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Acharya is formally linked to three religions in this atlas: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, all three links carrying no further comment at the religion level. Its own description differentiates them anyway, and not lightly: a title that reads in English as one generic word for teacher names a genuinely different office in each of the three.

A Chair of Succession, a Highest Office, Two Offices Kept Apart

In Hindu Vedanta, "the great acharyas are the founders and heads of schools: Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva," and "the jagadguru of a math is an acharya in the strict sense, occupying a chair with defined authority over the affiliated community and its practice," an office of institutional succession. In Jainism the office carries real internal power: the acharya is "the head of a mendicant order and the highest office in the community, holding authority to ordain, to expel and to settle disputes of discipline." Buddhist usage keeps the word but splits the job in two on purpose: "the acariya is the teacher who instructs a monk in the training, distinguished from the upajjhaya who ordains him, two offices, deliberately separated, so that a novice depends on more than one man." A succession chair, a single office holding real disciplinary power, and a teaching role kept apart from the power to ordain by design: three religions, three different answers to what authority a teacher is actually given.

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• AcharyaHinduism RolesOne borrowed word for teacher; three religions counted, each giving it a genuinely different structure of authority
• HinduismDharmic (Polytheistic)A chair of institutional succession, the jagadguru of a math
• JainismDharmicThe highest office in the community, holding power to ordain, expel and settle discipline
• BuddhismDharmic (Nontheistic)A teaching role deliberately separated from the power to ordain, held by a second office