Hinduism

====Colonial views====
The notion and reports on "Hinduism" as a "single world religious tradition"{{sfn|King|1999|pp=100–102}} was also popularised by 19th-century proselytising missionaries and European Indologists, roles sometimes served by the same person, who relied on texts preserved by Brahmins (priests) for their information of Indian religions, and animist observations that the missionary Orientalists presumed was Hinduism.{{sfn|King|1999|pp=100–102}}<ref name=ronaldinden127 />{{sfn|Sweetman|2004|pp=14–15}} These reports influenced perceptions about Hinduism. Scholars such as Pennington state that the colonial polemical reports led to fabricated stereotypes where Hinduism was mere mystic paganism devoted to the service of devils,{{refn|group=note|Pennington{{sfn|Pennington|2005|pp=76–77}} describes the circumstances in which early impressions of Hinduism were reported by colonial era missionaries: "Missionary reports from India also reflected the experience of foreigners in a land whose native inhabitants and British rulers often resented their presence. Their accounts of Hinduism were forged in physically, politically and spiritually hostile surroundings [impoverished, famine-prone Bengal – now West Bengal and Bangladesh]. Plagued with anxieties and fears about their own health, regularly reminded of colleagues who had lost their lives or reason, uncertain of their own social location, and preaching to crowds whose reactions ranged from indifference to amusement to hostility, missionaries found expression for their darker misgivings in their production of what is surely part of their speckled legacy: a fabricated Hinduism crazed by blood-lust and devoted to the service of devils."}} while other scholars state that the colonial constructions influenced the belief that the ''Vedas'', ''[[Bhagavad Gita]]'', ''[[Manusmriti]]'' and such texts were the essence of Hindu religiosity, and in the modern association of 'Hindu doctrine' with the schools of Vedanta (in particular Advaita Vedanta) as a paradigmatic example of Hinduism's mystical nature".{{sfn|King|1999|p=169}}{{refn|group=note|name="Sweetman"}} Pennington, while concurring that the study of Hinduism as a world religion began in the colonial era, disagrees that Hinduism is a colonial European era invention.{{sfn|Pennington|2005|loc=pp. 4–5 and Chapter 6}} He states that the shared theology, common ritual grammar and way of life of those who identify themselves as Hindus is traceable to ancient times.{{sfn|Pennington|2005|loc=pp. 4–5 and Chapter 6}}{{refn|group=note|Many scholars have presented pre-colonial common denominators and asserted the importance of ancient Hindu textual sources in medieval and pre-colonial times:
* Klaus Witz<ref>{{Cite book |last=Witz |first=Klaus G |title=The Supreme Wisdom of the Upaniṣads: An Introduction, Motilal Banarsidass |year=1998 |isbn=978-81-208-1573-5 |pages=10–11|publisher=Motilal Banarsidass Publ. }}</ref> states that Hindu [[Bhakti movement]] ideas in the medieval era grew on the foundation of Upanishadic knowledge and Vedanta philosophies.
* John Henderson<ref>{{Cite book |last=Henderson |first=John |title=Scripture, Canon and Commentary |url=https://archive.org/details/scripturecanonco0000hend |publisher=Princeton University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-691-60172-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/scripturecanonco0000hend/page/120 120]}}</ref> states that "Hindus, both in medieval and in modern times, have been particularly drawn to those canonical texts and philosophical schools such as the Bhagavad Gita and Vedanta, which seem to synthesize or reconcile most successfully diverse philosophical teachings and sectarian points of view. Thus, this widely recognised attribute of Indian culture may be traced to the exegetical orientation of medieval Hindu commentarial traditions, especially Vedanta.
* Patrick Olivelle<ref name=Olivelle2014p3q>{{Cite book |last=Olivelle |first=Patrick |author-link=Patrick Olivelle |title=The Early Upanisads |publisher=Oxford University Press |year=2014 |isbn=978-0-19-535242-9 |page=3 |quote=Even though theoretically the whole of Vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth [shruti], in reality it is the [[Upanishad]]s that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu. Upanishads are the scriptures par excellence of Hinduism.}}</ref> and others<ref>{{harvnb|Doniger|1990|pp=2–3}}: "The Upanishads supply the basis of later Hindu philosophy; they alone of the Vedic corpus are widely known and quoted by most well-educated Hindus, and their central ideas have also become a part of the spiritual arsenal of rank-and-file Hindus."</ref><ref name=McDowell>{{Cite book |last1=McDowell |first1=Michael |title=World Religions |last2=Brown |first2=Nathan |publisher=Penguin |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-59257-846-7 |pages=208–210}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Dissanayake |first=Wiman |title=Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice |publisher=State University of New York Press |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-7914-1080-6 |editor-last=Kasulis |editor-first=Thomas P. |page=39 |display-editors=etal}}</ref> state that the central ideas of the Upanishads in the Vedic corpus are at the spiritual core of Hindus.}}