Upanishads (12 principal, Sacred Books of the East)

■.s^:-(-: - '"-i'-. ■■-•:-^',-^ .-.r '.- ;< 7 f^^-tr^ -i ■ •; ■■ ■■.-'1 "- I . •^- " '■' " '■ ■ 'i' \»'T.>!i-»ltmfc:i-;j "sacred books of the east Ka/-^a-upanishad Muwa'aka-upanishad . Taittiriyaka-upanishad Brzhadarawyaka-upanishad . -Svetajvatara-upanishad Prama-upanishad Maitraya7/a-brahma«a-upanishad Translation of the Kat-^a-upanishad Translation of the Muiw?AKA-uPANiSHAD Translation of the Taittiriyaka-upanishad Translation of the Bj?/hadaraa^yaka-upanishad Translation of the .Sveta^'vatara-upanishad . Translation of the Pra^-^ov-upanishad . Translation of the MAiTRAVAiVA-BRAHMAA^A-uPANiSHAD Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Translations of the Sacred Books of the East . . .347 This second volume completes the translation of the principal Upanishads to which 5ahkara appeals in his great commentary on the Vedanta-Sutras^, viz. : 2. Talavakara or Kena-upanishad, 5. Va^asaneyi or li-a-upanishad, These eleven have sometimes^ been called the old and genuine Upanishads, though I should be satisfied to call them the eleven classical Upanishads, or the fundamental Upanishads of the Vedanta philosophy. Vidyara«ya^, in his 'Elucidation of the meaning of all the Upanishads,' Sarvopanishadarthanubhuti-prakai-a, confines himself likewise to those treatises, dropping, however, the tsdi, and adding the Maitrayawa-upanishad, of which I have given a translation in this volume, and the Nrzsiwhottara-tapaniya-upanishad, the translation of which had to be reserved for the next volume. ^ See Deussen, Vedanta, Einleitung, p. 38. 5'ankara occasionally refers also to the Paifigi, Agnirahasya, Gabala, and Narayawiya Upanishads,

^ Deussen, loc. cit. p. 82. ' I state this on the authority of Professor Cowell. See also Fitzedward Hall, Index to the Bibliography of the Indian Philosophical Systems, pp. 116 and 236. It is more difficult to determine which of the Upanishads were chosen by 5arikara or deserving the honour of a special commentary. We possess his commentaries on the eleven Upanishads mentioned before \ with the exception of the Kaushitaki 2-upanishad. We likewise possess his commentary on the Ma;;^ukya-upanishad, but we do not know for certain whether he left commentaries on any of the other Upanishads. Some more or less authoritative statements have been made that he wrote commentaries on some of the minor Upanishads, such as the Atharvaj-iras, Atharva-j-ikha, and the Nrzsiwhatapani^ But as, besides 5ankara^arya, the disciple of Govinda, there is ^ankarananda, the disciple of Anandatman, another writer of commentaries on the Upanishads, it is possible that the two names may have been confounded by less careful copyists *. With regard to the Nmi;«hatapani all uncertainty might seem to be removed, after Professor Ramamaya Tarkaratna has actually published its text with the commentary of vSankara/tarya in the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1871. But some uncertainty still remains. While at the end of each KhsLuda. of the Nr/siwha-purvatapani we read that the Bhashya was the work of the Paramaha;«sa-parivra- ^aka/('arya vSri-vSankara, the pupil of Govinda, we have no such information for the Nrzsiwha-uttaratapani, but are told on the contrary that the words 5ri-Govindabhagavat &c. have been added at the end by the editor, because he thought fit to do so. This is, to say the least, very suspicious, and we must wait for further confirmation. There is another commentary on this Upanishad by Naraya«abha//a, the son of Bha//a Ratnakara^, who is well known as the author of Dipikas on several Upanishads.

