OUR EDITORIAL METHOD
How we decide what is true
Every claim on this platform is placed in one of three categories, and most carry a score out of five. The score says how close the source sits to Shruti — not how important the ritual is, and not how strongly anyone believes it.
If you arrived by tapping "Read source" on an article — this is the right place. The specific text for that claim is named on the article itself; this page explains the system behind it.
Someone tells you a vrat must be kept without water. Someone else says a particular day is unlucky. A forwarded message warns you what happens if you skip a step. None of it says whether it comes from a text, from a region, from a family — or from nowhere at all.
That is the gap. Not a shortage of information about Hindu ritual, but no way to tell which kind of information you are looking at.
One rule decides more classifications than any other, and it is the rule that is easiest to bend without noticing.
Two things have to be true. We can name the text. And you could go and verify it yourself. Both, not either.
What this rules out is the most tempting case: a practice everybody follows, that every pandit endorses, that has clearly been done for centuries — and nobody can say which text it comes from. That is Pratha. Not because it is lesser, but because we cannot show our working, and showing our working is the whole promise.
The pressure always runs one way — to round up. Something feels obviously scriptural, so it takes a Dharma tag and later nobody can say where it came from. Every time that happens the Dharma tag is worth slightly less. A correct Pratha costs us nothing. A wrong Dharma costs us the only thing we have.
These are not degrees of truth. They are different kinds of authority — and knowing which one you are looking at is the entire point. A 2/5 Pratha is not lesser than a 5/5 Dharma. It is a different kind of claim.
A specific scripture, chapter or section you could open and check for yourself. Universal authority.
Not "the scriptures say" — which scripture, and where in it. If we cannot name a source you could go and verify, the claim does not get this tag, however widely it is believed.
Scores 3/5 to 5/5 — never below 3"The midnight puja is performed during Nishita Kaal — the birth moment named in the text."
Bhagavata Purana · Skandha 10, Chapters 1–4 · Puranic · 4/5
Widely practised, real, worth keeping — and not traceable to a named text. Contextual authority.
It might be centuries old. It might be the most meaningful part of the day for your family. We are not ranking it below Dharma or suggesting you drop it. We are only saying: this one is yours, not scripture's.
Which matters when someone tells you your way is wrong, or that another region's practice is the correct one. Neither is true. They are different customs, and both are legitimate.
Scores 1/5 to 2/5 — never above 2"The smooth underside of the leaf faces the Shivalinga."
Widely observed across Shaiva practice · no named text mandates this orientation
No source class, and no score. Corrected in plain language, in every guide where it appears.
Bhranti carries no score because there is nothing to score. We recognise it by shape — a threatened consequence for omission, a claim of total invalidation, an exclusivity rule, devotion ranked by difficulty or expense, a prescription derived from a birth chart, or a manufactured product requirement.
A claim can be sincere, ancient and widely believed and still be Bhranti. Age is not authority. The correction is always gentle, and always cites what actually contradicts it.
"Only a Brahmin can perform Rudrabhishek."
No source text restricts performance. Correction badge — no score.
The number describes which class of source the claim comes from. The badge names that class in a word. Together they tell you how close the claim sits to Shruti — the oldest and most universally accepted layer of the tradition.
Veda, Brahmana, Aranyaka or a principal Upanishad. Example — the Abhisheka ritual, Krishna Yajurveda, Shri Rudram.
The layer most ritual practice actually rests on. Example — the Sawan Somwar vrat.
Named secondary texts — still named. Example — vrat tithi determination per Nirnaya Sindhu.
Where most Pratha sits. Example — Sinjara, the Kanwar Yatra.
Passed down rather than written down. We say so plainly rather than dressing it up.
Nothing to score. A correction badge appears instead, on the myth card.
If a claim would score below 3, it is not Dharma. The tag is wrong, not the score.
If a Pratha claim seems to deserve a 3, a named text has been found — and it is Dharma.
There is an internal framework. It is written down, applied to every article, and it includes things this page does not show:
We are keeping those internal while the method is young. We intend to publish them in full once we have been in the open long enough to defend them properly — with a year of articles behind us rather than a handful.
We would rather tell you that plainly than let you assume there is nothing behind the number. If a specific score looks wrong to you, the route to challenge it is at the bottom of this page, and it is open today.
The card at the top of every Ritual Guide and Dharmic Concept. Four things, and each one is doing a specific job.
