Concept

Hindu denominations

Overview

Hindu denominations, sampradayas, traditions, movements, and sects are traditions and sub-traditions within Hinduism centered on one or more gods or goddesses, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, and so on. The term sampradaya (Sanskrit: सम्प्रदाय, IAST: sampradāya) is used for branches with a particular founder-guru with a particular philosophy.

Hinduism has no central doctrinal authority, and many practising Hindus do not claim to belong to any particular denomination or tradition. Four major traditions are, however, used in scholarly studies: Vaishnavism, Shaivism, Shaktism and Smartism. These are sometimes referred to as the denominations of Hinduism, and they differ in the primary deity at the centre of each tradition.

A notable feature of Hindu denominations is that they do not deny other concepts of the divine or deity, and often celebrate the other as henotheistic equivalents. The denominations of Hinduism, states Lipner, are unlike those found in major religions of the world, because Hindu denominations are fuzzy, with individuals practising more than one, and he suggests the term "Hindu polycentrism".

Although Hinduism contains many denominations and philosophies, it is linked by shared concepts, recognisable rituals, cosmology, shared textual resources, pilgrimage to sacred sites and the questioning of authority.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

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But by sacred things one must not understand simply those personal beings which are called gods or spirits; a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred. A rite can have this character; in fact, the rite does not exist which does not have it to a certain degree.
Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
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Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
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Finally, there is another theory which, like the ancestor hypothesis, seeks to derive gods, or at least the beings generally regarded as gods, from more primitive mythological ideas. This theory, which was developed by Hermann Usener, the most prominent student of the science of religion among recent classical philologists, might perhaps be referred to, in distinction from the soul and ancestor hypothesis, as the…
Wilhelm Max Wundt, Elements of Folk Psychology Outline of a Psychological History of the Development of Mankind
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Philosophers who discussed Hindu denominations

Adi Shankara

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Āstika and nāstika.

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