Working draft · 33 living paths · 4 lineage case studies

The Dharmic Landscape

“Dharmic” is the umbrella term for the religions that grew up in India: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, along with many movements that sit between them. They share a vocabulary of karma, rebirth, liberation and the guru, and they have borrowed from and argued with one another for more than two thousand years. Their boundaries were never clean.

Here, Hinduism is the centre and the other dharmic religions are its neighbours. Living paths are sorted into three settings: strictly Vedic, within the Hindu fold, and beyond the fold. The last lists neighbouring religions that aim at compatible ends, without counting them as Hindu. The lineage map shows how all of them descend from, borrow from and reject one another.

Traditions on one set of nodes, with three layers of edges. The orthodox lens shows what traditions claim about their own descent. The expansive lens adds what the historical record shows and where teachings aim at the same ends.

Reference

Schema as it stands

Node fields

kind: Tradition · scripture · figure · outside influence. A text or person gets a node only if it acts on the graph (the Brahma Sūtras as a choke point, the Guru Granth Sahib as anthology and Guru), not merely because it records a teaching.
home: Outside influences only: the non-dharmic tradition they belong to, named but not drawn. Their ancestry stays off the map unless a chain leaves the dharmic world and comes back changed.
lane: The parallel root: Vedic, Śramaṇa, Āgamic/Tantric, Vernacular bhakti and sant, and one lane for everything outside the dharmic world. A folk-substrate lane joins when a case needs it.
origin: Vedic-internal · absorbed from outside · parallel root.
authority: Veda · separate revelation · lineage and guru · direct realization · vernacular scripture.
doctrine / practice: Filled when professed doctrine and actual practice differ. Split nodes show the practice line in the box.
parent: Makes a node splittable. Absorption often acts on one sub-lineage, not the whole tradition.
primitives: Locus, ultimate, body and purity, means. Rough placements for plotting, not measurements.

Edge fields

type: Lineage, schism, absorption, unacknowledged borrowing, independent convergence, confluence, retrofitting, rejection, teleological compatibility.
layer: Claimed · historical · teleological. The orthodox lens shows claimed only.
provenance: Self · absorber · third party · hostile (an opponent's charge).
confidence: Low · medium · high. For hagiographic claims it rates historicity.
absorption only: Frame (who subordinates whom), retained, and stripped with a mode: substitution, internalization or excision.
teleological only: Doctrine subverted, grounding (doctrine · phenomenology · ethics), licensing mechanism (tātparya, adhikāra-bheda, avatāra, two truths, Gītā 18.66).

Gaps the test cases exposed

Hostile provenance. Both crypto-charges are opponents' claims. Case 1.
Borrowing vs convergence. Dolpopa had no contact with Vedānta, so that edge is independent convergence. Case 1.
Confidence. Gauḍapāda–Yogācāra is well attested; Śaṅkara–Madhyamaka is debated. Case 1.
Absorption frame. Inclusivism runs both ways: Abhinavagupta ranks the Veda lowest. Case 2.
Retained and stripped, with mode. Siddhānta excised transgression; Samaya Śrī Vidyā substituted and internalized it. Case 2.
Doctrine and practice layers. An Advaita maṭha running Śrī Vidyā. Case 2.
Splittable nodes. The right-hand branch was absorbed; the left-hand residue was not. Case 2.
Scripture as a node. The Guru Granth Sahib holds the voices of four other nodes. Anthology needs its own edge type. Case 3.
Rejection modes. Refutation, replacement (Ravidassia’s Amritbani), conversion and disavowal behave differently. Case 3.
Institutional provenance. The Constitution absorbs Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists by definition. The absorber is a state, not a tradition. Case 3.
Lanes outside the dharmic world. The Sufis are a root the tradition drew on from outside. Resolved as a single boundary lane with an “outside influence” node kind. Case 3.
Deification. A guru worshipped as an avatāra is a figure and a deity at once: Shirdi Sai, Sathya Sai, Guruji. The avatāra move turns a fakīr or a Punjabi sant into an object of Hindu temple worship. Case 4.
Succession. A living-guru node changes hands when the guru dies, to a disciple, a named successor or a relative, and its authority moves with it. Not yet modelled. Case 4.
Node kinds. Scripture and figures act differently from traditions. Resolved with a kind field. Case 3.

