Vaikhanasa Samhita

…of Five Nights”) and the Vaikhanasa (“Relating to a Hermit or Ascetic”) are the most important. Though Vaishnava philosophers trace the Pancharatra works to Vedic origin, absolutists such as Shankara refused to acknowledge this claim. The main topics of the Pancharatra literature concern rituals and forms of image worship and…

…the ritual prescribed in the Vaikhanasa Samhitas, one of two collections of ritual texts. The Pancharatra Samhitas supplanted the Vaikhanasa Samhitas within most of Vaishnavism in the 12th century at the urging of the great Vedanta theologian Ramanuja (c. 1017–1137), but the Vaikhanasa ritual continues to be followed in most…

Vaikhanasa Samhitas (collections of the Vaishnava school of Vaikhanasas, who were originally ascetics) seem to have been the original temple manuals for the Bhagavatas (devotees of Vishnu), which by the 11th or 12th century had become supplanted by the Pancharatra Samhitas (collections of the Vaishnava…