Lessons on the Upanishads -2.1: Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 10,  June 2024. 07:40.
Upanishads
Chapter 2: The Problem in Understanding the Upanishads
Post-9.

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We were touching upon the subject of the Upanishads. I made reference to the Veda Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and the Upanishads being the section-wise classification of the Vedic lore. There are supposed to be more than 1,000 editions or versions of the Vedas, with slight differences of words or letters in varying cases. If there are more than 1,000 such versions—we are told in this context that each version has its own Upanishad, so theoretically at least, traditionally, the information that has come to us is that there are more than 1,000 Upanishads—we do not find them; they are not extistent. What is available to us is only a group of about 108 Upanishads, or two or three more.

108 Upanishads are prominent and very well known. One of the Upanishads, which is known as the Muktikopanishad, gives a section-wise list of these 108 Upanishads; but ten of them are the most important. The philosophically important Upanishads are ten out of the 108 and all the remaining ones, apart from these ten, stand almost in the position of expositions, elucidations—a sort of commentary of certain aspects briefly touched upon in the ten Upanishads.

The great philosophers and commentators on the Upanishads have considered only ten as prominent. The traditional commentators on the Upanishads are the Acharyas; their names are perhaps well known to many of you. The most pre-eminent of them are Acharya Sankara, Acharya Ramanuja, Acharya Madhva, Nimbarka and Vallabha. These are the well-known Acharyas who have commented on the Upanishads and also on two other important philosophical texts: the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavadgita. All the three—namely, the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavadgita—constitute what is usually known as Prastana Trayi, the tripod of Indian thought. The whole of Indian philosophy in its highest reaches is to be found in these three great fundamental texts: the Upanishads, the Brahma Sutras and the Bhagavadgita.

Ten Upanishads are the foundation. These ten are: the Isavasya Upanishad, the Kena Upanishad, the Katha Upanishad, the Prasna Upanishad, the Mundaka Upanishad, the Mandukya Upanishad, the Taittiriya Upanishad, the Aitareya Upanishad, the Chhandogya Upanishad and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. This is the usual sequence in which these ten important Upanishads are traditionally recounted, but modern scholars have a different sequence. 

They consider the oldest as the best and the later ones as less important. Western scholars, especially, have introduced this new system of placing the Upanishads in a novel order, or sequence, considering the prose Upanishads as older and the versified ones as later. The thoughts of these so-called older ones are supposed to be more foundational and determinative than the later ones. Whatever it be, this aspect of the matter is not important for us. What is of consequence is that all the ten Upanishads are very important for some reason or other. We can forget about the sequence.

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Continued

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