21. Atma-upanishad, pp. 299-303 ; „ 35. Sarvopanishat-sara//, pp. 394-404 ; „ 26. Ha;/^sa-upanishad, pp. 404-416 ; „ 27. Paramaha;;/sa-upanishad, pp. 417-436 ; „ 38. G^abala-upanishad, pp. 437-455 ; „ 39. Kaivalya-upanishad, pp. 456-464 ; „ Kaivalya-upanishad, pp. 465-479 ; Dipika by 6"ankarananda, 30. Garu^a-upanishad, pp. 480 seq. ; Dipika by Naraya;/a, pp. 78-83. pp. 83-101. pp. 103-114. pp. 1 14-118. pp. 118-133. pp. 122-127. pp. 128-184. pp. 184-196. ibidem. We owe to the same editor in the earlier numbers of the BibHotheca the following editions : Sha//i'akra-upanishad, with commentary by Naraya;/a. Lastly, HaraX'andraVidyabhushawa and Vij-vanatha 5astri have published in the BibHotheca Indica an edition of the Gopalatapani-upanishad, with commentary by Vij-vej-vara. These editions of the text and commentaries of the Upanishads are no doubt very useful, yet there are many passages where the text is doubtful, still more where the commentaries leave us without any help. Whatever other scholars may think of the difficulty of translating the Upanishads, I can only repeat what I have said before, that I know of few Sanskrit texts presenting more formidable problems to the translator than these philosophical treatises. It may be said that most of them had been translated before. No doubt they have been, and a careful comparison of my own translation with those of my predecessors will show, I believe, that a small advance, at all events, has now been made towards a truer understanding of these ancient texts. But I know full well how much still remains to be done, both in restoring a correct text, and in discovering the original meaning of the Upanishads ; and I have again and again had to translate certain passages tentatively only, or following the commentators, though conscious all the time that the meaning which they extract from the text cannot be the right one.

As to the text, I explained in my preface to the first volume that I attempted no more than to restore the text, such as it must have existed at the time when vSankara wrote his commentaries. As 5ahkara lived during the ninth century A.D.\ and as we possess no MSS. of so early a date, all reasonable demands of textual criticism would thereby seem to be satisfied. Yet, this is not quite so. We may draw such a line, and for the present keep within it, but scholars who hereafter take up the study of the * India, What can it teach us ? p. 360. Upanishads will probably have to go beyond. Where I had an opportunity of comparing other commentaries, besides those of 5ankara, it became quite clear that they often followed a different text, and when, as in the case of the Maitraya;/a-brahma;/a-upanishad, I was enabled to collate copies which came from the South of India, the opinion which I have often expressed of the great value of Southern MSS. received fresh confirmation. The study of Grantha and other Southern MSS. will inaugurate, I believe, a new period in the critical treatment of Sanskrit texts, and the text of the Upanishads will, I hope, benefit quite as much as later texts by the treasures still concealed in the libraries of the Dekhan.

The rule which I have followed myself, and which I have asked my fellow translators to follow, has been adhered to in this new volume also, viz. whenever a choice has to be made between what is not quite faithful and what is not quite English, to surrender without hesitation the idiom rather than the accuracy of the translation. I know that all true scholars have approved of this, and if some of our critics have been offended by certain unidiomatic expressions occurring in our translations, all I can say is, that we shall always be most grateful if they would suggest translations which are not only faithful, but also idiomatic. For the purpose we have in view, a rugged but faithful translation seems to us more useful than a smooth but misleading one. However, we have laid ourselves open to another kind of censure also, namely, of having occasionally not been literal enough. It is impossible to argue these questions in general, but every translator knows that in many cases a literal translation may convey an entirely wrong meaning. I shall give at least one instance. My old friend, Mr. Nehemiah Goreh — at least I hope he will still allow me to call him so — in the 'Occasional Papers on Missionary Subjects/ First Series, No. 6, quotes, on p. 39, a passage from the iT/zandogya-upanishad, translates it into English, and then remarks that I had not translated it accurately. But the fault seems to me to lie

entirely with him, in attempting to translate a passage without considering the whole chapter of which it forms a part. I\Ir. Nehemiah Goreh states the beginning of the story rightly when he says that a youth by name vSvetaketu went, by the advice of his father, to a teacher to study under him. After spending twelve years, as was customary, with the teacher, when he returned home he appeared rather elated. Then the father asked him: Uta tam adej-am apraksho^ yena^rutawz i'rutam bhavaty amatam matam avi^;7ata;/z vi^/latam iti ? I translated this : ' Have you ever asked for that instruction by which we hear what cannot be heard, by which we perceive what cannot be perceived, by which we know what cannot be known ?' Mr. Nehemiah Goreh translates : ' Hast thou asked (of thy teacher) for that instruction by which what is not heard becomes heard, what is not comprehended becomes comprehended, what is not known becomes known.?' I shall not quarrel with my friend for translating man by to comprehend rather than by to perceive. I prefer my own translation, because manas is one side of the common sensory (anta/^kara«a), buddhi, the other ; the original difference between the two being, so far as I can see, that the manas originally dealt with percepts, the buddhi with concepts^. But the chief difference on which my critic lays stress is that I translated aj^rutam, amatam, and avi^watam not by 'not heard, not comprehended, not known,' but by ' what cannot be heard, what cannot be perceived, what cannot be known.'

