38 Facts About Upanishads

Upanishads are late Vedic Sanskrit texts that supplied the basis of later Hindu philosophy.

The aim of all Upanishads is to investigate the nature of Atman, and "direct[ing] the enquirer toward it.

Around 108 Upanishads are known, of which the first dozen or so are the oldest and most important and are referred to as the principal or main Upanishads.

The mukhya Upanishads are found mostly in the concluding part of the Brahmanas and Aranyakas and were, for centuries, memorized by each generation and passed down orally.

The mukhya Upanishads predate the Common Era, but there is no scholarly consensus on their date, or even on which ones are pre- or post-Buddhist.

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Remainder, 95 Upanishads are part of the Muktika canon, composed from about the last centuries of 1st-millennium BCE through about 15th-century CE.

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer was deeply impressed by the Upanishads and called it "the most profitable and elevating reading which.

The ancient Upanishads are embedded in the Vedas, the oldest of Hinduism's religious scriptures, which some traditionally consider to be apauruseya, which means "not of a man, superhuman" and "impersonal, authorless".

Various philosophical theories in the early Upanishads have been attributed to famous sages such as Yajnavalkya, Uddalaka Aruni, Shvetaketu, Shandilya, Aitareya, Balaki, Pippalada, and Sanatkumara.

The chronology of the early Upanishads is difficult to resolve, states philosopher and Sanskritist Stephen Phillips, because all opinions rest on scanty evidence and analysis of archaism, style and repetitions across texts, and are driven by assumptions about likely evolution of ideas, and presumptions about which philosophy might have influenced which other Indian philosophies.

Later Upanishads, numbering about 95, called minor Upanishads, are dated from the late 1st-millennium BCE to mid 2nd-millennium CE.

Scholars are reasonably sure that the early Upanishads were produced at the geographical center of ancient Brahmanism, comprising the regions of Kuru-Panchala and Kosala-Videha together with the areas immediately to the south and west of these.

These are further divided into Upanishads associated with Shaktism, Sannyasa (renunciation, monastic life), Shaivism (god Shiva), Vaishnavism (god Vishnu), Yoga, and Samanya (general, sometimes referred to as Samanya-Vedanta).

Some of the Upanishads are categorized as "sectarian" since they present their ideas through a particular god or goddess of a specific Hindu tradition such as Vishnu, Shiva, Shakti, or a combination of these such as the Skanda Upanishad.

One chronology assumes that the Aitareya, Taittiriya, Kausitaki, Mundaka, Prasna, and Katha Upanishads has Buddha's influence, and is consequently placed after the 5th century BCE, while another proposal questions this assumption and dates it independent of Buddha's date of birth.

The Kena, Mandukya, and Isa Upanishads are typically placed after these Principal Upanishads, but other scholars date these differently.

Each of the principal Upanishads can be associated with one of the schools of exegesis of the four Vedas.

The new Upanishads often have little relation to the Vedic corpus and have not been cited or commented upon by any great Vedanta philosopher: their language differs from that of the classic Upanishads, being less subtle and more formalized.

In 1908, for example, four previously unknown Upanishads were discovered in newly found manuscripts, and these were named Bashkala, Chhagaleya, Arsheya, and Saunaka, by Friedrich Schrader, who attributed them to the first prose period of the Upanishads.

Ancient Upanishads have long enjoyed a revered position in Hindu traditions, and authors of numerous sectarian texts have tried to benefit from this reputation by naming their texts as Upanishads.

All Upanishads are associated with one of the four Vedas—Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda.

These lists associated each Upanishad with one of the four Vedas, many such lists exist, and these lists are inconsistent across India in terms of which Upanishads are included and how the newer Upanishads are assigned to the ancient Vedas.

Upanishads include sections on philosophical theories that have been at the foundation of Indian traditions.

On occasions, the Upanishads extend the task of the Aranyakas by making the ritual allegorical and giving it a philosophical meaning.

Upanishads describe the universe, and the human experience, as an interplay of Purusha and Prakrti (the temporary, changing material world, nature).

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Shankara in his discussions of the Advaita Vedanta philosophy referred to the early Upanishads to explain the key difference between Hinduism and Buddhism, stating that Hinduism asserts that Atman exists, whereas Buddhism asserts that there is no soul, no self.

Upanishads contain four sentences, the Mahavakyas, which were used by Shankara to establish the identity of Atman and Brahman as scriptural truth:.

Sri Ramanuja frequently cited the Upanishads, and stated that Vishishtadvaita is grounded in the Upanishads.

The Upanishads, according to the Vishishtadvaita school, teach individual souls to be of the same quality as the Brahman, but quantitatively they are distinct.

The Brahman in the Upanishads is a living reality, states Fowler, and "the Atman of all things and all beings" in Sri Ramanuja's interpretation.

Several scholars have recognised parallels between the philosophy of Pythagoras and Plato and that of the Upanishads, including their ideas on sources of knowledge, concept of justice and path to salvation, and Plato's allegory of the cave.

Upanishads have been translated into various languages including Persian, Italian, Urdu, French, Latin, German, English, Dutch, Polish, Japanese, Spanish and Russian.

Upanishads found his own philosophy was in accord with the Upanishads, which taught that the individual is a manifestation of the one basis of reality.

Poet T S Eliot, inspired by his reading of the Upanishads, based the final portion of his famous poem The Waste Land upon one of its verses.

The Upanishads insisted on oneness of soul, excluded all plurality, and therefore, all proximity in space, all succession in time, all interdependence as cause and effect, and all opposition as subject and object.

Max Muller, in his review of the Upanishads, summarizes the lack of systematic philosophy and the central theme in the Upanishads as follows,.

The key-note of the old Upanishads is "know thyself, " but with a much deeper meaning than that of the ????? sea?t?? of the Delphic Oracle.

The "know thyself" of the Upanishads means, know thy true self, that which underlines thine Ego, and find it and know it in the highest, the eternal Self, the One without a second, which underlies the whole world.