Understanding Hinduism
The questions a newcomer actually asks: what Sanatana Dharma is, whether it is monotheistic, and what it says about caste, death and rebirth.
Hinduism is a name given from outside. The Persians called the people beyond the Sindhu river Hindus; the British turned it into a religion with an -ism; and a tradition that had never needed a collective name acquired one in the nineteenth century. What the name covers is genuinely plural: four broad streams, six classical schools of philosophy, and local practice that answers to none of them.
That plurality is the first thing to understand, and the reason the usual questions land awkwardly. Is it monotheistic or polytheistic? The tradition has considered answers, and holds several at once. Does it have a founder, a creed, a single book? It has none of the three, and the absence is structural rather than a gap waiting to be filled.
These pages are the ground floor. They set out the vocabulary, name the four streams, and take the common questions seriously enough to give them real answers rather than reassurance.