Lastly, the influence of Sakh4s or schools may have told more or less on certain Upanishads. Thus the Maitrayaziya- upanishad, as we now possess it, shows a number of irregular forms which even the commentator can account for only as peculiarities of the Maitrayaziya-sakha1. That Upanishad, as it has come down to us, is full of what we should call clear-indications of a modern and corrupt age. It contains in VI, 37, a sloka from the Manava-dharma-sastra, which startled even the commentator, but is explained away by him as possibly found in another Sakha, and borrowed from there by Manu. It contains corruptions of easy words which one would have thought must have been familiar to every student. Thus instead of the passage as found in the K/an- dogya-upanishad VIII, 7, 1, ya atmapahatapadpma vigaro vimvztyur visoko ’vigighatso ’pipasak, &c., the text of the Maitrayawtya-upanishad (VII, 7) reads, Atmapahatapapma vigaro vimvityur visoko ’vikikitso ’vipasaZ. But here again the commentator explains that another SAkha reads ’vigi- ghatsa, and that avipdsa is to be explained by means of a change of letters as apipadsa. Corruptions, therefore, or modern elements which are found in one Upanishad, as handed down in one Sakha, do not prove that the same existed in other Sakhas, or that they were found in the original text.
All these questions have to be taken into account before we can venture to give a final judgment on the relative age of Upanishads which belong to one and the same class. I know of no problem which offers so many similarities with the one before us as that of the relative age of the four Gospels. All the difficulties which occur in the Upa- nishads occur. here, and no critical student who knows the difficulties that have to be encountered in determining the relative age of the four Gospels, will feel inclined, in the present state of Vedic scholarship, to speak with confidence on the relative age of the ancient Upanishads.
+ They are generally explained as khandasa, but in one place (Maitr. Up. II, 4) the commentator treats such irregularities as etakkhakha&sanketapathak, a reading peculiar to the Maitrayaniya school. Some learned remarks cn this point may be seen in an article by Dr. L. es Uber - Maitrayani Samhita.
INTRODUCTION. Ixxi
CRITICAL TREATMENT OF THE TEXT OF THE UPANISHADS.
With regard to a critical restoration of the text of the Upa- nishads, I have but seldom relied on the authority of new MSS., but have endeavoured throughout to follow that text which is presupposed by the commentaries, whether they are the work of the old Sankaraarya, or of the more modern Sankardnanda, or Sayama, or others. Though there still prevails some uncertainty as to the date of Sankarazarya, commonly assigned to the eighth century A.D., yet I doubt whether any MSS. of the Upanishads could now be found prior to 1000 A.D. The text, therefore, which Sankara had before his eyes, or, it may be, his ears, commands, I think, a higher authority than that of any MSS. likely to be recovered at present.
It may be objected that Sankara’s text belonged to one locality only, and that different readings and different recensions may have existed in other parts of India. That is perfectly true. We possess various recensions of several Upanishads, as handed down in different Sakhas of different Vedas, and we know of various readings recorded by the commentators. These, where they are of import- ance for our purposes, have been carefully taken into account.
It has also been supposed that Sankara, who, in writing his commentaries on the Upanishad, was chiefly guided by philosophical considerations, his chief object being to use the Upanishads as a sacred foundation for the Vedanta philosophy, may now and then have taken liberties with the text. ‘That may be so, but no stringent proof of it has as yet been brought forward, and I therefore hold that when we succeed in establishing throughout that text which served as the basis of Sankara’s com- mentaries, we have done enough for the present, and have fulfilled at all events the first and indispensable task in a critical treatment of the text of the Upanishads.
But in the same manner as it is easy to see that the text
Ixxil UPANISHADS.
of the Rig-veda, which is presupposed by Sayaza’s com- mentary and even by earlier works, is in many places palpably corrupt, we cannot resist the same conviction with regard to the text of the Upanishads. In some cases the metre, in others grammar; in others again the collation of analogous passages enable us to detect errors, and pro- bably very ancient errors, that had crept into the text long before Sankara composed his commentaries.
