Ramey/H5M, 22. How Many ‘Sacred Texts’ does Hinduism have?

Counting the number of “sacred texts” that people identify with Hinduism is complicated in two ways. First, people disagree about which texts are actually “sacred” and which are not. While one common, scholarly definition of sacred is something set apart, as in a text distinct from everyday stories, when people declare a text sacred, they commonly view the text as especially authoritative in some fashion. Second, counting individual texts requires an understanding of what is a different text and what is a part of a larger text.