Home›Brahmic Script Family›Belongs To TraditionBrowse ByBelongs To TraditionThis page groups alphabets by the family of languages they are actually used to write. Wikipedia notes that "alphabets based on the Hebrew script are used to write other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, and Judeo-Persian." Browsing by belongs-to-tradition lets a visitor find every alphabet used across the same family of languages.FactsBelongs To TraditionSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedScripts & Magical Alphabets 1Belongs To TraditionFilter Results4 entriesAdherents TodayAllEncyclopaedia Britannica estimates worldwide Jain adherents at roughly 4 to 5 million, a range consistent with both the 2011 Census of India's national count of about 4.45 million and the World Religion Database's higher 2021 global estimate of about 5.3 million, which extrapolates for the Jain diaspora outside India that a national census cannot capture. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Buddhist population at 324 million as of 2020, about 4 percent of the world's population, down 19 million from 2010, the only major world religion measured to shrink in absolute numbers over that decade. (1)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Hindu population at nearly 1.2 billion as of 2020, up 126 million from 2010, with about 99 percent of the world's Hindus living in the Asia-Pacific region and roughly 95 percent in India alone. (1)The Historical Dictionary of Sikhism estimates the worldwide Sikh population at between 25 and 30 million, of which India holds about 90 percent; the 2011 Census of India alone counted 20,833,116 Sikhs, 1.72 percent of the country's population. (1)Adherents Today MaximumAll5,000,000 (1)30,000,000 (1)324,000,000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll4,000,000 (1)25,000,000 (1)324,000,000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllIndependent Survey (2)National Census (2)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (3)Current StatusAllReligious authority in Sikhism has resided in the scripture and the community since 1708. Before his death that year, the tenth and last personal Guru, Gobind Singh, declared the line of living human Gurus closed, vesting Guruship jointly in the Guru Granth Sahib, the compiled scripture, and the Khalsa Panth, the collective body of initiated Sikhs. No individual has since been accepted by mainstream Sikh institutions as a personal successor Guru. (1)Establishment StatusAllDisestablished (1)Varies by Province (2)Form of the ConfessionAllHinduism has no single creed and no central authority to issue one. Adherence centers on orthopraxy, correct ritual and social practice, rather than a shared confession, and schools agreeing on almost no metaphysical claim, including atheistic Samkhya and materialist Charvaka, are still counted within the tradition. A formula such as the Gayatri Mantra marks a school, not the whole of Hinduism. (1)Taking refuge in the Three Jewels, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, functions as Buddhism's basic profession of faith. (1)The Mool Mantar, the opening verses of the Guru Granth Sahib, is Sikhism's foundational statement of the nature of God. (1)FounderAllGuru Nanak (1469-1539) (1)Jain tradition counts him the last of twenty-four Tirthankaras rather than a founder (1)Mahavira (Vardhamana) (1)None; Hinduism has no founder and no founding event (1)Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCustomary Norm (3)Obligation to Support, No Set Rate (1)Legal StatusAllArticle 9 of the Constitution of Sri Lanka (1978, as amended) states that the Republic shall give Buddhism the foremost place and that it shall be the duty of the State to protect and foster the Buddha Sasana, while assuring to all religions the rights granted by Articles 10 and 14(1)(e). (1)India: notified a national minority 27 January 2014 under the National Commission for Minorities Act, 1992 (1)Section 16(2) of the United Kingdom Road Traffic Act 1988, carrying forward the Motor-Cycle Crash Helmets (Religious Exemption) Act 1976, exempts a turban-wearing Sikh from any regulation requiring a motorcycle rider to wear protective headgear. (1)Sections 11 and 12 of the United Kingdom Employment Act 1989 exempt a turban-wearing Sikh from any statutory requirement to wear head protection on a construction site; section 6 of the Deregulation Act 2015 broadened the exemption to cover a requirement to wear head protection at any workplace, not construction sites alone. (1)The Supreme Court of Canada ruled unanimously on 2 March 2006, in Multani v. Commission scolaire Marguerite-Bourgeoys, that a Quebec school board's outright ban