The commentaries in this Atlas argue constantly from older scripture. This page is the map of what they are citing, and of where the Brahma Sūtras themselves sit.
Śruti · the revealed corpus (a scriptural category, in the tradition's terms)
The Vedas
Four collections: Ṛg, Sāma, Yajur, Atharva. Their concluding, contemplative portions are the Upaniṣads: the texts the Brahma Sūtras weave together, cited on nearly every page of this Atlas.
Smṛti · the remembered tradition (a scriptural category)
The Bhagavad Gītā
A dialogue inside the epic Mahābhārata. Formally smṛti, yet treated by the Vedānta commentators as a foundational text.
Systematization (a genre: the sūtra text)
The Brahma Sūtras
A string of compressed aphorisms that gathers the Upaniṣads' scattered teachings into one ordered argument. This is the text you are reading in the Atlas.
Interpretive traditions (schools of commentary, centuries later)
Śruti and smṛti
Hindu tradition sorts its scriptures into two broad categories. Śruti, “that which is heard,” is the Vedic corpus: four great collections, which the tradition regards as revealed rather than composed. Smṛti, “that which is remembered,” covers works of human authorship, including the great epics. The distinction matters here because the commentators you will read treat the two kinds of text differently: śruti settles questions; smṛti supports and illustrates.
Within śruti, the texts that matter most for this Atlas are the Upaniṣads: contemplative teachings that stand at the close of each Vedic corpus. They ask what underlies the world, what the self is, and what knowledge liberates. Because they arose across many communities and centuries, they speak in many voices, and they do not obviously agree.
The triple canon
The Brahma Sūtras exist because of that. Attributed by tradition to the sage Bādarāyaṇa, they are a systematization: hundreds of compressed aphorisms that gather the Upaniṣads’ scattered statements and argue that they teach one coherent doctrine about Brahman, the ultimate reality. Alongside the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, they form what the tradition calls the prasthāna-trayī, the triple canon of Vedānta. Each major school’s founding teacher wrote commentaries on all three.
The schools come centuries later, and this is where the commentators enter: readers of the same canon, reaching profoundly different conclusions. Vedānta means “the end of the Veda”: the Upaniṣads’ place at the close of the Vedic corpus and, for the tradition, its culminating teaching. A Vedānta school is a tradition of reading these texts as one coherent whole.