Sampradāyas & Orders
How the tradition is transmitted: the sampradaya, the unbroken succession of teacher and disciple, the four Vaishnava lineages and the Dashanami order.
A sampradaya is a lineage of transmission. Not a denomination and not an institution in the modern sense, but a chain of teachers holding a specific reading of the texts, a specific initiation, and a specific practice, handed down in an unbroken line the tradition takes care to record.
The Dashanami order traces itself to Shankara and his four seats. The four Vaishnava sampradayas each trace to a founding acharya with a distinct theology. Where these lines are historically verifiable and where they are retrospective construction is a live scholarly question, and the answer differs by lineage.
These pages set out what a sampradaya is, name the major ones, and treat the genealogies with the care they deserve. A lineage claim is a claim about history as well as about authority, and the two are worth separating.