This article focuses on anthropological and sociological research on Buddhism and Hinduism, not on their teachings and history.

Anthropologist Melford E. Spiro, is well-known for his work on Buddhism, particularly for his book Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes (1971). Spiro categorizes Theravada tradition of Buddhism into three distinct systems of religiosity:

1. Nibbanic Buddhism: This is the path to nibbana (nirvana) based on the practice of morality and meditation. Spiro equates this with the normative Buddhism found in the Pali Canon. This was the religious practice of privileged social strata.
2. Kammatic Buddhism: This focuses on achieving a pleasant future life through ritualized religious giving and merit-making. Spiro sees this as a transformation of nibbanic Buddhism. This form of Buddhism was practiced by ordinary people.
3. Apotropaic Buddhism: This system is about obtaining protection from dangers in the present life through participation in certain Buddhist rituals. Spiro acknowledges that these practices are found in the Pali Canon but questions their presence in the earliest forms of Buddhism.

Spiro argues that most Theravada Buddhists in Asia primarily practice kammatic and apotropaic Buddhism, with only a small number pursuing nibbanic Buddhism. He views nibbanic Buddhism as a path of morality and meditation leading to the ultimate goal of nibbana, while kammatic Buddhism is seen as fundamentally conflicting with nibbanic Buddhism as kammatic Buddhist don’t try to achieve nirvana and, instead, focus on creating good karma, not trough meditation, but by charitable donations.

Cultural sociologist Alfred Weber argued that each historical area has its own culture: art, literature, religion, philosophy, value systems, and other cultural emanations. Cultural emanations are the product of concrete history and the specific creativity of their creators, and can only be understood historically. Cultural emanations cannot simply be transferred to other historical areas. Every relocation of one area of ​​culture to another historical area changes the essence of the symbolic meaning of that area. Weber uses an example of an attempt to move original Buddhism, from the territory of its origin to other historical areas, which led to the emergence of a completely different religion from the original Indian Buddhism.

In his first book, Worship and Conflict under Colonial Rule: a South Asian Case (1981), anthropologist Arjun Appadurai presents the results of his research on the Hindu Sri Partasarati Svami Temple in India. In this research, he used a combination of ethnographic methods and archival data. His goal was to re-examine established notions of what constitutes “traditional” Hindu worship practices. His research explored a wide range of topics: authority and deference, sumptuary symbolism, the influence of the British hybrid colonial legal system, religious conflicts, relations between politics and religion, and religious organization.

Clifford Geertz, in his The Religion of Java (1960), uses the Weberian approach to religion to study the relationship between religious ideas and social and political changes in Indonesia. He distinguishes between three ideal types of religiosity in Java: syncretic religion in villages; orthodox Islam practiced by merchants; and ritualistic Hinduism practiced by the bureaucratic elite.

Books:

Fromm. Zen Buddhism and Psychoanalysis (1960);

Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996);

Spiro, Melford E. Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes (1971);

Weber, Max. The Religion of India: The Sociology of Hinduism and Buddhism (1958);

Wilson, B. A Time to Chant: The Soka Gakki Buddhists in Britain (1994).