The stream that later comes to be called Smartism begins in the Vedic world, where “smārta” referred not to a sect but to those who grounded their lives in the remembered tradition (*smṛti*): the domestic rites, legal norms, and ritual codes derived from the Vedas and elaborated in Gṛhya Sūtras, Dharma Sūtras, and Dharmaśāstras. This early layer is marked less by a distinctive theology and more by a Veda-based orthopraxy that shaped household worship, life‑cycle rituals, and social order. Over time, these practices formed a stable religious culture into which later philosophical developments could be integrated. The soil was thus prepared for a synthesis in which rigorous ritual observance and a more interior, contemplative vision of reality could coexist.

Into this setting emerged the non‑dual insights of the early Upaniṣads, with their bold identification of ātman and brahman and their sense that the manifold world is dependent upon a single ultimate reality. From these texts grew the Vedānta traditions, which took the Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the Brahma Sūtras as their scriptural triad and sought to understand how one absolute could appear as many. One influential current within Vedānta emphasized the sole reality of nirguṇa Brahman while treating the gods as valid forms for devotion and meditation at the empirical level. This current provided the conceptual framework in which multiple deities could be honored without compromising a non‑dual metaphysics.

The figure traditionally regarded as giving this synthesis its classical form is Ādi Śaṅkarācārya, whose Advaita Vedānta articulates the view that Brahman alone is ultimately real, while Īśvara and the devas belong to the realm of everyday experience. His commentarial work on the foundational Vedānta texts offered a powerful rationale for seeing diverse deities as manifestations or worship‑forms of the one Brahman, rather than as rival absolutes. Within this vision, the worship of several gods is not a concession to inconsistency but a pedagogical and devotional means of approaching the same non‑dual truth from different angles.

In the generations that followed, this Advaitic understanding was woven together with the older smārta ritual culture to form a more self‑conscious Smārta identity. Later Advaitins and the monastic lineages associated with Śaṅkara helped consolidate a pattern in which Vedic law and ritual, household and temple worship of multiple deities, and non‑dual philosophy were held together as complementary dimensions of a single path. The pañcāyatana‑pūjā, centered on five principal deities—Śiva, Viṣṇu, Devī, Gaṇeśa, and Sūrya—became emblematic of this synthesis, allowing each practitioner to honor a chosen deity while acknowledging the others as equally valid expressions of the same reality.

As this tradition matured, networks of Advaita monasteries and learned communities played a significant role in transmitting both ritual and doctrine, especially in regions where Smārta‑Advaita patterns became deeply rooted. In such settings, Smartism took shape as a non‑sectarian, Veda‑based way of life that could embrace Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, Śākta, and other devotional currents without losing its Advaitic center of gravity. The result is a religious form in which meticulous observance, inclusive worship, and a subtle non‑dual metaphysics are not competing commitments but mutually illuminating facets of a single spiritual inheritance.