Upanishad

 

The Upaniṣads are ancient texts from India that were composed orally in Sanskrit between about 700 B.C.E. and 300 B.C.E. There are thirteen major Upaniṣads, many of which were likely composed by multiple authors and are comprised of a variety of styles. As part of a larger group of texts, known as the Vedas, the Upaniṣads were composed in a ritual context, yet they mark the beginning of a reasoned enquiry into a number of perennial philosophical questions concerning the nature of being, the nature of the self, the foundation of life, what happens to the self at the time of death, the good life, and ways of interacting with others. As such, the Upaniṣads are often considered to be the fountainhead of the subsequent rich and varied philosophical tradition in India. The Upaniṣads contain some of the oldest discussions about key philosophical terms such as ātman (the self), brahman (ultimate reality), karma, and yoga, as well as saṃsāra (worldly existence), mokṣa (enlightenment), puruṣa (person), and prakṛti (nature)—all of which would continue to be central to the philosophical vocabulary of later traditions. In addition to contributing to the development of a discursive language, the Upaniṣads further frame later philosophical debates by their exploration of a number of means of attaining knowledge, including deduction, comparison, introspection, and debate.

Main Upanishads

The Upaniṣads are the fourth and final section of a larger group of texts called the Vedas. There are four different collections of Vedic texts, the Ṛgveda, Yajurveda, Sāmaveda, and Atharvaveda, with each of these collections containing four different layers of textual material: the Saṃhitās, Brāhmaṇas, Āraṇyakas, and Upaniṣads. Although each of these textual layers has a variety of orientations, the Saṃhitās are known to be largely comprised of  hymns praising gods and the Brāhmaṇas are mostly concerned with describing and explaining Vedic rituals. The Āraṇyakas and Upaniṣads are also firmly rooted in ritual, but with both groups of texts there is an increasing emphasis on understanding the meaning of ritual, while some sections of the Upaniṣads seem to move completely away from the ritual setting into naturalistic and philosophical inquiry about the processes of life and death, the workings of the body, and the nature of reality.

The Vedic Upaniṣads are widely recognized as being composed during two chronological stages.The texts of the first period, which would include the Bṛhadāraṇyaka (BU),  Chāndogya (CU),  Taittirīya (TU),  Aitareya (AU) and Kauṣītakī (KsU),  are generally dated between 700 and 500 B.C.E., and are considered to predate the emergence of the so-called heterodox traditions, such as the Buddhists, Jains, and Ājīvikas. Scholarly consensus dates the second stage of Vedic Upaniṣads, which includes the Kena (KeU),   Kaṭha (KaU),   Īśā (IU),   vetāśvatara (SU),   Praśna (PU),   Muṇḍaka (MuU), Māṇḍūkya (MaU), and Maitrī (MtU), between 300-100 B.C.E. The older Upaniṣads are primarily composed in prose, while the later ones tend to be in metrical form, but any individual text may contain a diversity of compositional styles. Additionally, many individual Upaniṣads consist of various types of material, including creation myths, interpretations of ritual actions, lineages of teachers and students, magical formulae, procreation rites, and narratives and dialogues about famous teachers, students, and kings.

The so-called Hindu darśanas—Nyāya, Vaiśeṣika, Mīmāṃsā, and Vedānta—do not adhere to the chronology above, as they regard all the Vedic Upaniṣads as śruti, meaning a timeless revealed knowledge. The remaining two Hindu darśanas—Sāṃkhya and Yoga—are usually read as supporting the Vedas.  However, when tracing the historical development of philosophical ideas, it is helpful to note some differences in orientation between the two stages of Upanishadic material. While all the Upaniṣads devote considerable attention to topics such as the self (ātman) and ultimate reality (brahman), as well as assume some version of the karma doctrine, the earlier texts tend to characterize ultimate reality in abstract and impersonal ways, while the later Upaniṣads, particularly the Īśā and Śvetāśvatara, are more theistic in orientation. Meanwhile, the later Upaniṣads explicitly address a number of key topics such as yoga, mokṣa, and saṃsāra, all of which would continue to be central aspects of subsequent Indian philosophy.

Minor Upanishads

In addition to those affiliated with the Vedas, there are literally hundreds of other texts bearing the name “Upaniṣad.” These texts have been grouped together by scholars according to common themes, such as the Yoga Upaniṣads (Upaniṣads on Yoga), the Saṃnyāsa Upaniṣads (Upaniṣads on Renunciation), the Śaiva Upaniṣads (Upaniṣads on the Hindu God Śiva), and the Vaiṣṇava Upaniṣads (Upaniṣads on the Hindu God Viṣṇu). The majority of these texts were composed between the 2nd and 15th centuries CE, although texts referred to as  “upaniṣad” have continued to be composed up to the present day. Many of the post-Vedic Upaniṣads further develop core concepts from the Vedic Upaniṣads, such as ātman, brahman, karma, and mokṣa. In addition to a shared conceptual world, the post-Vedic Upaniṣads often quote extensively from the earlier texts and feature many of the same teachers and students, such as Yājñavalkya, Janaka, and Śaunaka.

