From Adi Shankaracharya's four cardinal mathas to the ten names of renunciation — the parampara that gives every akhada sannyasi his name, his lineage and his place at the Kumbh.
In the 8th century CE, Jagadguru Adi Shankaracharya walked the length of Bharata four times, re-established the Vedanta of the Upanishads in open debate, and anchored the sannyasa tradition to four great monasteries — one in each direction of the land. Each matha was given one Veda and one mahavakya — a "great sentence" of the Upanishads that condenses the whole of Advaita:
Sringeri Sharada Peetham (South, Karnataka) — Yajur Veda — Aham Brahmasmi, "I am Brahman". · Dwarka Sharada Peetham (West, Gujarat) — Sama Veda — Tat Tvam Asi, "That thou art". · Govardhana Peetham, Puri (East, Odisha) — Rig Veda — Prajnanam Brahma, "Consciousness is Brahman". · Jyotirmath (North, Uttarakhand) — Atharva Veda — Ayam Atma Brahma, "This Self is Brahman". The heads of these four seats carry the title Shankaracharya to this day.
The sannyasis of this tradition are called Dashanami — "of the ten names" — because every initiate receives one of ten order-names after his diksha. Each name carries its own flavour of the renunciate path:
Giri (mountain) — steadfast as the mountain; the name of many naga lineages. · Puri (city/complete) — dwelling in the fullness of Brahman. · Bharati (goddess of learning) — bearers of sacred knowledge. · Saraswati — masters of scripture and speech. · Tirtha (sacred ford) — living at the crossing-places to liberation. · Ashrama — established in the final stage of life. · Vana (forest) and Aranya (wilderness) — hermits of the deep woods. · Parvata (peak) — dwellers of the high places. · Sagara (ocean) — vast and unfathomable as the sea.
Tradition assigns the ten names across the four mathas, so that every Dashanami sannyasi stands in a living chain that reaches back to Shankaracharya himself. When you read the name of a great saint — Avdheshanand Giri, Ravindra Puri, Kailashanand Giri — you are reading his lineage.
Entry into sannyasa is by diksha (initiation) from a guru of the order: the seeker performs his own funeral rites (pinda-dana) — dying to his former life — takes the ochre robe, receives the mahavakya, and is given his Dashanami name. Within the akhadas this path has further stages: years of service and study as an aspirant, initiation as a sannyasi, and for some, the fierce further vows of the naga — the naked warrior-ascetic — traditionally taken only at the Kumbh Mela itself, where thousands of new nagas are initiated in a single night of ancient rites.
The akhada then becomes the sannyasi's regiment and family: his madhi (sub-lineage) within the akhada, his elders, his duties, and — at every Kumbh — his place in the Peshwai and his turn at the Amrit Snan.
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