Home›South Asia›Sacred ToBrowse BySacred ToThis page groups sacred regions by the specific worship they were built to hold. Wikipedia notes that "the Temple in Jerusalem ... was the central place of worship for Israelites and Jews and serves as the namesake of the Temple Mount." Browsing by sacred-to lets a visitor find every region built to hold the same worship.FactsSacred ToSourcesComments (0)Reader Challenges (0)FactsDirectoryCategoryWell-attestedRegions 1Sacred ToFilter Results5 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)Pew Research Center's Religious Composition of the World, 2010-2020 report puts the global Muslim population at 2.0 billion as of 2020, about 26 percent of the world's population, up from 1.7 billion in 2010 and growing about twice as fast as the world's population as a whole over that decade. (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)2,000,000,000 (1)Adherents Today MinimumAll4,000,000 (1)25,000,000 (1)324,000,000 (1)1,200,000,000 (1)2,000,000,000 (1)Basis of the Membership FigureAllIndependent Survey (3)National Census (2)Scholarly or Demographic Estimate (4)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 (3)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)The shahada, the declaration that there is no god but God and Muhammad is His messenger, is Islam's central creed and the first of the five pillars. (1)FounderAllGuru Nanak (1469-1539) (1)Jain tradition counts him the last of twenty-four Tirthankaras rather than a founder (1)Mahavira (Vardhamana) (1)Muslims hold Islam to be the restoration of the primordial religion rather than a new founding (1)None; Hinduism has no founder and no founding event (1)Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (1)The Prophet Muhammad (c. 570-632) (1)How the Expectation Is EnforcedAllCodified Obligation With Consequences (1)Customary 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 DetailAllQur'an 4:3 states: "And if you fear that you shall not be able to deal justly with the orphan girls then marry (other) women of your choice, two or three, or four." Classical and contemporary Sunni and Shia jurisprudence alike reads this as permitting, not requiring, a man to be married to up to four wives at one time, on two conditions: material justice between the wives, in spending, clothing, and time, which Qur'an 4:129 immediately qualifies by noting that perfect justice in feeling, as opposed to material treatment, is not humanly possible and so is not what is required; and the financial capacity to support each wife. Monogamy remains the ordinary practice for most Muslims worldwide; the ruling recognizes polygynous marriage as licit rather than mandating it. (1)The 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 (3)2011-01-01 (1)2011-01-27 (1)2011-03-01 (1)2012-12-18 (2)2020-01-01 (3)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 2020, the same Pew study found the global Muslim population had grown 21 percent to 2.0 billion (26 percent of world population), growing twice as fast as the rest of the world's population over the decade, driven by Muslims having more children and a younger average age than members of any other major religion. (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)In its January 27, 2011 report, Pew Research Center estimated about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide as of 2010, 23.4 percent of the estimated 6.9 billion global population, compiled from roughly 1,500 sources across 232 countries and territories. (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 its global religion modeling revised its own 2010 Muslim estimate upward to 1.7 billion (24 percent of world population), a modest revision of the 2011 report's 1.6 billion figure for the same year, both recorded here side by side rather than one replacing the other. (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)Islam traces its origin to the revelations received by the prophet Muhammad in Mecca and Medina in the early seventh century, collected as the Quran. (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)632 (1)1708 (1)Origin Period Start YearAll1500 BCE (1)600 BCE (1)500 BCE (1)610 (1)1499 (1)Place of OriginAllThe Hijaz, in western Arabia: Mecca and Medina (1)The 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)Marriage may licitly be polygynous (1)Position on SexualityAllSame-sex orientation or practice is held to bar full membership or participation (2)Position on UsuryAllInterest of any kind on a loan is forbidden (1)Practice StatusAllLiving, and practised in varied local forms (3)Partly restricted: some elements are closed to outsiders (2)Sexuality Position DetailAllClassical Islamic jurisprudence treats homosexual acts, generally termed liwat in the legal literature, as unlawful across all four Sunni schools, though the schools differ on the exact legal category and punishment. The Shafi'i, Hanbali and main Maliki position hold the punishment mirrors that for zina under the hadd category, a fixed penalty applied only under strict evidentiary conditions such as four eyewitnesses or a clear confession; the Maliki school's own harshest reading holds both parties subject to execution regardless of marital status; the Hanafi school instead leans toward a discretionary punishment, ta'zir, set by a judge rather than a fixed hadd penalty, on the reasoning that the specific evidentiary threshold hadd requires was not met by the available textual evidence. Across all four schools, the same-sex attraction itself is treated as distinct from the act and is not, on its own, held to be sinful; the legal rulings address conduct. (1)In 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)Two and a half 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)Zakat, one of the five pillars of Islam, obliges a Muslim whose accumulated wealth exceeds a minimum threshold (nisab) to give 2.5 percent of that qualifying wealth annually. The Quran (9:60) names eight categories of recipients. In several Muslim-majority countries zakat is collected by the state itself rather than left to the individual, giving the obligation a legal as well as a religious force there; elsewhere it is a personal duty of conscience understood to be as central to Islamic practice as prayer and fasting. (1)Status TodayAllLiving tradition, practised today (5)Supreme BeingAllAllah, God, held to be one and without partner or equal. (1)Hindu 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 (2)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)Akl mal al-yatim: consuming the wealth of an orphan. (1)Al-tawalli yawm al-zahf: fleeing from the battlefield. (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)Qadhf: slandering chaste, believing women with unchastity. (1)Qatl al-nafs: killing a soul that Allah has forbidden, except by right. (1)Raga (lobha): greed, craving or attachment, the first of the Three Poisons said to bind beings to samsara. (1)Riba: consuming usury or interest. (1)Shirk: associating partners with Allah, the first and gravest of the Seven Destructive Sins (as-sab al-mubiqat). (1)Sihr: magic or sorcery. (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)Usury Position DetailAllThe Quran's treatment of riba came in stages rather than all at once. An early Meccan verse, Surah Al-Rum 30:39, contrasted interest unfavorably with charity as moral guidance, without yet imposing a legal ban. After the migration to Medina the tone sharpened: Surah Al-Nisa 4:161 rebukes an earlier community for taking interest despite being forbidden it, and Surah Al-Imran 3:130, revealed after the Battle of Uhud, specifically condemns compounding interest. The final and complete prohibition, covering interest of any kind, came in Surah Al-Baqarah 2:275-281, revealed near the end of the Prophet's life and describing persistence in the practice as tantamount to war against God and His messenger. This is why contemporary Islamic finance avoids interest bearing loans altogether, structuring transactions instead as profit and loss sharing partnerships or cost-plus sales. (1)BrowseCompareBuddhismSacred To3 entriesHinduismSacred To10 entriesIslamSacred To2 entriesJainismSacred To4 entriesSikhismSacred To1 entrySources1. Divinity Atlas Directory Taxonomy, First Edition Category TreeComments (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.