Now, before finding fault, why did he not ask himself what possible reason I could have had for deviating from the original, and for translating avi^;7ata by unknowable or ' Mr. Nehemiah Goreh writes aprakshyo, and this is no doubt the reading adopted by Roer in his edition of the A'Aandogya-upanishad in the Bibliotheca Indica, p. 384. In 5'ankara's commentary also the same form is given. Still grammar requires apraksho. ' The Pa;7/{ada!.i (I, 20) distinguishes between manas and buddhi, by saying, mano vimar.san'ipawi syad buddhiAsyan nis/ayatmika, which places the difference between the two rather in the degree of certainty, ascribing deliberation to manas, decision to buddhi. what cannot be known, rather than by unknown, as every one would be incHned to translate these words at first sight ? If he had done so, he would have seen in a moment, that without the change which I introduced in the idiom, the translation would not have conveyed the sense of the original, nay, would have conveyed no sense at all. What could 5vetaketu have answered, if his father had asked him, whether he had not asked for that instruction by which what is not heard becomes heard, what is not comprehended becomes comprehended, what is not known becomes known ? He would have answered, ' Yes, I have asked for it ; and from the first day on which I learnt the vSiksha, the ABC, I have every day heard something which I had not heard before, I have comprehended something which I had not comprehended before, I have known something which I had not known before.' Then why does he say in reply, 'What is that instruction?' Surely Mr. Nehemiah Goreh knew that the instruction which the father refers to, is the instruction regarding Brahman, and that in all which follows the father tries to lead his son by slow degrees to a knowledge of Brahman^. Now that Brahman is called again and again ' that which cannot be seen, cannot be heard, cannot be perceived, cannot be conceived,' in the ordinary sense of these words ; can be learnt, in fact, from the Veda only^. It was in order to bring out this meaning that I translated aj-rutam not by ' not heard,' but by ' not bearable,' or, in better English, by 'what cannot be heard V

^ In the Vedanta-Sara, Sadananda lays great stress on the fact that in this very chapter of the ATAandogya-upanishad, the principal subject of the whole chapter is mentioned both in the beginning and in the end. Tatra prakarawapratipadyasyarthasya tadadyantayor upadanam upakramasajwharam. Yatha Khandogyashash/Aaprapa/^ake prakarawapratipadyasyadvitiyavastuna ekam evadvitiyam (VI, 2, i) ityadav aitadatmyam ida.m sarvam (VI, i6, 3) ity ante ka, pratipadanam. ' The beginning with and ending with ' imply that the matter to be declared in any given section is declared both at the beginning and at the end thereof: — as, for instance, in the sixth section of lIieii-'Handogyaupanishad, 'the Real, besides which there is nought else' — which is to be explained in that section — is declared at the outset in the terms, 'One only, without a second,' and at the end in the terms ' All this consists of That.* ^ Vedanta-Sara, No. 118, tatraivadvitiyavastuno manantaravishayikarawam. ' See Mund, Up. I, 1,6, adresyam agrahyam. Any classical scholar knows how often we must translate invictus by invincible, and how Latin tolerates even invictissimus, which we could never render in English by ' the most unconquered,' but ' the unconquerable.' English idiom, therefore, and common sense required that avi^;1ata should be translated, not by inconceived, but by inconceivable, if the translation was to be faithful, and was to give to the reader a correct idea of the original.

Let us now examine some other translations, to see whether the translators were satisfied with translating literally, or whether they attempted to translate thoughtfully. Anquetil Duperron's translation, being in Latin, cannot help us much. He translates : ' Non auditum, auditum fiat ; et non scitum, scitum ; et non cognitum, cognitum.' Rajendralal Mitra translates : ' Have you enquired of your tutor about that subject which makes the unheard-of heard, the unconsidered considered, and the unsettled settled?' He evidently knew that Brahman was intended, but his rendering of the three verbs is not exact. Mr. Gough (p. 43) translates : ' Hast thou asked for that instruction by which the unheard becomes heard, the unthought thought, the unknown known?' But now let us consult a scholar who, in a very marked degree, always was a thoughtful translator, who felt a real interest in the subject, and therefore was never satisfied with mere words, however plausible. The late Dr. Ballantyne, in his translation of theVedanta-Sara^, had occasion to translate this passage from the iT/zandogya-upanishad, and how did he translate it? 'The eulogizing of the subject is the glorifying of what is set forth in this or that section (of the Veda) ; as, for example, in that same section, the sixth chapter of the /iT/zandogya-upanishad, the glorifying of the Real, besides whom there is nought else, in the following terms : " Thou, O disciple, hast asked for that instruction whereby the unheard-of becomes heard, the inconceiv-