on a Sikh student wearing a kirpan to school violated his freedom of religion under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and that a total ban could not be justified once conditions requiring the kirpan to be worn sealed inside its sheath and under clothing were available as a less restrictive alternative. (1)Marriage Position DetailAllThe Rehat Maryada states a Sikh man and woman should enter wedlock "without giving thought to the prospective spouse's caste and descent," that "a Sikh's daughter must be married to a Sikh," and that child marriage "is taboo for Sikhs." On plurality of spouses it holds that "generally, no Sikh should marry a second wife if the first wife is alive." On widowhood it states "if a woman's husband has died, she may, if she so wishes, finding a match suitable for her, remarry. For a Sikh man whose wife has died, similar ordinance obtains," with the remarriage following the ordinary Anand Karaj. No Sikh should accept payment for arranging a match, and persons professing a faith other than Sikhism cannot be joined in wedlock by the Anand Karaj. (1)Membership Figure As OfAll2001-01-01 (1)2001-03-01 (1)2010-01-01 (2)2011-01-01 (1)2011-03-01 (1)2012-12-18 (2)2020-01-01 (2)2021-01-01 (1)Membership Over TimeAllAt the 2001 Census of India, whose reference date was March 1, 2001, 19,215,730 people in India identified as Sikh, 1.87 percent of the country's population. India holds roughly 90 percent of the world's Sikhs, so this national count, though not a global figure, is the closest dated series available for this body. (1)By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Buddhist population had fallen further to 324 million (just over 4 percent of world population), a 5 percent decline over the decade, the only major religious group worldwide to shrink in absolute numbers, attributed to religious disaffiliation in East Asia and a comparatively low birth rate among Buddhist-majority populations. (1)By 2020, the same Pew study found the global Hindu population had grown 12 percent to nearly 1.2 billion, remaining stable as a share of world population since non-Hindus grew at about the same rate; 99 percent of Hindus worldwide live in the Asia-Pacific region and about 95 percent in India alone. (1)By the 2011 Census of India, whose reference date was March 1, 2011, the Sikh population had grown to 20,833,116, though its share of India's faster-growing overall population fell slightly to 1.72 percent. Outside India, the World Religion Database (Brill, accessed September 2025) records substantial Sikh populations in Pakistan, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States, among other countries. (1)In its December 2012 Global Religious Landscape study, Pew Research Center estimated about 1 billion Hindus worldwide as of 2010, 15 percent of the global population, while noting a lack of census or survey data on Hindu subgroups in most countries. (1)In its December 2012 Global Religious Landscape study, Pew Research Center estimated about 488 million Buddhists worldwide as of 2010, 7 percent of the global population, a figure the study notes includes members of groups that identify as Buddhist such as Soka Gakkai and Hoa Hao. (1)India's 2001 Census of India counted 4,225,053 Jains, 0.41 percent of the national population, an actual census count under the country's religion-community tables. (1)India's 2011 Census of India counted 4,451,753 Jains, but only 0.37 percent of a larger national population, so the Jain share of India fell even as the raw count grew from 2001. (1)Pew's June 2025 update put its own 2010 Hindu estimate at a little under 1.1 billion, close to but modestly higher than the 2012 report's figure for the same year, a mild revision rather than the sharp divergence seen in the same pair of studies' Buddhist figures. (1)Pew's June 2025 update to the same study revised its own 2010 Buddhist estimate sharply downward, to 343 million (just under 5 percent of world population), citing East Asian religious identity being deeply embedded with local folk religions, so many practitioners do not formally self-identify as Buddhist in survey terms. Both the 2012 report's 488 million and this 343 million figure describe the same year, 2010, under two different Pew methodologies, and are recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (1)The World Religion Database, edited by Gina A. Zurlo, estimates the worldwide Jain population at approximately 5.3 million as of 2021, noticeably higher than India's own census count alone because it extrapolates the global diaspora that a national census by definition cannot count. (1)Origin AccountAllBuddhism traces its origin to the awakening of Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, in the fifth century BCE in northern India. (1)Hinduism has no single founder or founding event; scholars trace its roots to the blending of Vedic religion, brought by Indo-Aryan migration, with indigenous religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent over more than a millennium. (1)Jain tradition holds its teaching to have been renewed in the current cosmic cycle by a succession of twenty four tirthankaras, the last being Mahavira in the sixth century BCE, though the tradition itself is presented as eternal rather than founded by him. (1)Sikhism traces its origin to the teaching of Guru Nanak, born in Punjab in 1469, and was shaped over two centuries by ten successive human Gurus. (1)Origin PeriodAllJain tradition reckons the lineage of Tirthankaras far older (1)No founding event (1)The Buddha's dates are contested (traditional 563-483 BCE, critical scholarship c. 480-400 BCE) (1)Origin Period End YearAll500 BCE (1)400 BCE (2)1708 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll1500 BCE (1)600 BCE (1)500 BCE (1)1499 (1)Place of OriginAllThe Indian subcontinent, chiefly the Indo-Gangetic plain (1)The middle Ganges plain of north-eastern India (1)The middle Ganges plain of north-eastern India: Magadha and Kosala (1)The Punjab, in north-west India (1)Position on MarriageAllMarriage is held to be monogamous, with remarriage after divorce sanctioned under specified conditions (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation (1)Practice StatusAllLiving, and practised in varied local forms (3)Partly restricted: some elements are closed to outsiders (1)Sexuality Position DetailAllIn January 2005, the Jathedar of Sri Akal Takht Sahib, Amritsar, "the highest seat of Sikh temporal-religious (miri-piri) authority for interpreting Sikh teachings, issued an edict denouncing same-sex marriages, and urging the worldwide Sikh community not to allow such marriages to take place at any Gurdwara." In March 2005, Giani Joginder Singh Vedanti of the Akal Takht made a further statement to visiting Sikh-Canadian members of parliament on the same question. (1)Standard Rate ExpectedAllTen percent. (1)Standing Giving ExpectationAllDana, giving, is a shared ethical foundation across the Buddhist tradition, asked of every lay follower with no fixed rate or amount, in explicit contrast to a percentage-based tithe. A Buddhist Publication Society compilation of Pali Canon teaching on dana, already cited on this axis for the Theravada school fact, states that a gift's merit rests chiefly on the giver's intention rather than the gift's size. Each of the tradition's major branches, already recorded individually on this axis, carries its own documented expression of the same no-fixed-rate ethic: Theravada's daily almsround supporting monastics, Mahayana's dana paramita as one of the perfections and its historic role financing temple institutions, and Vajrayana's ngondro mandala offering, a formally counted practice with a set numerical target rather than an open-ended one. This religion-level fact records the shared ethic those three branch-level facts already document in its own tradition-specific detail. (1)Dana, giving, is not a single uniform rule in Hindu tradition but a textual category examined at length across dharmashastra literature. Maria Heim's academic study Theories of the Gift in South Asia traces how thinkers writing across roughly 1100 to 1300 CE debated whether a gift is fully voluntary or carries an obligatory dimension, a live question precisely because the dharmashastra sources themselves classify gifts along a spectrum running from daily, expected household giving to occasional, circumstance-bound giving and freely chosen giving, without resolving which end of that spectrum binds an ordinary householder. Dakshina, the gift or fee traditionally owed an officiating priest at the close of a ritual, sits at the more expected end of the same spectrum: its Vedic root, traced to a fee due the priest, originally a cow, makes it read as more customary and completion-bound than a purely charitable dana, though its scale is set by custom and the giver's own means rather than by any stated rate. Hinduism has no single hierarchical body, no synod and no magisterium, that could codify either dana or dakshina into a binding rule with a stated percentage or a stated penalty for falling short; what the textual and scholarly record shows is a customary norm of long standing, carried by tradition and ritual expectation rather than by institutional enforcement. (1)Dasvandh, giving one tenth of one's earnings for the common good, is implicit in Guru Nanak's own teaching (Guru