Within Advaita Vedānta, the Brahma Sūtras function as a central pillar of authority and a carefully wrought framework for non-dual philosophy. Counted among the *prasthāna-trayī* alongside the Upaniṣads and the Bhagavad Gītā, they offer a terse, aphoristic structure within which the scattered insights of the Upaniṣads can be organized into a coherent vision. Their very brevity demands interpretation, and this has allowed Advaita teachers to unfold a detailed, systematic account of reality, knowledge, and liberation grounded in these compact statements. Thus, the Sūtras do not stand apart from the Upaniṣads, but serve to gather and harmonize their teaching into a single, sustained inquiry into Brahman.

Śaṅkara’s *Brahma Sūtra Bhāṣya* occupies a special place in this process, becoming the standard Advaita reading of the text. Through this commentary, the Sūtras are interpreted as affirming Brahman as the sole, non-dual reality and as identifying the individual self (*ātman* or *jīva*) with that ultimate principle. The commentary uses the Sūtras to articulate central Advaitic themes: the illusory status of the phenomenal world (*māyā*), the distinction between Brahman as absolute and Brahman as the cosmic Lord, and the understanding that liberation is not produced by action but revealed through knowledge (*jñāna*). In this way, the Sūtras, as read by Śaṅkara, become the backbone for Advaita’s metaphysics and soteriology.

Equally important is the role of the Brahma Sūtras in guiding interpretation and debate. They serve as a kind of hermeneutical touchstone for resolving apparent tensions within the Upaniṣadic corpus, giving precedence to statements of identity such as “tat tvam asi” and “ahaṃ brahmāsmi” when these seem to conflict with more dualistic passages. Many sections of the text are framed as engagements with rival systems—Sāṅkhya, Nyāya, Yoga, and other Vedānta orientations—and Advaita uses these discussions to clarify its own stance: that prakṛti is not an independent cause, that liberation is the uncovering of an already-present reality, and that Brahman is not one entity among many but the single, ultimate truth.

Over time, later Advaita thinkers such as Sureśvara, Vācaspati Miśra, Padmapāda, Prakāśātman, Madhusūdana Sarasvatī, and Vidyāraṇya have all taken Śaṅkara’s Brahma Sūtra commentary as their primary reference point. Their refinements and internal debates—about *māyā*, *adhyāsa* (superimposition), the mode of the world’s appearance, and the precise nature of ignorance—are framed as attempts to draw out what the Sūtras, interpreted in this lineage, already imply. In this sense, the Brahma Sūtras provide not only the initial scaffolding for Advaita Vedānta but also the enduring standard against which later developments are measured and through which the school continually rearticulates its non-dual insight.