' Lecture on the Vedanta, embracing the text of the Vedanta-Sara, Allahabad, 185 1, p. 69, Vedantasara, with Nnsi/nha-Sarasvati's Subodhini, and Ramatirtha's Vidvanmanoraw^ini, Calcutta, i860, p. 89. Here we find the right reading, aprakshaA, able becomes conceived, and the unknowable becomes thoroughly known.'" Dr. Ballantyne therefore felt exactly what I felt, that in our passage a strictly literal translation would be wrong, would convey no meaning, or a wrong meaning ; and Mr. Nehemiah Goreh will see that he ought not to express blame, without trying to find out whether those whom he blames for want of exactness, were not in reality more scrupulously exact in their translation than he has proved himself to be. Mr. Nehemiah Goreh has, no doubt, great advantages in interpreting the Upanishads, and when he writes without any theological bias, his remarks are often very useful. Thus he objects rightly, I think, to my translation of a sentence in the same chapter of the TT/^andogya-upanishad, where the father, in answer to his son's question, replies : ' Sad eva, Somya, idam agra asid ekam evadvitiyam.' I had tried several translations of these words, and yet I see now that the one I proposed in the end is liable to be misunderstood. I had translated : ' In the beginning, my dear, there was that only which is, one only, without a second.' The more faithful translation would have been : ' The being alone was this in the beginning.' But ' the being' does not mean in English that which is, to or, and therefore, to avoid any misunderstanding, I translated 'that which is.' I might have said, however, 'The existent, the real, the true (satyam) was this in the beginning,' just as in the Aitareya-upanishad we read : ' The Self was all this, one alone, in the

beginning^.' But in that case I should have sacrificed the gender, and this in our passage is of great importance, being neuter, and not masculine. What, however, is far more important, and where Mr. Nehemiah Goreh seems to me to have quite misapprehended the original Sanskrit, is this, that sat, to oi>, and atma, the Self, are the subjects in these sentences, and not predicates. Now Mr. Nehemiah Goreh translates : ' This was the existent one itself before, one only without a second ;' and he '■ Atma va idam eka evagra asit xplains : ' This universe, before it was developed in the present form, was the existent one, Brahma, itself.' This cannot be. If 'idam,' this, i.e. the visible world, were the subject, how could the Upanishad go on and say, tad aikshata bahu syam pra^ayeyeti tat te^o 'srz>ata, ' that thought, may I be many, may I grow forth. It sent forth fire.' This can be said of the Sat only, that is, the Brahman^ Sat, therefore, is the subject, not idam, for a Vcdantist may well say that Brahman is the world, or sent forth the world, but not that the world, which is a mere illusion, was, in the beginning. Brahman.

This becomes clearer still in another passage, Maitr. Up. VI, 17, where we read : Brahma ha va idam agra asid eko 'nanta/^, 'In the beginning Brahman was all this. He was one, and infinite.' Here the transition from the neuter to the masculine gender shows that Brahman only can be the subject, both in the first and in the second sentence. In English it may seem to make little difference whether we say, ' Brahman was this,' or ' this was Brahman.' In Sanskrit too we find, Brahma khalv idam vava sarvam, ' Brahman indeed is all this ' (Maitr. Up. IV, 6), and Sarva7;z khalv idam Brahma, ' all this is Brahman indeed ' ( A7/and. Up. Ill, 14, i). But the logical meaning is always that Brahman was all this, i. e. all that we see now. Brahman being the subject, idam the predicate. Brahman becomes idam, not idam Brahman. Thus the Va.nka.da.si, I, 1 H, says : Ekada^endriyair yuktya j-astrewapy avagamyate Yavat ki;;/X'id bhaved etad idawi^abdodita?;? ^agat, which Mr. A.Venis (Pandit, V, p. 667) translates: 'Whatever may be apprehended through the eleven organs, by argument and revelation, i. c. the world of phenomena, is expressed by the word idam, this.' The Ta.fika.da.sx then goes on :

