last pilgrimage to Juggernaut, where she died, that ‘he was right, but that she was a weak woman, and grown too old to give up the observances which were a comfort to her. It was not therefore from any regard of their antiquity or their sacred character that Rammohun Roy clung to the Upanishads, that he translated them into Bengali, Hindi, and English, and published them at his own expense. It was because he recognised in them seeds of eternal truth, and was bold enough to distinguish between what was essential in them and what was not,—a distinction, as he often remarked with great perplexity, which Christian teachers seemed either unable or unwilling to make! The death of that really great and good man during his stay in England in 1833, was one of the severest blows that have fallen on the prospects of India. But his work has not been in vain. Like a tree whose first shoot has been killed by one winter frost, it has broken out again in a number of new and more vigorous shoots, for whatever the outward differences may be between the Adi Brahnio Samaj of De- bendranath Tagore, or the Brahmo Samaj of India of Keshub Chunder Sen, or the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj, the common root of them all is the work done, once for all, by Rammohun Roy. That work may have disappeared from sight for a time, and its present manifestations may seem to many observers who are too near, not very promising. But in one form or another, under one name or another, I feel convinced that work will live. ‘In India,’ Schopenhauer writes, ‘ our religion will now and never strike root: the primitive wisdom of the human race will never be pushed aside there by the events of Galilee. On the con- trary, Indian wisdom will flow back upon Europe, and produce a thorough change in our knowing and thinking.’ Here, again, the great philosopher seems to me to have allowed himself to be carried away too far by his enthu- siasm for the less known. He is blind for the dark sides of the Upanishads, and he wilfully shuts his eyes against the bright rays of eternal truth in the Gospels, which even
—_— ee -h r--
1 Last Days, p. II.
INTRODUCTION. Ixv
Rammohun Roy was quick enough to perceive behind the
mists and clouds of tradition that gather so quickly round
the sunrise of every religion.
POSITION OF THE UPANISHADS IN VEDIC LITERATURE.
If now we ask what has been thought of the Upanishads by Sanskrit scholars or by Oriental scholars in general, it must be confessed that hitherto they have not received at their hands that treatment which in the eyes of philo- sophers and theologians they seem so fully to deserve. When the first enthusiasm for such works as Sakuntala and Gita-Govinda had somewhat subsided, and Sanskrit scholars had recognised that a truly scholarlike study of Indian literature must begin with the beginning, the exclu- sively historical interest prevailed to so large an extent that the hymns of the Veda, the Brahmavzas, and the Sitras absorbed all interest, while the Upanishads were put aside for a time as of doubtful antiquity, and there- fore of minor importance.
My real love for Sanskrit literature was first kindled by the Upanishads. It was in the year 1844, when attending Schelling’s lectures at Berlin, that my attention was drawn to those ancient theosophic treatises, and I still possess my collations of the Sanskrit MSS. which had then just arrived at Berlin, the Chambers collection, and my copies of com- mentaries, and commentaries on commentaries, which I made at that time. Some of my translations which I left with Schelling, I have never been able to recover, though to judge from others which I still possess, the loss of them is of small consequence. Soon after leaving Berlin, when continuing my Sanskrit studies at Paris under Burnouf, I put aside the Upanishads, convinced that for a true appreciation of them it was necessary to study, first of all, the earlier periods of Vedic literature, as represented by the hymns and the Brahmamzas of the Vedas.
In returning, after more than thirty years, to these
favourite studies, I find that my interest in them, though
it has changed in character, has by no means diminished.
Ixvi UPANISHADS.
It is true, no doubt, that the stratum of literature which contains the Upanishads is later than the Sam- hitas, and later than the Brahmazas, but the first germs of Upanishad doctrines go back at least as far as the Mantra period, which provisionally has been fixed between 1000 and 800 B.C. Conceptions corresponding to the general teaching of the Upanishads occur in certain hymns of the Rig-veda-samhita, they must have existed there- fore before that collection was finally closed. One hymn in the Samhita of the Rig-veda (I, 191) was designated by Katydyana, the author of the Sarvanukramazika, as an Upanishad. Here, however, upanishad means rather a secret charm than a philosophical doctrine. Verses of the hymns have often been incorporated in the Upa- nishads, and among the Oupnekhats translated into Persian by Dara Shukoh we actually find the Purusha-sikta, the goth hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda’, forming the greater portion of the Bark’heh Soukt. In the Samhita of the Yagur-veda, however, in the Vagasaneyi- sdkha, we meet with a real Upanishad, the famous Isa or ea ceteris while the Sivasamzkalpa, too, forms part of its thirty-fourth book 2, In the Brahmawas several Upani- shads occur, even in portions which are not classed as Aranyakas, as, for instance, the well-known Kena or Tala- vakara-upanishad.. The recognised place, however, for the ancient Upanishads is in the Arazyakas, or forest-books, which, as a rule, form an appendix to the Brahmamas, but are sometimes included also under the general name of Brahmaza. Brahmama, in fact, meaning originally the sayings of Brahmans, whether in the general sense of priests, or in the more special of Brahman-priest, is a name applicable not only to the books, properly so called, but to all old prose traditions, whether contained in the Samhitas, such as the Taittiriya-samhita, the Brahmamas, the Aramyakas, the Upanishads, and even, in certain cases, in the Sdtras. We shall see in the introduction to the Aitareya-dranyaka, that that Arazyaka is in the beginning
* See Weber, Indische Studien, IX, p. 1 seq. * See M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 317.
