Hinduism, the name given to certain forms of religion among the Hindus, the characteristics of which are the worship of divinities exalted above the rest, and the highly concrete and intensely personal conception of these, which comes out in sundry accounts respecting them of a biographical nature which divinities are identified either with Çiva or Vishnu, and their religions called Çivaite or Vishnuite, while their respective followers are styled Çaivas or Vishnavas.