Etymology

The Sanskrit word " " (IAST: ruti; IPA for Sanskrit: [rut i]) has multiple meanings
depending on context. It means "hearing, listening", a call to "listen to a speech", any form of
communication that is aggregate of sounds (news, report, rumor, noise, hearsay).[15] The word
is also found in ancient geometry texts of India, where it means "the diagonal of a tetragon or
hypotenuse of a triangle",[15] and is a synonym of karna.[16] The word ruti is also found in
ancient Indian music literature, where it means "a particular division of the octave, a quarter
tone or interval" out of twenty-two enumerated major tones, minor tones, and semitones.[15]
In music, it refers the smallest measure of sound a human being can detect, and the set of
twenty-two ruti and forty four half Shruti, stretching from about 250 Hz to 500 Hz, is called
the Shruti octave.[17]

In scholarly works on Hinduism, ruti refers to ancient Vedic texts from India. Monier-
Williams[15] traces the contextual history of this meaning of ruti as, "which has been heard
or communicated from the beginning, sacred knowledge that was only heard and verbally
transmitted from generation to generation, the Veda, from earliest Rishis (sages) in Vedic
tradition.[1] In scholarly literature, ruti is also spelled as Shruti.[18][19][20]

Distinction between ruti and smti

Smriti literally "that which is remembered," refers to a body of Hindu texts usually attributed
to an author, traditionally written down but constantly revised, in contrast to rutis (the Vedic
literature) considered authorless, that were transmitted verbally across the generations and
fixed.[2] Smriti is a derivative secondary work and is considered less authoritative than Sruti
in Hinduism.[21] Sruti are fixed and its originals preserved better, while each Smriti text exists
in many versions, with many different readings.[2] Smritis were considered fluid and freely
rewritten by anyone in ancient and medieval Hindu tradition.[2][22]

Both rutis and smtis represent categories of texts of different traditions of Hindu
philosophy.[23] According to Gokul Narang, the Sruti are asserted to be of divine origin in the
mythologies of the Puranas.[24] In contrast, states Roy Perrett, ancient and medieval Hindu
philosophers have denied that ruti are divine, authored by God.[8]

The Mms tradition, famous in Hindu tradition for its Sruti exegetical contributions,
radically critiqued the notion and any relevance for concepts such as "author", the "sacred
text" or divine origins of Sruti; the Mimamsa school claimed that the relevant question is the
meaning of the Sruti, values appropriate for human beings in it, and the commitment to it.[25]

Nstika philosophical schools such as the Crvkas of the first millennium BCE did not
accept the authority of the rutis and considered them to be human works suffering from
incoherent rhapsodies, inconsistencies and tautologies.[10][11]

Smtis are considered to be human thoughts in response to the rutis.[2] Traditionally, all
smtis are regarded to ultimately be rooted in or inspired by rutis.[2]
Texts

The ruti literature include the four Vedas:[26][27]

Rigveda
Yajurveda
Samaveda
Atharvaveda

Each of these Vedas include the following texts, and these belong to the ruti canon:[28]

Samhitas
Brahmanas
Aranyakas
Upanishads

The literature of the shakhas, or schools, further amplified the material associated with each
of the four core traditions.[29]

Of the above rutis, the Upanishads are most widely known, and the central ideas of them are
the spiritual foundation of Hinduism.[13] Patrick Olivelle writes,

Even though theoretically the whole of Vedic corpus is accepted as revealed truth [ruti], in
reality it is the Upanishads that have continued to influence the life and thought of the various
religious traditions that we have come to call Hindu. Upanishads are the scriptures par
excellence of Hinduism.

Patrick Olivelle[14]