheshika (which together build a logic-plus-atomism account of the world), Samkhya and Yoga (a shared dualist metaphysics, with Yoga supplying the practical method), and Mimamsa and Vedanta (which between them interpret the two halves of the Veda — the ritual portion and the knowledge portion).
• Every one of the six grapples with the same four questions: what are the valid means of knowledge (pramanas)? what is the nature of reality? what is the self? and how is liberation achieved?
• Their different answers are what give each school its character.

6. School 1 — Nyaya (Logic & Epistemology)

• The Nyaya school was founded by the sage Gautama (also called Akshapada) in the Nyaya Sutras (c. 200 BCE).
• It is vital to note that this Gautama is not Gautama the Buddha — a favourite examination trap.
• The word nyaya means "logical analysis" or "the rule", and the school's great contribution is to epistemology and logic: it asks how we can know anything at all, and what counts as valid proof.
• Its rigorous method of argument was the common tool of all Indian philosophers, orthodox and heterodox alike.

• Nyaya recognises four valid means of knowledge (pramanas). Pratyaksha is direct perception through the senses. Anumana is inference, reasoning from a sign to a conclusion. Upamana is comparison or analogy, by which we identify something from a known similarity. Shabda is the trustworthy testimony of a reliable authority, such as the Vedas or a credible person.
• Nyaya is especially famous for formalising inference into a five-membered syllogism, far more explicit than the European three-step form.
• The classic example runs: pratijna (the proposition: "the hill has fire"); hetu (the reason: "because it has smoke"); udaharana (the universal rule with an example: "wherever there is smoke there is fire, as in a kitchen"); upanaya (the application: "this hill has such smoke"); and nigamana (the conclusion: "therefore the hill has fire").
• The Nyaya world-view is one of atomistic realism — the external world is genuinely real and is composed of atoms — and it is theistic, accepting Ishvara (God) as the efficient cause who fashions the world from eternal atoms.
• Liberation, called apavarga, comes from removing false knowledge: once wrong cognition is destroyed, the self is freed from suffering.
• Because Nyaya supplies the logic and Vaisheshika the metaphysics, the two were eventually fused into a single combined system, Nyaya-Vaisheshika.

7. School 2 — Vaisheshika (Atomism & Categories)

• The Vaisheshika school was founded by the sage Kanada (also called Kashyapa) in the Vaisheshika Sutras.
• Its name comes from vishesha, meaning "particularity" or "distinctness", which points to its central interest: classifying the ultimate constituents of reality.
• Where Nyaya concentrates on how we know, Vaisheshika concentrates on what there is — it is essentially a system of metaphysics and an early atomic theory.

• Vaisheshika analyses all reality into seven categories (padarthas). Dravya (substance) is the most basic, and there are nine substances: earth, water, fire, air, ether (akasha), time, space, the self (atman) and the mind (manas). Guna (quality) covers the twenty-four properties that inhere in substances, such as colour, taste and number. Karma here means motion or action. Samanya is generality — the universal shared by many particulars. Vishesha is particularity — the unique individuating feature that makes one eternal atom different from another. Samavaya is inherence, the inseparable relation that binds a quality to its substance or a whole to its parts.
• To these six a seventh, Abhava (non-existence or absence), was added by later thinkers.
• The school's most celebrated doctrine is its atomic theory: the material universe is built up from eternal, indivisible, imperceptible atoms called paramanus, which combine to form everything we see.
• The atoms themselves are inactive; it is Ishvara who sets them in motion at the start of each cosmic cycle — so Vaisheshika too is theistic. Its outlook is one of pluralistic realism (reality is genuinely many and genuinely real), and liberation consists in isolating the self from all contact with matter and its qualities.

8. School 3 — Samkhya (Dualism)

• Samkhya is among the oldest of the systems, attributed to the sage Kapila; its classic surviving text is the Samkhya Karika of Ishvarakrishna (c. 350 CE).
• The word samkhya means "enumeration" or "number", because the system works by counting out the principles of existence.
• Its defining feature is a thoroughgoing dualism: it explains the entire universe in terms of two ultimate, irreducible realities.

• The first is Purusha — pure consciousness, the witnessing self.
• Purusha is passive, eternal, unchanging, and plural (there are many individual Purushas, one for each living being); it does nothing but observe.
• The second is Prakriti — primal matter or nature.
• Prakriti is active, unconscious, eternal and single; it is the creative source out of which the whole material and even mental world evolves.
• Prakriti is constituted of three strands or gunas: Sattva (purity, clarity, lightness, goodness), Rajas (activity, passion, restlessness) and Tamas (inertia, dullness, darkness, heaviness).
• When these three are in equilibrium, Prakriti is unmanifest; when their balance is disturbed by the mere presence of Purusha, evolution begins.
• From this contact unfold the twenty-five tattvas (principles): Purusha (1) and Prakriti (1), then Mahat/Buddhi (intellect), Ahamkara (ego), Manas (mind), the five organs of perception (jnanendriyas), the five organs of action (karmendriyas), the five subtle elements (tanmatras) and the five gross elements (mahabhutas) — making twenty-five in all.