Ida;« sarvam pura sr/sh/er ekam evadvitiyakam Sad cvasin namarupc nastam ity Aru;/er vaka.h. This Mr. Vcnis translates: 'Previous to creation, all this ' -S'ahk.ira snys (p. 398, 1. 5) : ckam evadvitiyam paramarthata idam buddhiJcalc 'pi tat sad aikshata. was the existent (sat), one only without a second : name and form were not : — this is the declaration of the son of Aru7/a.' This is no doubt a translation grammatically correct, but from the philosophical standpoint of the Vedanta, what is really meant is that, before the srishti (which is not creation, but the sending forth of the world, and the sending forth of it, not as something real, but as a mere illusion), the Real alone, i. e. the Brahman, was, instead of this, i. e. instead of this illusory world. The illusion was not, but the Real, i.e. Brahman, was. What became, or what seemed to change, was Brahman, and therefore the only possible subject, logically, is Brahman, everything else being a predicate, and a phenomenal predicate only. If I were arguing with a European, not with an Indian scholar, I should venture to go even a step further, and try to prove that the idam, in this and similar sentences, does not mean this, i. e. this world, but that originally it was intended as an adverb, meaning now, or here. This use of idam, unsuspected by native scholars, is very frequent in Vedic literature, and instances may be seen in Boehtlingk's Dictionary. In that case the translation would be : ' The real (to ov), O friend, was here in the beginning.' This meaning of idam, however, would apply only to the earliest utterances of ancient Brahmavadins, while in later times idam was used and understood in the sense of all that is seen, the visible universe, just as iyam by itself is used in the sense of the earth.

However, difficulties of this kind may be overcome, if once we have arrived at a clear conception of the general drift of the Upanishads. The real difficulties are of a very different character. They consist in the extraordinary number of passages which seem to us utterly meaningless and irrational, or, at all events, so far-fetched that we can hardly believe that the same authors who can express the deepest thoughts on religion and philosophy with clearness, nay, with a kind of poetical eloquence, could have uttered in the same breath such utter rubbish. Some of the sacrificial technicalities, and their philosophical interpretations with which the Upanishads abound, may perhaps in time assume a clearer meaning, when we shall have more fully mastered the intricacies of the Vedic ceremonial. But there will always remain in the Upanishads a vast amount of what we can only call meaningless jargon, and for the presence of which in these ancient mines of thought I, for my own part, feel quite unable to account. ' Yes,' a friend of mine wrote to me, after reading some of the Sacred Books of the East, ' you are right, how tremendously ahead of other sacred books is the Bible. The difference strikes one as almost unfairly great.' So it does, no doubt. But some of the most honest believers and admirers of the Bible have expressed a similar disappointment, because they had formed their ideas of what a Sacred Book ought to be, theoretically, not historically. The Rev. J. M. Wilson, in his excellent Lectures on the Theory of Inspiration, p. 32, writes: 'The Bible is so unlike what you would expect; it does not consist of golden sayings and rules of life ; give explanations of the philosophical and social problems of the past, the present, and the future ; contain teachings immeasurably unlike those of any other book ; but it contains history, ritual, legislation, poetry, dialogue, prophecy, memoirs, and letters ; it contains much that is foreign to your idea of what a revelation ought to be. But this is not all. There is not only much that is foreign, but much that is opposed, to your preconceptions. The Jews tolerated slavery, polygamy, and other customs and cruelties of imperfect civilisation. There are the vindictive psalms, too, with their bitter hatred against enemies, — psalms which we chant in our churches. How can we do so.'' There are stories of immorality, of treachery, of crime. How can we read them?' Still the Bible has been and is a truly sacred, because a truly historical book, for there is nothing more sacred in this world than the history of man, in his search after his highest ideals. All ancient books which have once been called sacred by man, will have their lasting place in the history of mankind, and those who possess the courage, the perseverance, and the self-denial of the true miner, and of the true scholar, will find even in the darkest and dustiest shafts what they are seeking for, — real nuggets of thought, and precious jewels of faith and hope.

The Ka/Z/a-upanishad is probably more widely known than any other Upanishad. It formed part of the Persian translation, was rendered into English by Rammohun Roy, and has since been frequently quoted by English, French, and German writers as one of the most perfect specimens oPthe mystic philosophy and poetry of the ancient Hindus. It was in the year 1845 that I first copied at Berlin the text of this Upanishad, the commentary of 5ankara (MS. 1 27 Chambers^), and the gloss of Gopalayogin (MS. 224 Chambers). The text and commentary of 5ankara and the gloss of Anandagiri have since been edited by Dr. Roer in the Bibliotheca Indica, with translation and notes. There are other translations, more or less perfect, by Rammohun Roy, Windischmann, Foley, Weber, Muir, Regnaud, Gough, and others. But there still remained many difficult and obscure portions, and I hope that in some at least of the passages where I differ from my predecessors, not excepting .S'ankara, I may have succeeded in rendering the original meaning of the author more intelligible than it has hitherto been. The text of theKa///a-upanishad is in some MSS. ascribed to the Ya^ur-veda. In the Chambers MS. of the commentary also it is said to belong to that Veda 2, and in the Muktikopanishad it stands first among the Upanishads of the Black Ya^ur-veda. According to Colebrooke (Miscellaneous Essays, I, 96, note) it is referred to the Sama-veda also. Generally, however, it is counted as one of the Atharva;/a Upanishads.

