Indian Legend says there are 330 million gods in Hinduism?

“Indian lore contains a well-known tale about a Hindu man who spent his entire life as a kind of theistic census taker. He went from village to village, house to house, occupation to occupation, caste to caste, inquiring at every location about which deities were worshipped at that place by those people. After traveling throughout India and recording the names of all the deities who were worshipped, tradition states that he chronicled the list in a great book. The number is traditionally held to have been 330 million. When the weary traveler finally returned to his home village, exhausted and in his ninety-third year, he was asked to count how many gods were in his book, He spent seven years counting the gods, and at the end of the book he wrote the grand total—one. He declared in his dying breath that there is “one God worshipped in India.”

The author goes on to make this Missiological claim.

"This story symbolizes the classic problem concerning Hindu theism, and it is the reason why the Western assumption that Hindus are polytheistic is not as simple as the observations of a casual visitor to India might indicate. On the one hand, popular Hinduism seems to have no end to gods and goddesses who are worshipped and adored. On the other hand, India is known throughout the world for its intricate and sublime philosophy that teaches there is only one ultimate reality."

(Timothy C. Tennent, Christianity at the Religious Round Table: Evangelicalism in Conversation with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Grand Rapids, Baker Academic, 2002. p. 38.)