The Branches of Hinduism

This page describes Hinduism's main traditions. How they arose is told on the History page.

What are the main branches of Hinduism?

One grouping names four main traditions: Vaishnava, Shaiva, Shakta, and Smarta. Dancing with Siva, a catechism that teaches a monistic form of Shaiva Siddhanta,¹ calls them Hinduism's four principal denominations, each set apart by its supreme deity.²³ A scholarly survey groups differently. John Carman, describing devotional (bhakti) movements in the Encyclopedia of Religion, names three by the deity each places highest: Vaishnavas, Shaivas, and Shaktas, each divided into many lineages.⁴

The Pew Research Center counted 1.2 billion Hindus in 2020.⁵ How many follow each tradition is not reliably known: Pew writes that, for lack of census or survey data on Hindu subgroups, reliable estimates are not available.⁶ Vasudha Narayanan, in an encyclopedia survey, writes that a Vaishnava does not have to belong to any one school, so the exact number of Vaishnavas is hard to determine.⁷

Tradition	Size	Where it is concentrated	What sets it apart
Vaishnava	Not reliably known. One encyclopedia entry gives 9.5 percent of the world's population, with no year or method stated.7	Almost every part of India7	Vishnu, with the goddess Lakshmi, or one of his forms such as Krishna or Rama, as supreme7
Shaiva	Not reliably known. One encyclopedia entry gives 3.2 percent of the world's population, with no year or method stated.8	Throughout India and Nepal8	Shiva as the origin, cause, and end of all that exists8
Shakta	Not reliably known6	Mainly Bengal and Assam, in the Oxford dictionary's account, with village goddess worship throughout India9	The Goddess, or divine female power (shakti), as supreme94
Smarta	Not reliably known6	Not given in the sources used here	Worship of five or six deities, with one chosen as the worshiper's own, and the Advaita teaching of Shankara10

How do Hindus belong to a tradition?

Belonging to a tradition is often flexible. Michael Witzel, in the Encyclopedia of India, notes that Hinduism has no common creed, and that people choose which god or goddess they worship.¹¹ Narayanan likewise notes that one can be a Vaishnava without belonging to any institution or school.⁷

Pew's 2019 to 2020 survey of India asked Hindus who believe in God which gods they feel closest to, their ishta devata, or "personal god." Shiva was named most often (44 percent); others included Hanuman (35 percent), Ganesha (32 percent), Lakshmi (28 percent), and Rama (17 percent).¹²¹³ The vast majority chose more than one god or said they have many personal gods.¹³

What is Vaishnava Hinduism?

Vaishnavas worship Vishnu, "the all-pervasive one," with the goddess Lakshmi, or one of his forms, as supreme. Narayanan writes that all Vaishnava schools teach that devotion to Vishnu and Lakshmi, and Vishnu's grace, free the soul from the cycle of birth and death.⁷

The schools differ in important ways. Sri Vaishnavas of South India worship Vishnu with the goddess Lakshmi and honor the Tamil hymns of the twelve Alvars; Ramanuja is their leading philosopher. Madhva's followers, also in the south, hold that the soul is distinct from Vishnu. The followers of Vallabha and Chaitanya came mainly from northern and northeastern India.⁷¹⁴ Chaitanya's followers, the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, hold Krishna to be the supreme reality itself, not one incarnation among many. Some other traditions hold Rama to be supreme.⁷ ISKCON, the Hare Krishna movement, belongs to the Gaudiya line.¹⁵

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Forsaking all duties, come to me as (your) sole refuge. I will release you from all sins. Be not grieved. (Bhagavad Gita 18.66)¹⁶¹⁶

The Swaminarayan movement is a devotional tradition rooted in Vaishnavism that arose in Gujarat, in western India. It traces itself to Sahajanand Swami (1781 to 1830), whom his followers came to regard as Bhagavan (Lord) Swaminarayan, the highest manifestation of reality. In 1801 he succeeded his guru, Ramanand Swami, as leader of his group.¹⁷¹⁸ In 1907 a new branch, BAPS, was founded; a 2005 encyclopedia entry reports its own count of over one million followers worldwide.¹⁸⁷ A Swaminarayan temple in Vadodara describes its tradition as following Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita philosophy, refined by Swaminarayan into five distinct realities.¹⁷

What is Shaiva Hinduism?

Shaivas worship Shiva as the origin, cause, and end of existence. Hugh Urban, in an encyclopedia survey, writes that most Shaiva groups, like other Hindus, accept karma and rebirth and seek liberation from them.⁸

Dancing with Siva teaches that Shaivism has no beginning, and that its sacred writings know of no time when it did not exist. It names six main schools: Shaiva Siddhanta, Pashupata, Kashmir Shaivism, Vira Shaivism, Siddha Siddhanta, and Shiva Advaita.¹⁹ Urban dates the earliest known Shaiva group, the Pashupatas, to around the second century CE.⁸

The schools differ on how God and the soul relate. Shaiva Siddhanta, Urban writes, describes three realities: the Lord, the soul, and the bond that holds the soul in the world. It is generally dualist, keeping the Lord and the soul distinct, while Kashmir Shaivism tends to teach that God and the soul are ultimately one.⁸ Dancing with Siva follows a monistic form of Shaiva Siddhanta.²

What is Shakta Hinduism?

