Vaikhanasas

Doctrine

Vaikhanasas claim to be a surviving school of Vedic ritual, the Taittiriya Shakha of the Krishna Yajurveda. Vaikhanasa tradition says the sage Vikhanasa, who was a manifestation of Vishnu, acquired an education of the Vedas and the Shastras. He learnt how to worship Vishnu as an arcāvatāra, a temple image regarded to be an iconic form of the deity. He is regarded to have travelled to the holy forest known as the Naimisharanya and composed the Vaikhanasa Kalpasutra and taught the treatise known as the Sri Vaikhanasa Bhagavad Shastra to his four disciples, the sages Atri, Bhrigu, Kashyapa and Marichi, which contained the procedures of Samurtarcana, Amurtarchana, and devotional service to Vishnu in the form of his images.