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Unlike the other major religions which have one scripture each to build upon, what is popularly known as Hinduism has a plethora of scriptural sources. This is because of the antiquity of the revelations from which from which a huge host of religious practices have emerged. The oldest scripture, the rig veda, is believed to be perhaps 13,000 years old. The others, based on analysis of the shift in the linguistics therein, are believed to have been revealed/recorded some 2 to 3 millennia apart. Since then, there have been many more books, also taken to be scriptural, but the 4 vedas remain the mainstay.
Much wisdom was handed down from those scriptures but, as is always the case with humans, while rituals were adopted and even enforced, the wisdom was forgotten. By the time Jainism & Buddhism became popular in India, the Brahmins, who had been charged with preserving the ancient wisdom, had become corrupt and materialistic. With the people looking for better answers, the new religions swept across the nation.
Adi Shankara, who was already searching for his true self at the tender age of 8, went beyond the wisdom of the vedas. Seeing the need to unify the followers of the vedic traditions in the face of fierce competition, he codified the vast array of pathways to divinity that had evolved over the millennia into four primary paths of union with the Source. My next segment is about those four paths.
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