Mapping the Dharmic Landscape
I was born Hindu and have gone through many cycles of a changing relationship to this identity. Currently, I'd define myself as a cultural Hindu — my metaphysics and ethics are inspired by Hinduism, the broader landscape of dharmic traditions, and other philosophies of what makes a wholesome life. I also have a spiritual practice, one that largely treats the texts and rites as instrumental — means toward living a good life and being a good person.
What set this off was a change I noticed in New Delhi. More and more, devotion to living gurus there seemed to sit beside the worship of Lord Rāma, Kṛṣṇa, Hanumān and Śiva, and sometimes to replace it. I wanted to understand where that shift sat in the larger picture.
That turned out to be harder than I expected, because Hinduism, in its current form, contains a vast number of traditions, institutions and metaphysics. Ask ten Hindus what Hinduism teaches and you'll get ten honest, incompatible answers. Is God a person to love or the self you already are? Does ritual matter in itself, or only for what it points to? Is the body something to quiet or a tool to use? I wanted to see how these different chunks of Hinduism, and the broader dharmic landscape, are related.
What I built
The Dharmic Landscape has two parts.
Path cards describe about thirty living paths, from Arya Samaj to ISKCON to the Varkarī walkers of Maharashtra. Each card says what practice looks like day to day, what the path asks of you and where to find it. Each one also answers the same nine questions, like the ones above, so you can find the paths whose answers match yours. You can also decide how far out to look: strictly Vedic, anywhere within the Hindu fold, or beyond it into Buddhist, Jain and Sikh paths that aim at similar ends.
The lineage map shows how these traditions descend from, borrow from and reject one another. By default it shows what each tradition says about its own history. A second view adds what historians think happened and where different teachings seem to aim at the same goal.
If you're here out of curiosity, start with the path cards. If you like history, start with the map.
What truly surprised me
Subversion was open, not quiet. I expected later traditions to work around Vedic authority. Instead the Āgamas and Tantras made a direct claim: our scripture is revelation too, equal to the Veda, and for this age more suitable. This wasn't a fringe position. It's the theological basis of much temple worship, especially in the south.
And then how little of the Veda actually shows up. The mantras survive — you hear them at weddings, at fire offerings, in temple ritual. But the content of everyday Hindu practice is overwhelmingly Purāṇic and later: the deities, the stories, the vows, the festivals, the whole devotional world. The Veda is invoked constantly as the ground of authority while informing remarkably little of what people actually do. Once I saw that, "Vedic" started to look less like a description of a tradition's content and more like a claim about its standing.
The plurality doesn't resolve, and that makes room to explore. Every practising Hindu knows the tradition is plural, and most hold that the differences ultimately reconcile — many roads, one summit. Mapping them, I don't think that's true of all of them. Some are real forks. Either the self is identical with Brahman or it isn't. Either there's a ground at the bottom of things or the search dissolves. Either liberation comes by grace or by your own effort. These aren't emphases or temperaments; they're contradictions. The usual move is to hold both at once, on the grounds that God exceeds logic, but that sets the contradiction aside rather than resolving it.
I'd rather take the forks seriously, and doing so shows how unusual this plurality is. Unlike most major religions, Hinduism has no single founder, scripture or central authority to say what counts as Hindu, so its contradictory branches all stay inside it. That creates a very different set of choices. In many traditions, taking up a different theology means leaving the fold or being called a heretic. Here, you can explore between paths as different as Advaita, Kṛṣṇa devotion and Tantra without ever stepping outside. This map is meant to make that exploration easier.
A caveat
This is a working draft by one person, not a scholar. Dates are approximate, many claims are disputed, and I've simplified plenty. The modern guru movements that started all this are only sketched so far. If you know a tradition better than I've drawn it, I'd genuinely like to hear from you.