Hindu Scripture - The Upanishads

from Hinduism, Ancient and Modern

Next to the Vedas come the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas and the Upanishads. The Brahmanas are theological treatises dealing with sacrificial ceremonial. The Aranyakas are treatises for the use of those who have retired into the forest and the Upanishads deal with the knowledge of Brahman and the means of escape from transmigratory existence, and are intended chiefly for those who have retired from active life. The word Upanishad is a compound of the root sad with the prefixes up and ni, and signifies, not a mere session or assemblage of pupils gathered round their master, but according to Sankara "that knowledge which tears asunder the veil of ignorance and makes one realize and approach Brahman." It also means "esoteric knowledge or esoteric doctrine," as we find in the Taittiriya Upanishad, Chapter I, 3. "We shall now explain the Upanishad of the Samhita," meaning its esoteric meaning. In the Mahabharata, the word Upanishad is used for secret or essence (rahasya), for when Vyasa speaks of "truth being the Upanishad of the Veda, subjugation of the senses the Upanishad of truth, and charity the Upanishad of the control of the senses," (Shanti Parva, 251-12), he means that the essence of the Vedas lies in the practice of truthfulness, and that, without the latter, a knowledge of the Vedas is of no use. Primarily, the word Upanishad therefore means secret knowledge, and, secondarily, the books containing that knowledge.

The Principal Upanishads

The Upanishads are many in number. From the ten or twelve principal ones we have now as many as 52, 108, or 235, and according to some Hindu writers who assign an Upanishad to each Sakha of the Veda, as many as 1,180. The fact seems to be that, as in other branches of literature, the Hindu writers were not wanting in multiplying the Upanishads, till we come to have not only many which betray much poverty of thought or are verbatim copies of the more ancient or even later treatises like the Bhagavad Gita, or the Panchadasi, but embody sectarian views or were written to please the fancy of the writers themselves or their patrons. Otherwise, we should not have had an Allopanishat presenting a strange mixture of Sanskrit and Arabic words in a rather ludicrous manner. The safest way, therefore, to find out which of these treatises is ancient and which of comparatively modern date, is to take those that show originality of thought and have been commented upon or referred to by Sankara, their earliest commentator extant, or which furnish internal evidence of their being authoritative, leaving the study of the rest to the curious or the follower of sectarian views.

The authoritative Upanishads are thus the Isa, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Mundaka, Mandukya, Aitareya, Taittiriya, Chandogya, Brihadaranyaka and Svetasvatara, and one or two others like the Kaushitaki and the Maitreyi. Of these the Ishavasya Upanishad, as already stated, is the fortieth or the last chapter of the Samhita of the Sukla Yajur Veda, and is named after its opening words 'Isavasyam.' It is also called the Vajsanehi Upanishad. The Kena, also named after its opening words, is called the Talavakara Upanishad, and belongs to a Sakha or branch of the Sama Veda. The Katha belongs to a Sakha of the White Yajur Veda, whose name is not known. The Prasna and the Mundaka appertain to the Pippalada and the Saunaka Sakhas of the Atharva Veda, to which also belongs the Mandukya Upanishad. The Aitareya Upanishad belongs to the Aitareya Brahmana, which in its turn belongs to the Sakal Sakha of the Rig Veda.

The Kaushitaki Upanishad which belongs to the Brahmana of the same name also appertains to this Veda. The Taittiriya Upanishad belongs to the Taittiriya Sakha of the Krishna Yajur Veda. The Chandogya Upanishad belongs to the Brahmana of the same name of the Sama Veda, and the Brahmana in its turn belongs to its Kauthami or the Ranayani Sakha, but to which it is uncertain. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad belongs to the White Yajur Veda, while the Svetasvatara belongs to the Black Yajur Veda. The reason why each of the Vedas had its own Upanishad was either that the knowledge portion of each of its Sakhas was so closely connected with its ritualistic portion, as to require a knowledge of the latter for a knowledge of the former, or because the followers of each Sakha were anxious to have their own Upanishad and were too isolated to know that another Sakha of the same Veda or another Veda had a similar body of esoteric doctrines also. And yet the identity of thought in all the Upanishads is truly remarkable, especially in the final results arrived at.

Authorship of the Upanishads

The Upanishads are dialogues between teachers and pupils, or discussions between sages at kings' courts, or in the forest. In some cases the gods are declared as imparting knowledge of Brahman to men. In other cases the Rishis describe their own experiences of truth. But seldom do we find any clue to the authorship of an Upanishad, either in itself or in other contemporary or later works. Neither the style nor the doctrine helps us in this respect. Some of the Upanishads, like the Brihadaranyaka, give long lists of teachers through whom the knowledge of Brahman descended from teacher to pupil. Others merely give a few names, for instance, from Brahma the knowledge descended to Atharvan, from Atharvan to Angiras, from Angiras to Bharadwaja and from Bharadwaja to Angi, and from him to Saunaka

The question does not puzzle the Indian student, who looks upon the whole of what is said in the Upanishads as revealed truth. To him the Upanishads are not merely guesses at truth, but truth itself. More properly speaking, they are records in human language (and therefore more or less imperfect) of what transcends human thought and human speech. "As the branch of a tree is sometimes resorted to for pointing out the lunar digit on the first day of the light half of the month, so the Vedas are used for indicating the Supreme Self. What that object which is to be proved in its nature is, is unknown either to the Vedas, which are without life, or to those who merely read them, and yet those Brahmanas who are truly acquainted with the Vedas, succeed in obtaining a knowledge of the object knowable by the Vedas, through the Vedas" (Mahabharata Udyoga Parva, Chapter 12, verses 50-53).

