The vastness of Hindu scriptures

Sanatan Dharma doesn't have one book the way some traditions do — it has a tree of texts, built up over a very long span of time, with different branches serving different purposes: knowledge, ritual, philosophy, worship, and everyday conduct. The diagram below is the shape of that tree at a glance; the sections after it fill in the context for each branch.

The Vedas and their Upavedas

The four Vedas are the oldest layer of the tradition's scripture — Rigveda, Yajurveda (which splits into Shukla and Krishna recensions), Samaveda, and Atharvaveda. Each is traditionally paired with an Upaveda, a field of applied knowledge. Sources agree on three of the four — Dhanurveda (archery and warfare), Ayurveda (medicine), and Gandharvaveda (music, dance, and the arts) — but disagree on both the fourth (Arthashastra or Sthapatyaveda/Shilpa Shastra, architecture) and on exactly which Veda each Upaveda pairs with: a commonly taught scheme links Dhanurveda to the Yajurveda and Gandharvaveda to the Samaveda, but authorities differ on whether Ayurveda belongs to the Rigveda or the Atharvaveda. How much authority the layers below the Vedas carry is itself a question traditions answer differently: the Arya Samaj, founded by Dayanand Saraswati in 1875, holds the four Vedas alone to be authoritative and sets the Puranas aside.

Vedanga and Upanga — preserving and applying that knowledge

The six Vedangas exist to make sure the Vedas are recited, understood, and applied correctly: Shiksha (phonetics), Vyakarana (grammar), Chandas (meter), Nirukta (etymology), Jyotisha (astronomy), and Kalpa (ritual procedure). The four Upangas cover how that knowledge is meant to be lived day to day: Nyaya, Mimamsa, Itihasa-Purana, and Dharmashastra. Nyaya and Mimamsa also appear below as two of the six darshanas — the same subjects counted twice, once as an auxiliary discipline supporting Vedic life and once as an independent philosophical school in their own right.

Full list of the 18 Mahapuranas

Brahma, Padma, Vishnu, Shiva (some traditional lists give Vayu in its place), Bhagavata, Narada, Markandeya, Agni, Bhavishya, Brahmavaivarta, Linga, Varaha, Skanda, Vamana, Kurma, Matsya, Garuda, and Brahmanda — plus the two itihasa, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (which contains the Bhagavad Gita), and the Dharmashastra's roughly ten major smritis (Manusmriti and Yajnavalkya Smriti among the best known).

Shad-darshan and the Prasthana Trayi

Alongside scripture sits a distinct body of philosophy: six schools, paired as Nyaya and Vaisheshika, Samkhya and Yoga, Purva Mimamsa and Uttara Mimamsa. The last of these, Vedanta, rests on three texts — the Prasthana Trayi — and nearly every later Vedanta teacher, however much they otherwise disagree, writes a commentary on those same three.

Which Upanishads make up the Prasthana Trayi's first text

The Prasthana Trayi's Upanishads aren't one fixed text but a set — ten principal Upanishads (Isha, Kena, Katha, Prashna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Taittiriya, Aitareya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka) that Adi Shankara wrote commentaries on, with Shvetashvatara, Kaushitaki, and Maitrayaniya commonly added to extend the list to thirteen. The other two members of the Prasthana Trayi are single, specific texts: the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahma Sutras.

Outside the Vedic fold

Not every Indian philosophical tradition accepts the Vedas' authority. Buddhist (Bauddha), Jain (Jaina), and Charvaka (Lokayata, a materialist school) thought developed their own scripture and reasoning independently — a commonly cited count, though how many schools belong here varies by classification. The Agamas are a separate stream again, shaping temple worship, mantra, and personal practice more directly than the Vedas themselves. Six devotional traditions each keep their own Agama texts — Shaiva, Vaishnava, Shakta, Ganapatya, Kaumara, and Saura — though far more has survived from the first three than the last three: the Shaiva Agamas alone number 28 principal texts (Kamika and Karana among them), the Vaishnava tradition's Pancharatra and Vaikhanasa Samhitas number over a hundred (including the Sattvata Samhita), and the Shakta tradition's own Agamas are usually called Tantras (the Mahanirvana Tantra is one of the better known).

Why this matters for a practice like naam jaap

A single mantra, chalisa, or aarti on this site sits somewhere inside this much larger tree — most often near the Puranas, the Agamas, or a bhakti tradition drawing on both. The Learn library on this site is one small, growing window into that tree — mantras, deities, gurus, aarti, and chalisa, each page sourced and cited on its own terms.