• Two points are critical for examinations.
• First, Samkhya is atheistic: it sees no need for a God to explain creation, since the interaction of Purusha and Prakriti is sufficient by itself.
• Second, bondage arises from a fundamental confusion in which Purusha wrongly identifies itself with the activities of Prakriti, mistaking the suffering of body and mind for its own. Liberation, called kaivalya ("aloneness" or "isolation"), is therefore achieved not by ritual or devotion but by discriminative knowledge — when Purusha at last realises that it is wholly separate from Prakriti, the suffering ceases and consciousness rests in its own pure nature.
• Samkhya's metaphysics is hugely influential: it supplies the conceptual framework of the Bhagavad Gita and forms the entire theoretical basis on which the Yoga school is built.

9. School 4 — Yoga (Discipline & Practice)

• If Samkhya provides the theory, Yoga provides the practice.
• Its founder is Patanjali, author of the Yoga Sutras, a compact work of 196 sutras arranged in four chapters (padas): the Samadhi Pada, the Sadhana Pada, the Vibhuti Pada and the Kaivalya Pada.
• Yoga adopts Samkhya's metaphysics almost wholesale but parts from it on one decisive point: Yoga is theistic.
• It admits Ishvara — but, and this is the crucial nuance, Ishvara here is understood as a special, ever-free Purusha, an ideal object of meditation and devotion, and not as the creator of the universe.
• Devotion to Ishvara is one aid among others on the path; it is not a doctrine of a world-making God.

• The very definition of yoga is given in the second sutra, Yoga Sutra 1.2: "Yogah chitta-vritti-nirodhah" — "yoga is the stilling (nirodha) of the modifications (vritti) of the mind-stuff (chitta)".
• The whole system is a graded discipline to reach that stillness, set out as the famous Ashtanga or "eight limbs".
• The first limb is Yama, the moral restraints toward others: ahimsa (non-violence), satya (truthfulness), asteya (non-stealing), brahmacharya (continence) and aparigraha (non-possession).
• The second is Niyama, the personal observances: saucha (purity), santosha (contentment), tapas (austerity), svadhyaya (self-study) and Ishvara-pranidhana (surrender to God).
• The remaining six move progressively inward: Asana (steady posture), Pranayama (regulation of the breath), Pratyahara (withdrawal of the senses from their objects), Dharana (concentration on a single point), Dhyana (sustained meditation) and finally Samadhi (complete absorption, the super-conscious state).
• The goal, as in Samkhya, is kaivalya — liberation through the clear discrimination of Purusha from Prakriti, the isolation of pure consciousness.
• The continuing global relevance of this system is marked by the International Day of Yoga, observed on 21 June.

10. School 5 — Mimamsa (Purva Mimamsa)

• The Mimamsa school — more precisely Purva ("earlier") Mimamsa — was founded by Jaimini in the Mimamsa Sutras (c. 300 BCE), which at around 2,745 sutras is the largest of all the sutra texts.
• The word mimamsa means "inquiry" or "investigation", and the school's specific business is the investigation of Vedic injunctions and dharma.
• Where Vedanta would later concentrate on the knowledge-portion of the Veda, Mimamsa is firmly devoted to the karma-kanda — the ritual portion — and its whole purpose is to establish, defend and correctly interpret the authority of the Vedas as a guide to ritual action.

• Its doctrines follow from this purpose.
• The Vedas, Mimamsa insists, are eternal and authorless (apaurusheya) — not composed by any human or even any god — and they are self-validating (svatah pramanya), requiring no external proof of their truth.
• Since dharma cannot be known by ordinary perception or inference, it can be known only through Vedic injunction (vidhi); hence Shabda (verbal testimony) is the supreme means of knowledge.
• Mimamsa develops the most generous list of pramanas, accepting six: the four of Nyaya (perception, inference, comparison, testimony) plus two of its own. Arthapatti is "postulation" — assuming an unstated fact to explain an otherwise contradictory one; the standard illustration is "the fat Devadatta does not eat during the day", from which we must postulate that he eats at night, or his fatness could not be explained. Anupalabdhi is "non-cognition" — we know the absence of a thing (an empty room has no elephant) by the very fact that it is not perceived.
• The school had two great sub-schools that differed over the theory of error and the pramanas, founded by Prabhakara and Kumarila Bhatta.
• Mimamsa has an atheistic tendency: no creator-God is needed, for the eternal Vedic injunctions are self-sufficient and the universe is beginningless.
• Liberation, in the original system, comes from the flawless performance of Vedic duty (later commentators added a role for knowledge).
• Historically, Mimamsa's rigorous method of interpreting injunctions became the foundation of Hindu legal theory and the Dharmashastra tradition.

