Our lineage

The teaching upheld at Arsha Vidya Mandir is no personal opinion. It is the timeless vidyā of the Upaniṣads, handed down in an unbroken guru-śiṣya paramparā from Ādi Śaṅkara Bhagavadpāda, through the great ācāryas of the Advaita tradition, to our own times. In the modern era, Pūjya Swami Dayānanda Saraswatī (1930–2015) revived this teaching with extraordinary clarity, training a generation of ācāryas through his long-duration Vedānta courses. From him the lineage flows to Pūjya Swami Paramātmānanda Saraswatī, the founder of Arsha Vidya Mandir Rajkot, and to Pūjya Swaminī Dhyānānanda Saraswatī, the founding ācāryā of this mandir at Vadodara. ॥ सदाशिव समारम्भां शङ्कराचार्य मध्यमाम् । अस्मद् आचार्य पर्यन्तां वन्दे गुरु परम्पराम् ॥ We bow to that unbroken stream of teachers — beginning with Sadāśiva, through Śaṅkarācārya in the middle, down to our own ācārya — by whose grace alone this knowledge has reached us.