The family of traditions rooted in the Veda, ordered by dharma, karma, and liberation, and worshipping the divine under many names and forms.
Hinduism names the traditions that grew from the religious world of the Veda: temple worship of Vishnu, Shiva, and the Goddess, the philosophical schools that argue over the nature of the self, and the reform movements of the modern centuries. This tree models its sampradayas and darshanas as first-class entities.
Major divisions
The divisions most visitors need first, in the order the tradition itself presents them.
Branch
Shaivism
The traditions that worship Shiva as supreme: the ascetic orders, the Kashmiri schools, and the temple lineages of the Tamil country.
Branch
Vaishnavism
The traditions that worship Vishnu as supreme, in his avatars Rama and Krishna, through devotion ordered by the great acharyas and their lineages.
Branch
Shaktism
The traditions that worship the Goddess, Devi, as the supreme power, through her temples, her tantras, and her festivals.
Branch
Smarta Tradition
The tradition of the smriti, which worships the five deities as forms of the one Brahman and follows Shankara's Advaita as its philosophy.
Branch
Vedanta
The school of the Upanishads' end: the systematic reading of the Brahma Sutras that produced Advaita, Vishishtadvaita, and Dvaita, and stands as the…
Branch
Branch
The Six Darshanas
The six orthodox schools that accept the Veda's authority and argue, school against school, over knowledge, atoms, spirit, practice, rite, and the…
Branch
Hindu Reform Movements
The movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that re-read the tradition against colonial rule and social reform, from the Brahmo Samaj to…
Hinduism across the site
Libraries (1) · Prayers & Creeds (2) · Devotion (6) · History of Worldviews (42) · Traditions (3) · News (1) · Languages (2) · Religious Art Entries (3) · Calendar Events (10)
Sources
Primary
- The Upanishads.
Secondary
- Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (1996).