Queued cases

Folk substrate. Viṭhobā and Jagannāth absorbed from local worship; completes the Varkarī card.
Jain line. A second śramaṇa root, the Digambara–Śvetāmbara split, and exchange with Hindu narrative.
The Dara Shikoh loop. Upaniṣads → Persian translation (1657) → Latin version read by Schopenhauer and the Romantics → Theosophy and Orientalism → Vivekānanda’s Neo-Vedānta. A chain that leaves the dharmic world and returns changed.

Dates are approximate and many are contested. Teleological edges with third-party provenance are this schema's own claims, marked so they can be weighed separately from what the traditions say.

Draft cards for paths you could take up today. Each is profiled on the nine forks, and each links back to its ancestors on the lineage map. Where a path’s doctrine and practice answer a fork differently, both are shown.

● firm○ flexible◐ split: doctrine / practice

Within each setting, cards run from closest to the Vedic core to furthest from it. Inside the fold: Vedānta-grounded paths and their renunciate and yogic offshoots, then Vedānta-framed devotion, everyday and vernacular devotion, and Āgamic, Śākta and tantric paths, ending with the one that ranks the Veda lowest. Beyond the fold: contested placements first, then separate religions, nearest in doctrine first.

Authority setting

Filter by fork

Or start from a path you know

Coverage

What is here, what is next, and what is left out on purpose

The cards aim to cover every major living path under the dharmic umbrella, starting with where most people actually practise. These lists show the gaps, so a missing path reads as a known gap rather than a judgement.

Next to add

Vaiṣṇava schools: Mādhva (Dvaita) at Udupi; Puṣṭimārga (Vallabha) at Nathdwara; Ekaśaraṇa in Assam, Śaṅkaradeva’s monasteries on Majuli.
Modern movements: Sri Aurobindo’s Integral Yoga; Transcendental Meditation.
Buddhist: Nichiren and Soka Gakkai; Gelug as its own card, since it answers Ground differently from shentong; Newar Buddhism, with hereditary Buddhist priests inside a caste system.
Jain and Sikh branches: Śrīmad Rājcandra’s lay Jain movement; the Udāsī ascetics, often counted as Hindu.
Syncretic: The Bauls of Bengal.
Contemporary guru movements: Cards for Isha, Art of Living, Mata Amritanandamayi and Sathya Sai. These need an inclusion rule first, because some carry serious controversies. Most are already on the lineage map (Case 4).

On the map only

Philosophical schools: Sāṃkhya, Yoga and Nyāya–Vaiśeṣika.
Extinct rejecters of the Veda: The Cārvāka materialists and the Ājīvikas.
Scriptures that act: The Bhagavad Gītā and the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.
Founders and systems: Pāñcarātra, Madhva, Caitanya, Vallabha.
Modern currents: Hindutva and the RSS, for the political flow; Phule’s Satyashodhak Samaj, for anti-caste reform; Theosophy, as an outside influence; Dera Sacha Sauda, as a guru movement on the map rather than a path offered to readers.
Modern gurus: Shirdi and Sathya Sai Baba, Guruji of the Bade Mandir, Isha and Art of Living: on the map as Case 4, with no cards.

Left out on purpose

Zoroastrianism: Iranian in origin, not dharmic, though Parsis live in India.
Sufism as a path: It appears on the map as an outside influence; cards stay under the dharmic umbrella.
Secular mindfulness: Derived from Buddhist practice but not offered as a religious path.
Bön, Daoism and Shinto: Outside the Indic umbrella, even where they touched Tibetan or Zen practice.

“Beyond the fold” lists paths from other religions for readers who asked to see them. Listing a path there is not a claim that it belongs to Hinduism. Each carries a status: a separate religion, or a path whose placement is contested among its own followers. Practices and access rules change; the “who can join” lines are the ones most worth re-checking.