Re: Mountains
Given how to this day new sects are forming (such as the submitters), I always thought that the 73 is the total by the Day of Judgement.
People in the past have tried to classify the beliefs of their era into 73 sects, but many of those classifications no longer exist and many new sects have sprung up since then. Perhaps what an individual in the past considered as 3 distinct sects were in fact a single one, etc etc etc.