ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to use the empirical observations in a systematic analysis for the first time when M. N. Srinivas and he jointly wrote an article on Hinduism for an encyclopaedia in 1968. Most accounts of a Hindu sect begin with a narration of how it was founded and what the ideas of its founder and his disciples were. Historians usually tell us that sects emerged in India as a reaction against the ritualism of what is called Vedic or Brahmanic Hinduism. Sectarian Hinduism is thus defined by exclusive social boundaries. Besides the inadequacy of the ethnography on sects, modern sociological and anthropological scholarship on Hinduism since the 1950s has also been problematic. The initial literature dealt mainly with so-called ‘popular’ Hinduism, rather than on the great traditions of Hinduism. J. P. S. Uberoi has based his study of Sikhism on what he calls the elementary structure of medieval Hinduism and Islam.
