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,"

66

as we find

in the Taittreya Upanishad, Chapter I, 3. "We shall now explain the Upanishad of the Samhita," meaning its esoteric meaning. In the Mahábhárata, the word Upanishad is used for secret or essence (rahasya), for when Vyása 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 Upanishads are many in number. From the ten or twelve principal ones we have now as many as 52—108 — The number of 235, and according to some Hindu writers who assign authoritative an Upanishad to each Sákhá of the Veda, as many Upanishads. as 1,180. The fact seems to be that, as in other branches of literature, the Hindu writers were not

manner.

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 Bhagvad Gita, or the Panchdasi, 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 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 bave 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, Mándukya, Aitreya, Taittreya, Chandogya, Brihad Aranyaka and Swetáswetara, and one or two others like the Kaushitaki and the Maitreyi. Of these

the Isávásya 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 'Isávásyam.' It is also called the Vajsanehi Upanishad. The Kena, also named after its opening words, is called the Tálavakára Upanishad, and belongs to a Sákhá or branch of the Sáma Veda. The Katha belongs to a Sákhá of the White Yajur Veda, whose name is not known. The Prasna and the Mundaka appertain to the Pippaláda and the Saunaka Sákhás of the Atharva Veda, to which also belongs the Mándukya Upanishad. The Aitreya Upanishad belongs to the Aitreya Bráhmana, which in its turn belongs to the Sákal Sákhá of the RigVeda. The Kaushitaki Upanishad, which belongs to the Brahmana of the same name, also appertains to this Veda. The Taittreya Upanishad belongs to the Taittreya Sakhá of the Krishna Yajur Veda. The Chandogya Upanishad belongs to the Brahmana of the same name of the Sáma Veda, and the Brahmana in its turn belongs to its Kauthami or the Ranayani Sákhá, but to which it is uncertain. The Brihad Aranyaka Upanishad belongs to the White Yajur Veda, while the Swetáswetara 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 Sákhás 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 Sákhá were anxious to have their own Upanishad and were too isolated to know that another Sákhá 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. The Upanishads are dialogues between teachers and pupils,

or discussion between sages at kings' courts, The authorship or in the forest. In some cases the gods are of the Upani- declared as imparting knowledge of Brahman to shads. 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 Brihad Aranyaka, give long lists of teachers through whom the knowledge of Brahman descended from teacher to pupil. Others

or

merely give a few names, for instance, from Brahmá the knowledge descended to Atharwa, from Atharwa 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 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." (Mahábhárata Udyoga Parva, Chapter 12, verses 50-53.) Many of them contain various upásanás 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 Brihad Aranyaka speaking of the Vedas and the Upanishads as "the breathing of the Great Being" (Chapter II, Bráhmana 4, verse 10), while Sankara and his predecessor, Vyasa, declare "Brahman to be the cause of the Sastra." (Sutra 2, Chapter 1, páda 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 ɔthers 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. Vyása, the author of the Mahábhárata, 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.

Their 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 B.C. to the Mantra, and 600 B. C. to the Brahmana and the Aranyaka portion of the Vedas has now been controverted, and Mr. B G. Tilak, author of the Orion, ascribes from 5,000 to 3,000 B.C. to the Mantra portion, and 1,400 to 500 B.C to the pre-Buddhist period which would certainly carry the Brahmana and the Aranyaka portion much earlier than 600 B.C, It may be, that some of the larger Upanishads, like the Chandogya and the Brihad Aranyaka, 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 Swetáswetara, 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 Mimánsá, to the effect that 66 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 Vyása 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, viz., freedom from the Sansara and unity with Brahmau, 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 Mahábhárata, 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 travelled by persons who were most 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 metre 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, viz., 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 apará vidyá, they never lost sight of their ultimate aim, viz., to demonstrate the presence of the infinite in the flnite, and of the self in man being no other but the highest self. Tat twam asi (Thou art that), I am Brahman (aham Brahmásmi). This átman (self) is Brahman (ayam atina Brahma), Brahman is thought (Pragyanam Brahma). Truth, Intelligence, and Infinity are Brahman (Satyam Gyanamanantam Brahma). These great sayings Mahá 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 Apará (lower) Vidya (knowledge), 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 Pará Brahman, which was declared