The reason why it is ascribed to the Ya^ur-veda, is probably because the legend of Na/'iketas occurs in the Brahma//a of the Taittiriya Ya^-ur-veda. Here we read (111,1,8): Va^a^ravasa, wishing for rewards, sacrificed all his ' MS. 133 is a mere copy of MS. 127. " Yarurvede Ka.'/iavallibhashyam. wealth. He had a son, called Na>^iketas. While he was still a boy, faith entered into him at the time when the cows that were to be given (by his father) as presents to the priests, were brought in. He said : 'Father, to whom wilt thou dive me?' He said so a second and third time. The father turned round and said to him : ' To Death, I give thee.' Then a voice said to the young Gautama, as he stood up : ' He (thy father) said, Go away to the house of Death, I eive thee to Death.' Go therefore to Death when he is not at home, and dwell in his house for three nights without eating. If he should ask thee, ' Boy, how many nights hast thou been here ? ' say, ' Three.' When he asks thee, 'What didst thou eat the first night?' say, 'Thy offspring.' ' What didst thou eat the second night ? ' say, 'Thy cattle.' 'What didst thou eat the third night?' say, ' Thy good works.'

He went to Death, while he was away from home, and he dwelt in his house for three nights without eating. When Death returned, he asked : ' Boy, how many nights hast thou been here?' He answered: 'Three.'' 'What didst thou eat the first night ?' ' Thy offspring.' ' What didst thou eat the second night ? ' ' Thy cattle.' ' What didst thou eat the third night ? ' ' Thy good works.' Then he said: 'My respect to thee, O venerable sir! Choose a boon.' ' May I return living to my father,' he said. ' Choose a second boon.' ' Tell me how my good works may never perish.' Then he explained to him this Na./I'iketa fire (sacrifice), and hence his good works do not perish. ' Choose a third boon.' 'Tell mc the conquest of death again.' Then he explained to him this (chief) Na/^iketa fire (sacrifice), and hence he conquered death again ^ This story, which in the Bra.hma;/a is told in order to explain the name of a certain sacrificial ceremony called ' The commentator explains pnnar-mr/tyu as the death that follows after the present inevitable rkath. Na/^iketa, was used as a peg on which to hang the doctrines of theUpanishad. In its original form it may have constituted one Adhyaya only, and the very fact of its division into two Adhyayas may show that the compilers of the Upanishad were still aware of its gradual origin. We have no means, however, of determining its original form, nor should we even be justified in maintaining that the first Adhyaya ever existed by itself, and that the second was added at a much later time. Whatever its component elements may have been before it was an Upanishad, when it was an Upanishad it consisted of six Vallis, neither more nor less.

The name of valli, lit. creeper, as a subdivision of a Vedic work, is important. It occurs again in the Taittiriya Upanishads. Professor Weber thinks that valli, creeper, in the sense of chapter, is based on a modern metaphor, and was primarily intended for a creeper, attached to the j-akhas or branches of the Veda ^ More likely^ however, it was used in the same sense as par van, a joint, a shoot, a branch, i. e. a division. Various attempts have been made to distinguish the more modern from the more ancient portions of our Upanishad^. No doubt there are peculiarities of metre, grammar, language, and thought which indicate the more primitive or the more modern character of certain verses. There are repetitions which offend us, and there are several passages which are clearly taken over from other Upanishads, where they seem to have had their original place. Thirty-five years ago, when I first worked at this Upanishad, I saw no difficulty in re-establishing what I thought the original text of the Upanishad must have been. I now feel that we know so little of the time and the circumstances when these half-prose and half-metrical Upanishads were first put together, that I should hesitate