Shaktas worship the Goddess as the supreme power. Carman writes that they revere the Goddess not as the subordinate consort of Shiva but as the ultimate Power, or Shakti.⁴ Dancing with Siva holds that worship of the Divine Mother reaches back beyond recorded history. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions points to the Devi Mahatmya (sixth or seventh century CE; sources differ), part of the Markandeya Purana, as the text in which the Goddess, or Devi, is worshiped as supreme.²⁰⁹²¹

The Oxford dictionary divides most Shakta Tantras into two main groups: the Sri Kula, which worships the gentle goddess Tripurasundari, and the Kali Kula, which worships the fierce goddess Kali. A smaller third group is devoted to the goddess Tara.⁹ The Sri Vidya Temple in Rush, New York, gives a Shakta temple's own account. It describes Sri Vidya as divine knowledge that brings the grace of the goddess Lalita Maha Tripurasundari. Its founder calls it a Shiva temple in which Shakti is foremost, dedicated to the Divine Mother Rajarajeswari.²²

What is the Smarta tradition?

Dancing with Siva describes Smartas as worshiping several deities as forms of one reality, following the teaching of Shankara. It says that Shankara popularized the five-deity altar of Ganapati, Surya, Vishnu, Shiva, and Shakti, and added Kumara. Devotees choose one as their personal deity, and each is seen as a reflection of the one Brahman.¹⁰

Shankara is regarded as the promoter of Advaita Vedanta as a distinct school of thought, though the school's origins are older. Many scholars place him in the eighth century; others, including Dancing with Siva, in the ninth. The Sringeri monastery gives 788 to 820 CE.^23242510 The Sringeri Sharada Peetham, a monastery in South India, says that Shankara founded it more than twelve centuries ago as the first of four seats of learning, one in each corner of India, to spread Advaita Vedanta.²⁶

What are the Vedanta schools?

Vedanta, the "end of the Veda," names both a body of texts, chiefly the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Brahma Sutras, and the schools that interpret them.²⁵²⁴ Its three main schools differ on how the self relates to Brahman, ultimate reality, and each is tied to particular traditions.¹⁴²⁷¹⁰

School	Main teacher	Its teaching on the self and Brahman
Advaita, "non-dualism"	Shankara24	The individual self and Brahman are in reality identical; the self only seems different, as space in a jar seems different from space itself.24
Vishishtadvaita, "qualified non-dualism"	Ramanuja14	All selves and the world are the body of Brahman, as a body relates to its soul; each self stays a distinct person.14
Dvaita, "dualism"	Madhva (1238 to 1317 in one account; 1296 to 1386 in another)257	The self and Brahman are fundamentally different, and all else depends on Brahman's will.25

Ramanuja and Madhva both taught Vishnu's supremacy, and their schools belong to Vaishnava traditions; Narayanan writes that all Vaishnava schools reject Shankara's pure nondualism.²⁵⁷ Advaita is closely tied to the Smarta tradition.¹⁰ Madhva argued that identifying the self with Brahman undermines Vishnu's supremacy and strips devotion of its meaning.²⁵ For its part, Advaita provisionally accepts the world of individual selves, and holds that Brahman with its creative power is Ishvara, the Lord, who oversees the world.²⁴

What divides the branches?

Two of the main differences are which form of God is supreme and whether the soul is finally one with God or distinct from God. The second question also divides schools within the Shaiva and Vaishnava traditions.³²⁷⁸

They also share much: the same catechism lists karma, dharma, reincarnation, temple worship, the guru, and the Vedas as scriptural authority.³ Witzel finds one near-universal belief: rebirth shaped by the effects of a person's actions, or karma. He also notes that some groups, among them many Tantric movements and the Virashaivas, reject the Veda's authority.¹¹

What else stands beside the four traditions?

Several currents cut across the four traditions. Tantra, a set of ritual and meditative practices, appeared from the mid-first millennium CE across Indian religions, Witzel writes, and permeates much of modern Hinduism.¹¹ Witzel describes the four classes (varna) and the thousands of castes (jati) as divisions of Hindu society.¹¹ Modern reform movements, such as the Brahmo Samaj, which began with social reform, and the Arya Samaj, which called for a return to Vedic values, are grouped by Witzel under his label "Neo-Hinduism."¹¹

The comparison Christianity vs Hinduism sets Hindu traditions beside Christian ones, and the Resources page lists the books in the series.