Bhagavat Śāstram — bhagavat (of or belonging to Bhagavān) combined with śāstram (authoritative scripture, teaching) — denotes the entire body of sacred revelation that has its source in Bhagavān Himself. In Śrī Vaiṣṇava understanding, scripture is not the creation of human minds but the self-disclosure of Bhagavān: He reveals Himself, His nature, and the path to reaching Him through texts that He either directly spoke or caused to arise. The Vedas and Upaniṣads, the Bhagavad Gītā, and the ṛṣi-composed smṛtis that faithfully reflect Vedic truth — all of these constitute the Sanskrit stream of Bhagavat Śāstram.
Uniquely within the Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition, the Tamil Divya Prabandham — the 4,000 sacred hymns of the twelve Āzhvārs — is accorded the same status as the Vedas themselves, giving rise to the doctrine of ubhaya-vedānta: the non-dual summit of both Sanskrit and Tamil scripture. The Āzhvārs were not composing devotional poetry from personal inspiration alone; they spoke what Bhagavān revealed to them through His grace. Śrī Nāthamuni, Śrī Rāmānuja, and subsequent Āchāryas established this equivalence as a cornerstone of the sampradāya, so that the Divya Prabandham recited before Bhagavān in the temple is Bhagavat Śāstram in the most direct possible sense.
The purpose of Bhagavat Śāstram — whether Sanskrit or Tamil — is singular: to reveal Bhagavān's svarūpa (essential nature), rūpa (divine form), guṇas (auspicious attributes), and vibhava (divine deeds), and thereby to awaken in the soul the desire to surrender to Him and ultimately attain His presence. Our Āchāryas emphasise that Bhagavat Śāstram must be studied not as an academic exercise but as a living encounter with Bhagavān Himself — each verse, each sūtra, each śloka is His voice speaking directly to the earnest seeker.