^ History of Indian Literature, p. 93, note ; p. 157. * Though it would be unfair to hold Professor Weber responsible for his remarks on this and other questions connected with the Upanishads published many years ago (Indische Studien, 1853, p. 197), and thougii I have hardly ever thought it necessary to criticise them, some of his remarks are not without their value even now. before expunging even the most modern-sounding lines from the original context of these Vedantic essays \ The mention of Dhatrz, creator, for instance (Ka//z. Up. II, 30), is certainly startling, and seems to have given rise to a very early conjectural emendation. But dhatrz and vidhatr/ occur in the hymns of the Rig-veda (X, 82, a), and in the Upanishads (Maitr. Up. VI, 8} ; and Dhatr/, as almost a personal deity, is invoked with Pra^apati in Rig-veda X, 184, i. Deva, in the sense of God (Ka///. Up. II, 12), is equally strange, but occurs in other Upanishads also (Maitr. Up. VI, 23 ; ^veta^v. Up. I, 3). Much might be said about setu, bridge (Ka///. Up. Ill, 2 ; Mwid. Up. II, 2, 5), adarja, mirror (Ka//^. Up. VI, 5), as being characteristic of a later age. But setu is not a bridge, in our sense of the word, but rather a wall, a bank, a barrier, and occurs frequently in other Upanishads (Maitr. Up. VII, 7 ; iT/zand. Up. VIII, 4 ; Bnh. Up. IV, 4, 22, &c.), while adar.fas, or mirrors, are mentioned in the Brzhadarawyaka and the ^rauta-sutras. Till we know something more about the date of the first and the last composition or compilation of the Upanishads, how are we to tell what subjects and what ideas the first author or the last collector was familiar with ? To attempt the impossible may seem courageous, but it is hardly scholarlike.

With regard to faulty or irregular readings, we can never know whether they are due to the original composers, the compilers, the repeaters, or lastly the writers of the Upanishads. It is easy to say that adrejya {Mwud. Up. I, 1, 6) ought to be adrzVya ; but who would venture to correct that form ? Whenever that verse is quoted, it is quoted with adrcrya, not adr/^ya. The commentators themselves tell us sometimes that certain forms are either Vedic or due to carelessness (pramadapa/'/;a); but that very fact shows that such a form, for instance, as samiyata (AV^and. Up. I, 12, 3) rests on an old authority. No doubt, if we have the original text of an author, and can prove that his text was corrupted by later compilers * See Regnaud, Le Pessimisme Brahmanique, Annales du Muse'e Guimet, 1880; torn, i, p. loi. or copyists or printers, we have a right to remove those later alterations, whether they be improvements or corruptions. But where, as in our case, we can never hope to gain access to original documents, and where we can only hope, by pointing out what is clearly more modern than the rest or, it may be, faulty, to gain an approximate conception of what the original composer may have had in his mind, before handing his composition over to the safe keeping of oral tradition, it is almost a duty to discourage, as much as lies in our power, the work of reconstructing an old text by so-called conjectural emendations or critical omissions.

I have little doubt, for instance, that the three verses 16-18 in the first Valli of the Ka//^a-upanishad are later additions, but I should not therefore venture to remove them. Death had granted three boons to Na/^iketas, and no more. In a later portion, however, of the Upanishad (II, 3), the expression srmka vittamayi occurs, which I have translated by ' the road which leads to wealth.' As it is said that Na^iketas did not choose that srnika, some reader must have supposed that a sr/iika was offered him by Death, S;7nka, however, meant commonly a string or necklace, and hence arose the idea that Death must have offered a necklace as an additional gift to Na/^iketas. Besides this, there was another honour done to Na/('iketas by Mr/tyu, namely, his allowing the sacrifice which he had taught him, to be called by his name. This also, it was supposed, ought to have been distinctly mentioned before, and hence the insertion of the three verses 16-18. They are clumsily put in, for after punar evaha,'he said again/ verse 16 ought not to have commenced by tam abravit, ' he said to him.' They contain nothing new, for the fact that the sacrifice is to be called after Na/^iketas was sufficiently indicated by verse 19, 'This, O Na^'iketas, is thy fire which leads to heaven, which thou hast chosen as thy second boon.' But so anxious was the interpolator to impress upon his hearers the fact that the sacrifice should in future go by that name, that, in spite of the metre, he inserted tavaiva, 'of thee alone,' in verse 19.

This is an Upanishad of the Atharva-veda. It is a Mantra-upanishad, i. e. it has the form of a Mantra. But, as the commentators observe, though it is written in verse, it is not, Hke other Mantras, to be used for sacrificial purposes. Its only object is to teach the highest knowledge, the knowledge of Brahman, which cannot be obtained either by sacrifices or by worship (upasana), but by such teaching only as is imparted in the Upanishad. A man may a hundred times restrain his breath, &c., but without the Upanishad his ignorance does not cease. Nor is it right to continue for ever in the performance of sacrificial and other good works, if one wishes to obtain the highest knowledge of Brahman. The Sannyasin alone, who has given up everything, is qualified to know and to become Brahman. And thoufjh it mieht seem from Vedic legends that Grz'hasthas also who continued to live with their families, performing all the duties required of them by law, had been in possession of the highest knowledge, this, we are told, is a mistake. Works and knowledge can be as little together as darkness and light. This Upanishad too has been often translated since it first appeared in the Persian translation of Dara Shukoh. My own copy of the text and .Sahkara's commentary from the MS. in the Chambers Collection was made in October 1844. Both are now best accessible in the Bibliotheca Indica, where Dr. Roer has published the text, the comcommentary by vSaiikara, a gloss by Ananda^/7ana, and an English translation with notes.