Granth Sahib 1245: "He alone, O Nanak, knoweth the way who eats out of what he earneth by his honest labour and yet shareth part of it with others"), formalized under Guru Amar Das through the manji administrative structure that channeled Sikh giving to the Guru, and historically collected by masands, tithe collectors appointed to gather offerings from the sangats in their charge. It was codified in the rahitnamas, the codes of Sikh conduct compiled during or soon after Guru Gobind Singh's own lifetime: Bhai Nand Lal's Tankhah Nama records the injunction directly, "one who does not give dasvandh and, telling lies, misappropriates it, is not at all to be trusted." Dasvandh is distinguished in Sikh teaching from dan, ordinary charity, since it is directed specifically to the community's own religious institutions and welfare projects. The modern Rahit Maryada, the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee's own 1945 code of conduct, contains no explicit dasvandh provision in its own text, though the SGPC's own website actively solicits Daswandh contributions on a separate donations page with no percentage stated there either; the tradition today is sustained by individual observance rather than institutional enforcement, matching a description of the practice as having "been kept alive by chosen Sikhs who to this day scrupulously fulfil the injunction." (1)Jain doctrine names four kinds of gift under the heading chaturvidha dana: ahara-dana (food), aushadhi-dana (medicine), abhaya-dana (protection or freedom from fear) and shastra-dana (knowledge, historically the gift of scripture or its teaching). The first of these, offering food to a wandering mendicant who by vow owns no cooking vessel, is formalized beyond a general ethic into one of the vows a lay Jain formally undertakes, atithi-samvibhaga-vrata, "the vow of sharing with a guest," grounded in the earliest Jain textual and oral tradition. Maria Heim's Theories of the Gift in South Asia traces how Jain thinkers, alongside Hindu and Buddhist ones, worked through whether such giving is owed as duty or chosen as merit, because the Jain textual tradition itself holds it as both: a named vow formally taken, fulfilled without any fixed rate, quantity or schedule stated for how much a layperson must give, and gaining merit rather than carrying a stated penalty for falling short. No institution stands over the Jain laity to enforce the vow or to specify its scale; a Jain who gives little loses no formal standing, and the textual record itself sets no percentage. (1)Status TodayAllLiving tradition, practised today (4)Supreme BeingAllHindu theology ranges from devotion to a single supreme deity, most often Vishnu or Shiva depending on the tradition, to a broader vision in which many deities are held to be manifestations of a single underlying reality, Brahman. (1)Jain cosmology has no creator god; liberated souls, jinas or tirthankaras, are venerated as having achieved omniscience and freedom from karma, but none is held to have created the universe. (1)Waheguru, God, held to be one, formless and without gender. (1)TheologyAllMonistic: one ultimate reality behind all appearance (1)Monotheistic: one God (1)Non-theistic: no creator god is central (2)Panentheistic: the divine both within the world and beyond it (1)Polytheistic: many gods (1)Transgression CategoryAllAdharma, action contrary to one's dharma or to cosmic and moral order, is the broad Hindu category of wrongdoing. (1)Byapada: ill will, the second of the Five Hindrances. (1)Dvesha (dosa): hatred or aversion, the second of the Three Poisons. (1)Himsa, injury to living beings, is Jainism's principal category of wrongdoing, and avoiding it in thought, word and deed is the tradition's foremost ethical demand. (1)Kama-chanda: sensory desire, the first of the Five Hindrances (pancha nivarana) to meditative clarity. (1)Moha: delusion, or ignorance of the true nature of things, the third and most fundamental of the Three Poisons. (1)Raga (lobha): greed, craving or attachment, the first of the Three Poisons said to bind beings to samsara. (1)Thina-middha: sloth and torpor, the third of the Five Hindrances. (1)Uddhacca-kukkucca: restlessness and worry, the fourth of the Five Hindrances. (1)Vicikiccha: doubt, the fifth of the Five Hindrances. (1)BrowseCompareBuddhismBelongs To Tradition1 entryHinduismBelongs To Tradition1 entryJainismBelongs To Tradition1 entrySikhismBelongs To Tradition1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category Treetier 1Comments (0)No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.Sign in to join the discussion.Reader Challenges (0)No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.