Some questions connected with the metres of the Upani- shads have been very learnedly treated by Professor Gilde- meister in his essay, ‘Zur Theorie des Sloka.’ The lesson to be derived from that essay, and from a study of the Upanishads, is certainly to abstain for the present from conjectural emendations. In the old Upanishads the same metrical freedom prevails as in the hymns; in the later Upanishads, much may be tolerated as the result of con- scious or unconscious imitation. The metrical emendations that suggest themselves are generally so easy and so obvious that, for that very reason, we should hesitate before correcting what native scholars would have corrected long ago, if they had thought that there was any real necessity for correction.
It is easy to suggest, for instance, that in the Vagasaneyi- samhita-upanishad, verse 5, instead of tad antar asya sar- vasya tadu sarvasydasya bahyata4, the original text may have been tad antar asya sarvasya tadu sarvasya bahyataZ; yet Sankara evidently read sarvasyadsya, and as the same reading is found in the text of the Vagasaneyi-sawhita, who would venture to correct so old a mistake?
Again, if in verse 8, we left out yathatathyataz, we should get a much more regular metre,
Kavir manishi paribhiZ svyambhiz
atthan vyadadhak &&Asvatibhyas samabhyah,
Here vyada forms one syllable by what I have proposed
to call synizesis!, which is allowed in the Upanishads as
well as in the hymns. All would then seem right, except
— er RN: RRR | A ES a
? Rig-veds, translated by M. M., vol. i, Preface, p. cxliii.
INTRODUCTION. Ix xiii
that it is difficult to explain how so rare a word as yatha- tathyatak could have been introduced into the text.
In verse 10 one feels tempted to propose the omission of
eva in anyad ahur avidyay4, while in verse 11, an eva inserted
after vidya ka would certainly improve the metre.
In verse 15 the expression satyadharmaya drzshZaye is archaic, but perfectly legitimate in the sense of ‘that we may see the nature of the True,’ or ‘that we see him whose nature is true. When this verse is repeated in the Maitr. Up. VI, 35, we find instead, satyadharmaya vishvave, ‘for the true Vishzu.’ But here, again, no sound critic would venture to correct a mistake, intentional or unintentional, | which is sanctioned both by the MSS. of the text and by the commentary.
Such instances, where every reader feels tempted at once to correct the textus receptus, occur again and again, and when they seem of any interest they have been men- tioned in the notes. It may happen, however, that the correction, though at first sight plausible, has to be sur- rendered on more mature consideration. Thus in the Vagasaneyi-samhita-upanishad, verse 2, one feels certainly inclined to write evasz tve nanyatheto ’sti, instead of evam tvayi nanyatheto sti. But tve, if it were used here, would probably itself have to be pronounced dissyllabically, while tvayi, though it never occurs in the Rig-veda, may well keep its place here, in the last book of the Vagasaneyi- samhita, provided we pronounce it by synizesis, i.e. as one syllable.
Attempts have been made sometimes to go beyond Sankara, and to restore the text, as it ought to have been originally, but as it was no longer in Sankara’s time. It is one thing to decline to follow Sankara in every one of his interpretations, it is quite another to decline to accept the text which he interprets. The former is inevitable, the Jatter is always very precarious.
