The Upanisads

A Complete Guide

Signe Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781317636960
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

The Upani?ads are among the most sacred foundational scriptures in the Hindu religion. Composed from 800 BCE onwards and making up part of the larger Vedic corpus, they offer the reader "knowledge lessons" on life, death, and immortality. While they are essential to understanding Hinduism and Asian religions more generally, their complexities make them almost impenetrable to anyone but serious scholars of Sanskrit and ancient Indian culture.

This book is divided into five parts:

• Composition, authorship, and transmission of the Upani?ads;
• The historical, cultural, and religious background of the Upani?ads;
• Religion and philosophy in the Upani?ads;
• The classical Upani?ads;
• The later Upani?ads.

The chapters cover critical issues such as the origins of the Upani?ads, authorship, and redaction, as well as exploring the broad religious and philosophical themes within the texts. The guide analyzes each of the Upani?ads separately, unpacking their contextual relevance and explaining difficult terms and concepts. The Upani?ads: A Complete Guide is a unique and valuable reference source for undergraduate religious studies, history, and philosophy students and researchers who want to learn more about these foundational sacred texts and the religious lessons in the Hindu tradition.

1Introduction

What is an Upaniṣad?

Signe Cohen

The Upaniṣads are among the most important religious and philosophical Hindu texts. Significant ideas that are still embraced by millions of Hindus today, such as ātman (the eternal self), brahman (the cosmic divine force), karma, reincarnation, and the idea that salvation can be defined as freedom from an endless cycle of death and rebirth are first formulated in these ancient Sanskrit texts.

The Upaniṣads are a genre of philosophical and religious texts that flourished in India from about 700 BCE onwards. The texts are composed in Sanskrit, an ancient Indo-European tongue that is the distant ancestor of modern Indian languages such as Hindi, Bengali, Panjabi, Marathi, and Gujarati. Some of the oldest Upaniṣads are prose texts, while many later ones are composed in verse. The Upaniṣadic texts range in length from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, which fills 60–70 pages of printed Sanskrit text, to the brief Īśā Upaniṣad in just eighteen verses and the Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣad in twelve short prose sections. There are hundreds of texts called Upaniṣads, all dealing with the same central theme – the mystical identity between the cosmic force brahman and the immortal inner self of a living being, ātman. Texts titled Upaniṣad have been composed in Sanskrit throughout the middle ages and into the early modern era. As a genre, the Upaniṣads can be defined as philosophical texts exploring the relationship between brahman and ātman for the purposes of spiritual liberation.

Central to all Upaniṣads is the idea that all humans are bound to an unsatisfying existence by our ignorance, and that true knowledge is the path to liberation. Jñāna, or knowledge, is a profound understanding of the reality underlying all appearance. The Upaniṣads differentiate between two forms of knowledge. The lower (aparā) knowledge is merely knowledge for its own sake, such as traditional learning and familiarity with sacred scriptures. The higher (parā) knowledge, on the other hand, is the intuitive knowledge “by which one grasps the imperishable.”¹ This soteriological knowledge of brahman is often imparted by a teacher, although one theistic Upaniṣad suggests that one can also gain knowledge “through the grace of God.”² Ignorance (avidyā), on the other hand, is that which holds a person back from enlightenment and must be avoided at all costs. Ignorance is often compared to a tangled knot,³ or to fetters that bind a person to an unsatisfying existence.⁴ Upaniṣadic characters who realize their own ignorance often immediately set out on a quest for a knowledgeable teacher. Knowledge leads to liberation (mokṣa) from death and rebirth, which is often compared to being released from chains or fetters.

What does “Upaniṣad” mean?

The etymology of the term upaniṣad is still the subject of some debate. The word is derived from the Sanskrit verb sad, preceded by the preverbs upa- and ni-. The most common meaning of sad is “to sit.” The preverb upa- may express proximity (“near”), and the preverb ni- a downward motion. Upaniṣad may therefore be translated as “sitting down near” someone. The term is traditionally interpreted as a reference to the student sitting down at the teacher’s feet to receive the secret teachings about ātman and brahman. The Upaniṣads themselves often refer to teachers and students and the process of learning; in fact, the student–teacher relationship is the primary social relationship in the Upaniṣadic texts, far more significant than the relationships between parents and children or between husband and wife. Finding the right teacher is crucial, as the wisdom seekers in the Upaniṣads discover. The seekers in the Upaniṣadic texts end up finding the knowledge they need both in learned Brahman priests and in more unlikely preceptors such as kings, or even talking animals. The teacher’s background matters far less than the knowledge he (or she or it) possesses. It is perhaps reasonable, then, that the texts themselves are named after the act of sitting down at the feet of a teacher to absorb the essential ideas about ātman and brahman.

Other etymologies of the term upaniṣad have also been proposed. The Sanskrit scholar Oldenberg suggests a connection between upaniṣad and the Sanskrit noun upāsana, “worship.”⁵ Deussen proposes the meaning “secret doctrine,”⁶ and Schayer “the equivalence between two magical substances.”⁷ Gren-Eklund argues that the word upaniṣad may originally have denoted “the fact of two things being placed in a relation to each other.”⁸ Falk suggests, based on usage of the verb sad with the prefixes upa- and ni- in the older Vedic language, that the term upaniṣad should be rendered “effective power” (“bewirkende Macht”).⁹ Olivelle, in his standard edition and translation of the Upaniṣads, translates the term upaniṣad “hidden connection,” “hidden name,” or “hidden teachings.”¹⁰ Witzel, in his edition of the Kaṭha Āraṇyaka, translates upaniṣad as “formula of magical equivalence.”¹¹

Another possible translation of upaniṣad is “that which lies (sad) beneath,” or “underlying reality.”¹² This meaning is not too far removed from Olivelle’s “hidden connection.” The Upaniṣads are intensely occupied with the process of enlightenment as a gradual progression toward the ultimate, underlying reality. It is possible that this central Upaniṣadic idea of a quest for...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Notes on the contributors
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: What is an Upaniṣad?
• Part I Composition, authorship, and transmission of the Upaniṣads
• Part II The historical, cultural, and religious background of the Upaniṣads
• Part III Religion and philosophy in the Upaniṣads
• Part IV The classical Upaniṣads
• Part V The later Upaniṣads
• Index Locorum
• Index