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From: dran@cs.albany.edu (Paliath Narendran)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.eastern
Subject: the Upanishads
Message-ID: <9103041951.AA12701@panini.albany.edu>
Date: 4 Mar 91 19:51:41 GMT
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        The Upanishads
        --------------

Ramesh Sitaraman had, some time ago, written about the upanishads
in one of his postings on soc.religion.eastern. I thought the
following facts about them may be of interest to readers of this
net.

The upanishads have an important place in Indian
philosophical/religious thought, especially in the school known
as Vedanta.  The word `upanishad' means "secret teaching" or "the
secret meaning of the Vedas." (There are some other meanings as
well.)  There is some debate as to whether the upanishads are
part of the Vedas or merely appendices in some sense. In any case
they are now found in various sections of the Vedas *towards the
end* (and hence the name `Vedanta' - Veda + anta ("end") for the
school of philosophy).

The ten principal upanishads are:

 Name                  Appears in
 ------------------------------------

 Isa                   Yajur Veda

 Kena                  Sama Veda

 Kattha                Yajur Veda

 Prasna                Atharva Veda

 Mundaka               Atharva Veda

 Mandukya              Atharva Veda

 Aitareya              Rg Veda

 Taittiriya            Yajur Veda

 Chhandogya            Sama Veda
 
 Brhad-aranyaka        Yajur Veda


All except Mandukya are believed to be pre-Buddha. Chhandogya and
Brhad-aranyaka are also believed to be older than the rest.

There are two more upanishads, which, though not considered as
important as the above ten, are quite ancient.


 Svetaasvatara         Yajur Veda

 Kaushitaki            Rg Veda


There are many more upanishads, but most of them are more recent
than these. It also seems that they (the later ones) only have
the status of `smrti' (tradition) and not that of `sruti'
(revelation) in many schools of thought. The principal ones are
accepted to be sruti by all the Vedanta schools. (It should be
mentioned here that there is no general consensus on what is
sruti and what is smrti.  This in itself is a fascinating
subject.)

Sri Sankara (`Sankaracharya') has written `bhasya's (commentaries
or exegeses) for the ten principal ones named above. He seems to
have been the first one to do so.  Svetaasvatara also has a
bhashya believed to have been written by Sankara. I don't think
Ramanuja has written any commentaries on the Upanishads.  Madhva
has written commentaries on the above ten.

Upanishad Brahma Yogin (who was also the spiritual guru of the
great composer Thyagaraja) of Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu (in South
India), has written commentaries on 108 upanishads, including the 
major ten.

Most of the information here was obtained from some books in
Malayalam that I have been reading. I have not mentioned anything
about the subject matter of the upanishads, because I haven't
read any of them in its entirety except for Kena (#2) which is
short and sweet. The contents of most of them are metaphysical,
but there are also stories and maxims for ethical living in them.


Paliath Narendran


P.S. Dates of:
----            

  Sankara            788-820 A.D.

  Ramanuja          1017-1137 A.D.

  Madhva            1199-1278 A.D.

Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva are the most famous exponents of (different
schools of) Vedanta philosophy.