11. School 6 — Vedanta (Uttara Mimamsa)

• Vedanta, literally "the end or culmination of the Veda", is also called Uttara ("later") Mimamsa because it deals with the concluding, knowledge portion of the Veda.
• Its textual foundation is the Prasthanatrayi, the "three points of departure": the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras (composed by Badarayana, also identified with Vyasa, c. 200 BCE) and the Bhagavad Gita.
• It is essential to remember that the Brahma Sutras were written by Badarayana; Shankara and the others wrote commentaries on them, not the sutras themselves.
• Because the terse Brahma Sutras can be read in different ways, Vedanta blossomed into several sub-schools, of which three are central.

• Advaita Vedanta (non-dualism) was expounded by Adi Shankaracharya (c. 788–820 CE), whose works include commentaries on the entire Prasthanatrayi and the Vivekachudamani.
• Advaita teaches that there is only one reality, Brahman, and that Brahman is nirguna — without attributes, beyond all description.
• The individual self, Atman, is not a part of Brahman or a creature of Brahman but is identical with it; the sense of being a separate individual is born of ignorance.
• The plural world we experience is Maya, a cosmic illusion: Brahman alone is real, and the world is only an apparent superimposition upon it, a doctrine called vivartavada.
• Shankara's favourite illustration is the rope mistaken for a snake in dim light — the snake never truly existed; only the rope was ever there.
• He distinguishes two levels of truth, the vyavaharika (the practical, empirical truth of everyday life) and the paramarthika (the absolute truth in which only Brahman exists).
• Liberation (moksha) is therefore not something to be produced but something to be recognised: it is the removal of avidya (ignorance) through knowledge, the direct realisation that Atman is Brahman.
• Shankara organised the monastic defence of this teaching by founding four mathas at Sringeri, Dwaraka, Puri and Joshimath, and his work is credited with reviving Hinduism at a time of strong Buddhist influence.

• Vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism) was developed by Ramanujacharya (c. 1017–1137 CE) in his commentary, the Sri Bhashya.
• Ramanuja agreed that reality is ultimately one, but qualified that oneness.
• For him Brahman is saguna — possessed of all auspicious attributes — and is identified with the personal God Vishnu.
• The individual souls (chit) and matter (achit) are entirely real, not illusory, but they are utterly dependent on Brahman, standing to it as the body stands to the soul.
• The world is real; the difference from Shankara is decisive.
• The path to liberation is not bare knowledge but loving bhakti (devotion) and self-surrender (prapatti), and it requires the grace of God; in liberation the soul attains blissful nearness to God while retaining its individuality — it is never simply absorbed and dissolved.
• This philosophy is the foundation of Sri Vaishnavism.

• Dvaita (dualism) was taught by Madhvacharya (c. 1238–1317 CE).
• Madhva pushed realism to its limit, asserting an unbridgeable, eternal difference between God and everything else.
• His doctrine of the Pancha-bheda states five eternal distinctions: between God and the soul, between God and matter, between one soul and another, between soul and matter, and between one piece of matter and another.
• Brahman, again identified with Vishnu, and the individual souls are eternally separate; God alone is independent (svatantra) while souls and matter are dependent (paratantra).
• Liberation, won through devotion and divine grace, is the soul's eternal blissful proximity to Vishnu — never a merger.
• Beyond these three there are further sub-schools that take intermediate positions: Dvaitadvaita (Nimbarka), Shuddhadvaita (Vallabha, the Pushti Marga) and Achintya Bhedabheda (Chaitanya Mahaprabhu) — together showing how a single body of texts could sustain a whole spectrum of interpretation, from pure monism to outright dualism.

12. Table A — The Six Schools at a Glance

13. Table B — The Three Vedanta Sub-schools

14. Tables C, D & E — Text Hierarchy, Mahavakyas, Astika/Nastika

15. Tables F & G — Pramanas per School & the Three Gunas

This topic consistently generates direct Prelims questions — both single-statement MCQs and match-the-column sets. The philosophical schools appear as high-certainty, 1-mark items (founder–text–doctrine).

Revision tip: build two flashcard decks — (1) Founder → Text → Core concept per school, (2) Mahavakya → Upanishad → Veda — and revise both daily for two weeks before Prelims.

Vedic religion & the Shad-Darshanas are a GS-I (art & culture / ancient history) and GS-IV (ethics — Indian thinkers) theme. The examiner rewards cross-school comparison and the link from Vedic ritual to systematic philosophy.