Thus I see, for instance, that M. Regnaud, in the Errata to the second volume of his excellent work on the Upani- shads (Matériaux pour servir 4 Vhistoire de la philosophie de I'Inde, 1878) proposes to read in the Brzhad-aravyaka-
Ixxiv UPANISHADS.,
upanishad IV, 3, 1-8, sam anena vadishya iti, instead of sa mene na vadishya iti. Sankara adopted the latter reading, and explained accordingly, that Yagfiavalkya went to king Ganaka, but made up his mind not to speak. M. Regnaud, reading sam anena vadishya iti, takes the very opposite view, namely, that Yagfhavalkya went to king Ganaka, having made up his mind to have a conversation with him. As M. Regnaud does not rest this emendation on the author- ity of any new MSS., we may examine it as an ingenious conjecture; but in that case it seems to me clear that, if we adopted it, we should have at the same time to omit the whole sentence which follows. Sankara saw clearly that what had to be accounted or explained was why the king should address the Brahman first, samrad eva pirvas paprakkha; whereas if Yagfiavalkya had come with the intention of having a conversation with the king, he, the Brahman, should have spoken first. This irregularity is explained by the intervening sentence, in which we are re- minded that on a former occasion, when Ganaka and Yagiia- vaikya had a disputation on the Agnihotra, Yagnavalkya granted Ganaka a boon to choose, and he chose as his boon the right of asking questions according to his pleasure. Having received that boon, Ganaka was at liberty to question Yagnavalkya, even though he did not like it, and hence Ganaka is introduced here as the first to ask a question.
All this hangs well together, while if we assume that Yagiiavalkya came for the purpose of having a conversation with Ganaka, the whole sentence from ‘atha ha yag ganakas ka’ to ‘pirvam paprakkha’ would be useless, nor would there be any excuse for Ganaka beginning the conversation, when Yagiiavalkya came himself on purpose to question him.
It is necessary, even when we feel obliged to reject an interpretation of Sankara’s, without at the same time altering the text, to remember that Sankara, where he is not blinded by philosophical predilections, commands the highest respect as an interpreter. I cannot help thinking therefore that M. Regnaud (vol. i, p. 59) was right in trans- lating the passage in the A/and. Up. V, 3, 7, tasmad u
INTRODUCTION. Ixxv
sarveshu lokeshu kshattrasyaiva prasdsartam abhit, by ‘que le kshatriya seul l’a enseignée dans tous les mondes.’ For when he proposes in the ‘ Errata’ to translate instead, ‘c’est pourquoi l’empire dans tous les mondes fut attribué au kshatriya seulement, he forgets that such an idea is foreign to the ordinary atmosphere in which the Upanishads move. It is not on account of the philosophical knowledge possessed by a few Kshatriyas, such as Ganaka or Pravahama, that the privilege of government belongs everywhere to the second class. That rests on a totally different basis. Such excep- tional knowledge, as is displayed by a few kings, might be an excuse for their claiming the privileges belonging to the Brahmans, but it would never, in the eyes of the ancient Indian Aryas, be considered as an argument for their claim- ing kingly power. Therefore, although I am well aware that prasds is most frequently used in the sense of ruling, I have no doubt that Sankara likewise was fully aware of that, and that if he nevertheless explained prasdsana here in the sense of prasdstrztvam sishyazam, he did so because this meaning too was admissible, particularly here, where we may actually translate it by proclaiming, while the other meaning, that of ruling, would simply be impossible in the concatenation of ideas, which is placed before us in the Upanishad.
It seems, no doubt, extremely strange that neither the
last redactors of the text of the Upanishads, nor the com-
mentators, who probably knew the principal Upanishads by
heart, should have perceived how.certain passages in one
Upanishad represented the same or nearly the same text
which is found in another Upanishad, only occasionally
with the most palpable corruptions.
Thus when the ceremony of offering a mantha or mash is described, we read in the A/A4ndogya-upanishad V, 2, 6, that it is to be accompanied by certain words which on the whole are intelligible. But when the same passage occurs again in the Brizhad-drazyaka, those words have been changed to such a degree, and in two different ways in the two Sakhds of the Madhyandinas and Kazvas, that, though the commentator explains them, they are almost unintel-
Ixxvi UPANISHADS.
ligible. I shall place the three passages together in three parallel lines:
I. KAandogya-upanishad V, 2, 6
II. Brthad-arazyaka, MAadhyandina-sakha, XIV, 9, 3, 10:
III. Brzhad-aravyaka-upanishad, Kazva-sakha, VI, 3, 5