Panth

General term used for a particular religious community, such as the
Dadupanth, Varkari Panth, or the
Nanak Panth—an older name for the
Sikh community, which has simply been
abridged to “Panth” by contemporary
Sikhs. The word is derived from the
Sanskrit word for “path” and is here
used metaphorically to indicate a fixed
pattern of belief and behavior, often
rooted in a particular individual’s teachings. There is a certain amount of
semantic overlap between the words
panth and sampraday, both of which
denote religious communities, and
there is no hard-and-fast rule dividing
the two. In general, however, the term
497
Panth
panth is more closely associated with
movements in the sant religious tradition, which tended toward rebellion
against the prevailing religious establishment, whereas sampraday is more
commonly applied to groups that
evolved within these established religious communities.