Many of them contain various upasanas or meditations, for steadying the mind and qualifying it for the reception of the highest truth. All of them claim to be of divine origin, for we find the Brihadaranyaka speaking of the Vedas and the Upanishads as "the breathing of the Great Being" (Chapter II, Brahmana 4, verse 10), while Sankara and his predecessor, Vyasa, declare "Brahman to be the cause of the Sastra" (Sutra 2, Chapter 1, pada 1 of the Brahma Sutras). "The Supreme Being absorbs the Vedas at the end of a Kalpa (cycle of creation), and reveals them to Brahma and others at the commencement of the next Kalpa, and that though for ordinary mortals the course of practical existence is cut off at the end of each Kalpa, it is not so, for certain beings who, by their superior knowledge and power, assume the same form and power in different cycles, and are distinguished by the possession of the same light. For such beings dissolution and creation of the world are like sleep and awakening from sleep, and therefore the same things with the same names appear to them in each Kalpa" (Commentaries on Brahma Sutras I, III, 30).

But whether this argument be accepted or not, there can be no doubt that the ultimate truths taught in the Upanishads are eternal and all science or philosophy, ancient or modern, though it may explain, cannot add to them. Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata, and the compiler of the Vedas, is not the author of the Upanishads, though he may have arranged them in their present shape. All therefore that can be said as to their authorship is that they represent the teachings of a long line of teachers, handed down verbally from teacher to pupil, and that even the Rishis between whom the dialogues mentioned in them were held, were not the authors but the enunciators of the doctrines embodied in them.

Date, Authority and Subject Matter

For the same reason it is also impossible to define the date of any of the above Upanishads. The theory which assigned 800 to 1,000 BC to the Mantra, and 600 BC to the Brahmana and the Aranyaka portion of the Vedas has now been controverted, and BG Tilak, author of the Orion, ascribes from 5,000 to 3,000 BC to the Mantra portion, and 1,400 to 500 BC to the pre-Buddhist period which would certainly carry the Brahmana and the Aranyaka portion much earlier than 600 BC. It may be, that some of the larger Upanishads, like the Chandogya and the Brihadaranyaka, were collected in their present form at much later dates, and the mention of the Sankhya and the Yoga doctrines in others, such as the Svetasvatara, may place them at even more recent periods; but the main doctrines of the Upanishads have been prevalent in India from very ancient times. Beyond this it is unsafe to go, in the face of difference of opinion regarding everything connected with Hindu chronology, and leaving this question for persons of wider research to solve, we shall pass on to indicate briefly the other matters connected with these treatises.

Even in ancient India persons seem not to have been wanting who denied the authority of the Upanishads, for we find a Sutra of Jaimini, the author of the Purva Mimamsa, to the effect that "as the purport of the Veda is action, those passages whose purport is not action are purportless" (Jaimini Sutras 1, 2, 1). The argument was that the Upanishads which purport to give information about an existing entity like Brahman, were either purportless or were subordinate to those texts of the Veda which dealt with sacrificial action. The reply of Vyasa and his commentator Sankara, in the Brahma Sutras, was that the Veda has a meaning in so far only as it conduces to the highest end of man – freedom from the Samsara and unity with Brahman, and that such passages of it as give information about existing entities like Brahman, and point out the means for its attainment, instead of being purportless, serve the highest end of man.

This opinion, which is supported by the Mahabharata, every modern reader of the Upanishads shall very likely share in, for, while to him the sacrificial portion of the Veda may have only an antiquarian or historical interest, the philosophical portion has a much deeper and more vital one, in pointing out to him the road traveled by persons who were more earnest seekers after truth and who have left for him their experiences of the road. Hidden within much allegory and fanciful description and play upon words or crude or primitive ideas of physics, etc., and in spite of all faults of meter and grammar, and peculiarity of language, the Upanishads record the views of men who were deeply in earnest in finding out a solution to some of the most cardinal problems of existence, and who have solved them in a manner which has left little for future generations to add or alter.

The goal of the rishis, whatever be the interval of time and space at which they were uttering or discussing the truths embodied in the Upanishads, was one and one only – how to attain unity both in nature and in man – and in spite of many digressions and subordinate or inferior meditations included under the name of apara vidya (lower knowledge), they never lost sight of their ultimate aim – to demonstrate the presence of the infinite in the finite, and of the self in man being no other but the highest self. Tat tvam asi (Thou art that), aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman). This atman (self) is Brahman (ayam atina Brahma), Brahman is thought (Pragyanam Brahma). Truth, Intelligence, and Infinity are Brahman (Satyam Gyanamanantam Brahma). These great sayings, Maha vakyas, of the Upanishads embody the highest truths given for man to know.

There is a certain want of system in some of these treatises, and many a passage now and then baffles the ingenuity of the commentators to explain in a reasonable manner. But as to their ultimate object there cannot be the slightest doubt. This was to start from a system of apara vidya, in which Brahman was declared to be the Omniscient, Omnipotent, and All-Pervading Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer of the universe, as the Giver of the fruit of action, as the Internal ruler of all, and to attain to the absolute or Para Brahman, which was declared to be without any attributes whatever, transcending speech and mind, and described as "neti, neti," "not this, not this," and comprehended and realized only in silence. From many of their passages arise the deepest emotions and the mind is always elevated by their perusal. They are the final authority for all disputed doctrines of the Vedanta philosophy, and are appealed to by philosophers who hold such divergent views as Sankara, the apostle of absolute Advaitism, Ramanuja, the teacher of Advaitism with a qualification, and Madhava, the apostle of Dvaitism (duality). Each of these, as well as the followers of the Sankhya and the Yoga systems of Indian philosophy, finds texts in them to support his views, and in some cases they can do so without straining the meaning. But it is absolute unity which alone finds the most support from these treatises.

Source: Nath, Rai Bahadur. Hinduism, Ancient and Modern.

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