INTRODUCTION. Ixvil
a Brahmaza, a mere continuation of the Aitareya-brah- maa, explaining the Mahavrata ceremony, while its last book contains the Sfitras or short technical rules explain- ing the same ceremony which in the first book had been treated in the style peculiar to the Brahmawas. In the same Aitareya-arazyaka, III, 2, 6, 6, a passage of the Upanishad is spoken of as a Brahmawza, possibly as something like a Brahmavza, while something very like an Upanishad occurs in the Apastamba-sfitras, and might be quoted therefore as a Siitra', At all events the Upanishads, like the Aranyakas, belong to what Hindu theologians call Sruti, or revealed literature, in opposition to Smriti, or traditional literature, which is supposed to be founded on the former, and allowed to claim a secondary authority only ; and the earliest of these philosophical treatises will always, I be- lieve, maintain a place in the literature of the world, among the most astounding productions of the human mind in any age and in any country.
DIFFERENT CLASSES OF UPANISHADS.
The ancient Upanishads, i.e. those which occupy a
place in the Samhitas, Brahmavas, and Aranyakas, must
be, if we follow the chronology which at present is com-
monly, though, it may be, provisionally only, received
by Sanskrit scholars, older than 600 B.C., i.e, anterior
to the rise of Buddhism. As to other Upanishads, and
their number is very large, which either stand by them-
selves, or which are ascribed to the Atharva-veda, it is
extremely difficult to fix their age. Some of them are,
no doubt, quite modern, for mention is made even of
an Allah-upanishad; but others may claim a far higher
antiquity than is generally assigned to them on internal
evidence. I shall only mention that the name of Atharva-
siras, an Upanishad generally assigned to a very modern
date, is quoted in the Sitras of Gautama and Baudhayana?;
. Apastamba, translated by Biihler, Sacred Books. of the East, vol. ii, p. 75. ? Gautama, translated by Biihler, Sacred Books of the East, vol, ii, p. 272, and Introduction, p. lvi.
Ixvill UPANISHADS.
that the Svetasvatara-upanishad, or the Svetasvatarawvam
Mantropanishad, though bearing many notes of later periods
of thought, is quoted by Sankara in his commentary on
the Vedanta-sitras!; while the Nvrzsimhottaratapaniya-
upanishad forms part of the twelve Upanishads explained
by Vidyarazya in his Sarvopanishad-arthanubhiti-prakasa.
The Upanishads comprehended in that work are:
1. Aitareya-upanishad.
Taittiriya-upanishad. . Khandogya-upanishad. Muzdaka-upanishad. Prasna-upanishad. Kaushitaki-upanishad. Maitrayaziya-upanishad. Ka¢havalli-upanishad. Svetasvatara-upanishad. Brzhad-arazyaka-upanishad.
11. Talavakara (Kena)-upanishad.
12. Nvrisimhottaratapaniya-upanishad 2. The number of Upanishads translated by Dara Shukoh amounts to 50; their number, as given in the Mahavakya- muktavali and in the Muktikd-upanishad, is 108%. Pro- fessor Weber thinks that their number, so far as we know at present, may be reckoned at 235%. In order, however, to arrive at so high a number, every title of an Upanishad would have to be counted separately, while in several cases it is clearly the same Upanishad which is quoted under dif- ferent names. In an alphabetical list which I published in 1865 (Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Gesell- schaft XIX, 137-158), the number of real Upanishads reached 149. To that number Dr. Burnell® in his Catalogue
Od Sian Pyw Dh
bel
1 Vedanta-siitras I, 1, 11.
2 One misses the {cA or fsdvasya-upanishad in this list. The Upanishads chiefly studied in Bengal are the Brihad-araxyaka, Aitareya, Khandogya, Taitti- riya, 1s4, Kena, Katha, Prasna, Muzdaka, and Mazdiikya, to which should be added the Svetasvatara. M.M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 325.
3 Dr. Burnell thinks that this is an artificial computation, 108 being a sacred number in Southern India. See Kielhorn in Gough’s Papers on Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 193.
* Weber, History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 155 note.
® Jadian Antiquary, II, 267.
INTRODUCTION. Ixix (p. 59) added 5, Professor Haug (Brahma und die Brah- manen) 16, making a sum total of 170. New names, however, are constantly being added in the catalogues of MSS. pub- lished by Biihler, Kielhorn, Burnell, Rajendralal Mitra, and others, and I shall reserve therefore a more complete list of Upanishads for a later volume.
Though it is easy to see that these Upanishads belong to very different periods of Indian thought, any attempt to fix their relative age seems to me for the present almost hopeless. No one can doubt that the Upanishads which have had a place assigned to them in the Sashitas, Brahmavas, and Aranyakas are the oldest. Next to these we can draw a line to include the Upanishads clearly referred to in the Vedanta-sitras, or explained and quoted by Sankara, by Sayaza, and other more modern commentators. We can distinguish Upanishads in prose from Upanishads in mixed prose and verse, and again Upanishads in archaic verse from Upanishads in regular and continuous Anush¢fubh Slokas. We can also class them according to their subjects, and, at last, according to the sects to which they belong. But beyond this it is hardly safe to venture at present. Attempts have been made by Professor Weber and M. Regnaud to fix in each class the relative age of certain Upanishads, and I do not deny to their arguments, even where they conflict with each other, considerable weight in forming a preliminary judgment. But I know of hardly any argument which is really convincing, or which could not be met by counter arguments equally strong. Simplicity may be a sign of antiquity, but it is not so always, for what seems simple, may be the result of abbreviation. One Upanishad may give the correct, another an evidently corrupt reading, yet it does not follow that the correct reading may not be the result of an emendation. It is quite clear that a large mass of traditional Upanishads must have existed before they assumed their present form. Where two or three or four Upanishads contain the same story, told almost in the same words, they are not always copied from one another, but they have been settled independently, in different locali- ties, by different teachers, it may be, for different purposes.
Ixx UPANISHADS.