When you open a temple page on SevaCart you see a row of coloured chips at the top — Vaishnava, Pancharatra agama, Bodhayana paddhati, Ahobila Math, Dravida architecture. These aren’t marketing tags. They are the temple’s own declaration of which Hindu tradition it serves, and SevaCart locks them (Mig 81) once the temple is published so devotees can rely on what they read.
Most devotees don’t need to filter on all five axes — picking the right tradition is enough for routine sevas. But when a samskara matters — a vivaha, an upanayana, a major shraddha, a vyatipata-yoga shanti — the agama + paddhati + parampara combination is what determines whether the seva will be performed in the way your family expects. This page is the decoder ring.
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Tradition (sampradaya) · सम्प्रदाय
Q. Which broad school of dharma does this temple belong to?
Common values you’ll see — Vaishnava (Vishnu-centred) / Shaiva (Shiva-centred) / Shakta (Devi-centred) / Smarta (panchayatana — all 5 deities) / Lingayat (ishtalinga) / Madhva (Dvaita) / Gaudiya Vaishnava (Chaitanya-stream) and so on.
Who should care — Everyone — this is the broadest filter. A Shakta devotee who books a Mahalakshmi puja at a Vaishnava temple may find the worship style genuinely different from what they expected.
Q. Which canonical scripture set authorises this temple's worship?
Common values you’ll see — Pancharatra (most Vaishnava temples — ISKCON, Srirangam) / Vaikhanasa (Tirumala) / Shaiva Agama (Chidambaram, all Tamil Shiva temples) / Smartha / Tantra Sara (Bengali Shakta) / Kashmira Shaiva.
Who should care — Devotees whose family tradition is specifically agama-grounded — e.g. a family with a Vaikhanasa archaka heritage may want only a Vaikhanasa temple for major samskaras.
Q. Which procedural manual does the priest read from during your seva?
Common values you’ll see — Bodhayana / Apastamba / Aashvalayana / Drahayana paddhati (these map to your family Veda — Yajur / Yajur / Rig / Sama). Iyengar paddhati (Sri Vaishnava). Madhwa paddhati. Smarta paddhati. Tantra Saara (Bengali Shakta).
Who should care — Families with a known paddhati — if your home sankalpas use "Bodhayana sutra" wording, you almost certainly want a Bodhayana-paddhati temple for samskaras.
Q. Which matha or guru-disciple lineage does this temple answer to?
Common values you’ll see — Sringeri / Kanchi / Govardhan / Jyotir / Sharada (Smarta peethas). Ahobila Math (Sri Vaishnava Vatakalai). Tenkalai (Sri Vaishnava southern). Udupi Ashta Mathas (Madhva 8-fold rotation). Pejawar Math (Madhva). Veerashaiva Panchacharya peethas. Gaudiya (ISKCON-stream).
Who should care — Devotees with a kuladevata or family-guru attached to a specific matha. Especially Madhvas (matha matters strongly), Sri Vaishnavas (Vatakalai vs Tenkalai is a known split), and Smartas tied to one of the 4 amnaya peethas.
Common values you’ll see — Dravida (South Indian — Chola, Pallava, Vijayanagara) / Nagara (North Indian — Khajuraho, Konark) / Vesara (hybrid — Hoysala, Chalukya) / Kalinga (Odisha) / Kerala sloped-roof / Cave / Modern construction.
Who should care — Devotees travelling to a temple for darshan — sets expectations for the experience. Less directly relevant to ritual correctness, but central to the temple's aesthetic and sense of place.
When a temple is first published on SevaCart, the four ritual declarations (tradition, agama, paddhati, parampara) are frozen in the database. The temple’s self-service dashboard cannot rewrite them after that. If the temple ever needs to correct a declaration — say a fresh acharya transition has moved the temple to a new sub-parampara — the change must be requested through SevaCart admin, which records the prior value to a tradition_change_log table on the application row. That log lets us reconstruct exactly which declarations were live on the day any specific booking was made.
The lock is the technical enforcement of the Ritual Accuracy clause in the Partner Agreement(§3). The partner has signed: “perform each seva strictly in accordance with the agama / paddhati / parampara the Partner has declared on the listing the devotee booked from.” If the lock didn’t exist, a partner could quietly swap the declaration after you booked. With the lock + audit log, what you see is what you get.
Frequently asked
I don’t know my family’s tradition. What do I pick?
If you know your community (Havyaka, Iyer, Iyengar, Madhva, GSB, Nambudiri, Chitpavan, Lingayat, etc.), start with the Community → tradition finder — it maps 40+ communities to their typical tradition / agama / paddhati / parampara stack. Otherwise: for most routine sevas it doesn’t materially matter — pick a temple whose primary deity matches your sankalpa. For samskaras (vivaha, upanayana, shraddha), ask elders in your family which paddhati or sutra they have followed. If you genuinely don’t know, pick a Smarta-Bodhayana temple — it is the most widely-used combination in South India.
The temple I want shows “Other” in one of the chips. Should I still book?
When a temple picks “Other” in one of the dropdowns at registration, SevaCart asks them to type the actual name — that free-text is what shows on the chip. If you can read the name and recognise it as your tradition or lineage, it is fine. If the free-text means nothing to you, contact the temple via the “Talk to temple” option on the seva page before booking.
What if I book a seva and the priest performs it in a different paddhati?
Raise a dispute via the booking page within 15 days of the booked seva date. The Partner Agreement §3 and §5 (Indemnity) make the temple responsible for ritual conformance to the declared paddhati. SevaCart mediates the dispute under the in-app receipt-and-dispute flow described in your Devotee Terms of Use.
Are these distinctions universally agreed by all Hindu scholars?
No — different sampradayas disagree on the boundaries between traditions, the correctness of competing paddhatis, and which acharyas count as authoritative. SevaCart does not adjudicate religious correctness between schools. Our role is only to make sure the temple tells you which set of distinctions it follows, so you can choose.