Living with polytropy and hierarchy: the anthropology of Hinduism

Book section : Chapter

Hinduism contradicts most conventional assumptions about what a religion should look like, which makes it essential to include in any attempt to theorize about religion in general. The anthropological study of Hinduism helps us to understand how necessary it is to break the concept of religion down into soteriology, social religion, and instrumental religion. It also enables us to understand the polytropic nature of most people’s lifeworlds, as well as the hierarchical nature of their scales of value, exchange, and personhood. With modernization and globalization, Hinduism has begun to be reformed so that it comes closer to fitting the dominant, Protestant-influenced expectations of what a religion should look like. Nonetheless, Hinduism remains very different from the Abrahamic religions, which means that the anthropology of Hinduism is necessarily a different kind of project.

Authors: Gellner, DN

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Host title: Oxford Handbook of the Anthropology of Religion
• Pages: 273-290
• Chapter number: 17
• Place of publication: New York, USA
• Publication date: 2026-01-19
• DOI: 10.1093/9780191822285.003.0016
• ISBN: 9780199676217
• Language: English
• Keywords: Hinduism; hierarchy; caste; Louis Dumont; polytropy; jajmani system; gifts; definition of religion; Durkheim; Sanskritization
• Subtype: Chapter