This guide: 1 core practice (Dharma) · 4 regional customs (Pratha) · 2 corrections
Panchang content — today's tithi, a festival date, sunrise, Rahu Kaal timing — carries no classification tag and no score. Not because it is less reliable, but because it is a different kind of claim.
A tithi is computed, not interpreted. There is no scriptural authority to weigh, because nobody is making a claim about what you should do — only about where the Sun and Moon are. The almanac source is named directly in a Source Strip, which replaces the credibility card.
Where a Panchang article does make a claim about practice — that Sutak applies only where an eclipse is visible, for instance — that specific claim is tagged and corrected like any other. The data is not. The interpretation is.
Panchang sourcing never counts toward a Dharma or Pratha badge anywhere else on the platform. And where publishers disagree on a tithi boundary, we say so in the article rather than presenting one publisher's answer as the correct one.
Primary texts and established editions, not aggregator websites. A verse quoted in a digest is not a verified verse — verification means the original.
The four Vedas with their Samhita, Brahmana and Aranyaka portions · the principal Upanishads · ritual suktas in frequent use — Shri Rudram, Purusha Sukta, Sri Sukta, Durga Sukta
Cited by text, book and chapter wherever the text is divided that way.
The eighteen Mahapuranas · Valmiki Ramayana and the Mahabharata including the Gita · the Dharmashastras · the Kalpa Sutras, especially the Grihya Sutras which govern domestic ritual · Agama and Tantra, the authority for puja procedure
Where two Mahapuranas conflict, we say so in the article rather than picking the one that suits the ritual.
Ritual digests — Nirnaya Sindhu, Dharmasindhu, Hemadri's Chaturvarga Chintamani · bhashyas by Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Sayana · Upapuranas · peer-reviewed indological scholarship
The digests are the operative authority for vrat determination and tithi rules in North India — they matter to our content more than their tier suggests.
Drik Panchang — computed for Delhi-NCR, Purnimanta convention
Entered and verified manually. We do not auto-fetch, because a page served from your own IP returns the wrong city. Panchang sourcing never counts toward a Dharma or Pratha badge.
Six stages. Nothing goes live from a first draft.
Built from the named text, not from what is commonly said about the ritual. Every claim is logged against its source before any prose is written.
Each citation checked against the original text — not against a digest that quotes it. Claims that do not survive are downgraded or dropped.
Including an iconographic accuracy check on every deity image — attributes, hands, vahana, posture, consorts. An article that corrects misconceptions in its text while carrying a wrongly-armed Ganesha has undermined itself.
Every line read once more for one question: does this create, imply or reinforce fear? Includes the astrology and prescription check. Lines that fail are rewritten, even when factually correct.
Whether the regional detail is accurately scoped — and whether we have quietly presented one region's custom as universal.
Going live is not the end of the process. Corrections are made openly, and the article notes when a claim has been revised.
Applied to every sentence on this platform, including this one.
Does this line create, imply, or reinforce fear about ritual practice?
If someone doing this for the first time read this, would they know exactly what to do?
If challenged, can we point to a specific text, chapter, or section for this claim?
Not preferences. These are the conditions under which this platform is worth having.
No remedies for misfortune, no warnings about what happens if you skip a step, no dosha framed as a problem we can solve for a fee.
No horoscopes, no rashifal, no kundli matching. We never derive a ritual from a birth chart, rashi or planetary period. Calendar mechanics, yes. Personal prescription, never.
Selling a kit for a ritual does not alter a word of the guide for it. The guide says a kit is unnecessary, because it is.
If we cannot name the text, we say Pratha. Even when the practice is universal. Even when it would read better as Dharma.
Where a source text places no restriction on who may perform a ritual, neither do we — and we correct claims that do.
Every ritual guide, every samagri list, every correction is free to read and will stay that way.
If a citation is wrong, a score sits too high, a regional practice is misrepresented, or something has been tagged Pratha that you can point to in a text — we want to hear it. Especially the last one.
Every challenge gets a reply from a person. Where you are right, the article changes and says that it changed.
Nobody owns Dharma. Not a company, not an institution, not a person. We are students of this before we are publishers of it, and we read it that way — carefully, against the text, and without assuming the version we grew up with is the only one.
What we can promise is the method: name the text or do not make the claim, separate what is written from what is done, never use fear, and correct in the open. That is the whole of it. Everything else on this platform follows from those four things.