Due to their connection with previous Vedic material, the Upaniṣads generally assume a ritual context, containing many passages that explain the significance of ritual actions or interpret mantras (sacred verses) uttered during the ritual. One of the most prevalent tendencies to continue from the ritual texts is an attempt to identify the underlying connections (bandhus) that exist among different orders of reality. Often these connections were made among three spheres: the cosmos, the body of the sponsor of the ritual (yajamāna), and the ritual grounds—in other words, between the macrocosm, the microcosm, and the ritual. An illustrative example appears at the beginning of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, where the different body parts of the horse in the sacrifice (aśvamedha) are compared to the different elements, regions, and intervals of time in the cosmos. The implication is that by reflecting on the relational composition of the horse, one can understand the structure of the universe.

The Self

One of the most widely discussed topics throughout both the early and late Upaniṣads is the self (ātman). The word “ātman” is a reflexive pronoun, likely derived from √an (to breathe). ātman had already a wide range of lexical meanings, including ‘breath’, ‘spirit’, and ‘body’. By the time of the Upaniṣads, the word was used in a variety of ways, sometimes referring to the material body, but often designating something like an essence, a life-force, consciousness, or ultimate reality.

One of the most well known teachings of ātman appears in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (6.1-16), as the instruction of the brahmin Uddālaka Āruṇi to his son Śvetaketu. Uddālaka begins by explaining that one can know the universal of a material substance from a particular object made of that substance: by means of something made of clay, one can know clay; by means of an ornament made of copper, one can know copper; by means of a nail cutter made of iron, one can know iron. Uddālaka uses these examples to explain that objects are not created from nothing, but rather that creation is a process of transformation from an original being (sat) which emerges into the multiplicity of forms that characterizes our everyday experiences. Uddālaka’s explanation of creation is often assumed to have influenced the satkāryavāda theory—the theory that the effect exists within the cause—which was accepted by the Sāṃkhya, Yoga, and Vedānta darśanas.

Karma Samsara and Moksa

Karma (“karman”) is another central concept in the Indian philosophical tradition that finds some of its first philosophical articulations in the Upaniṣads. Literally meaning ‘action’, karma emerges out of a ritual context where it refers to any ritual action, which, if performed correctly, yields beneficial results, but if performed incorrectly, brings about negative consequences. The Upaniṣads do not offer any explicit theory of karma, but do contain a number of teachings that seem to extend the notion of karma beyond the ritual context to more general understandings of moral retribution and of causality. Yājñavalkya, for example, when asked by Ārtabhāga about what happens to a person after death, responds that a person becomes good by good action and bad by bad action. Yājñavalkya assumes that karma takes place across lifetimes, he does not attempt to explain the mechanisms of rebirth. In the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, however, King Pravāhaṇa Jaivali is more specific about how karma and rebirth operate, describing the link between them in terms of a naturalistic philosophy

saṃsāra refers to the cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. All living creatures, including the gods, are considered to be a part of saṃsāra. Accordingly, death is not considered to be final, and rebirth is an essential aspect of existence.

Closely related to saṃsāra is mokṣa, the concept that one can escape or be released from the endless cycle of repeated births. Similar to saṃsāra, the Upaniṣads do not contain an explicit theory about mokṣa. The Upaniṣads describe immortality in different ways, including having a long life span, surviving death in the heavenly world, becoming one with the essential being of the universe, and being preserved in the social memory.

Upaniṣads are composite and fragmented, and therefore lacking a coherent philosophical position. The early Upaniṣads do not contain passages explicitly articulating method, but with the development of yoga and meditation in the later texts, introspection begins to be formalized as a philosophical mode of enquiry. In addition to providing a repository of terms, concepts, and, to a certain degree, philosophical methods, from which subsequent philosophical schools would draw, the Upaniṣads were also influential in the development of the practice of debates, which would become the defining social practice of Indian philosophy. Although the texts do not discuss debate reflectively, a number of the most important teachings are articulated within the context of discussions between teachers and students, and verbal disputes among rival brahmins. In some dialogues, there is a dialectical relationship between the arguments of competing interlocutors, indicating that the dialogical presentation of teachings was a way of formulating philosophical rhetoric (Black 2015). In this way, debate is another way by which the Upaniṣads extend ideas first articulated in the context of the Vedic ritual into a more philosophical discourse.