The title of the Upanishad, Mwir^aka, has not yet been explained. The Upanishad is called Muw/aka-upanishad, and its three chapters are each called Mu;/^/akam. Native commentators explain it as the shaving Upanishad, that is, as the Upanishad which cuts off the errors of the mind, like a razor. Another Upanishad also is called Kshurika, the razor, a name which is explained in the text itself as meaning an instrument for removing illusion and error. The title is all the more strange because Muudaka, in its commonest acceptation, is used as a term of reproach for Buddhist mendicants, who are called ' Shavelings,' in opposition to the Brahmans, who dress their hair carefully, and often display by its peculiar arrangement either their family or their rank. Many doctrines of the Upanishads are, no doubt, pure Buddhism, or rather Buddhism is on many points the consistent carrying out of the principles laid down in the Upanishads. Yet, for that very reason, it seems impossible that this should be the origin of the name, unless we suppose that it was the work of a man who was, in one sense, a Muw^aka, and yet faithful to the Brahmanic law. The Taittiriyaka-upanishad seems to have had its original place in the Taittiriya-Ara^yaka. This Ara/zyaka consists, as Rajendralal Mitra has shown in the Introduction to his edition of the work in the Bibliotheca Indica, of three portions. Out of its ten Prapa///akas, the first six form the Arawyaka proper, or the Karma-ka;/(^a, as Sayaz/a writes. Then follow Prapa//mkas VII, VIII, and IX, forming the Taittiriyaka-upanishad; and lastly, the tenth Prapa//^aka, the Ya^>7iki or Mahanaraya//a-upanishad, which is called a Khila, and was therefore considered by the Brahmans themselves as a later and supplementary work.

5ahkara, in his commentary on the Taittiriyaka-upanishad, divides his work into three Adhyayas, and calls the first 5iksha-valli, the second the Brahmananda-valli, while he gives no special name to the Upanishad explained in the third Adhyaya. This, however, may be due to a mere accident, for whenever the division of the Taittiriyaka-upanishad into Vallis is mentioned, we always have three \ the 1 5'ahkara (ed. Roer, p. 141) himself speaks of two Vallis. teaching the paramatman-j7ana (the 5'iksha-valli has nothing to do with this), and Anquetil has Anandbli = Anaiida-valli, and Bharkbli = 13hn'gi.i-Yalli. 5iksha-valli, the Brahmananda-valli, and the Bhngu-valli^ Properly, however, it is only the second Anuvaka of the seventh Prapa//^aka which deserves and receives in the text itself the name of ^ikshadhyaya, while the rest of the first Valli ought to go by the name of Sawhita-upanishad^', or Sawhiti-upanishad. Saya;/a^ in his commentary on the Taittiriya-ara;/yaka, explains the seventh chapter, the 5ikshadhyaya (twelve anuvakas), as Sawhiti-upanishad. His commentary, however, is called 5iksha-bhashya. The same Saya;/a treats the eighth and ninth Prapa///akas as the Varu;^y-upanishad^. The Ananda-valli and Bhr/gu-valli are quoted among the Upanishads of the Atharva;/a^ At the end of each Valli there is an index of the Anuvakas which it contains. That at the end of the first Valli is intelligible. It gives the Pratikas, i. e the initial words, of each Anuvaka, and states their number as twelve. At the end of the first Anuvaka, we have the final words ' satyam vadishyami,' and pa^-^a /^a, i. e. five short paragraphs at the end. At the end of the second Anuvaka, where we expect the final words, we have the initial, i. e. j-iksham, and then psinka.. i. e. five sections in the Anuvaka. At the end of the third Anuvaka, we have the final words, but no number of sections. At the end of the fourth Anuvaka, we have the final words of the three sections, followed by one paragraph ; at the end of the fifth Anuvaka, three final words, and two paragraphs, though the first paragraph belongs clearly to the third section. In the sixth Anuvaka, we have the final words of the two Anuvakas, and one paragraph. In the seventh Anuvaka, there is the final word

' The thiid Valli ends with Bhngiir ity upanishat. * See Taitlhiyaka-upanishad, ed. Roer, p. 12. ' See M. M., Alphal.>ctisches Veizeichniss der Upanishads, p. 144. * The Anul<rama;ii of the Atreyi school (see Weber, Indische Studien, II, p. 108) of the Tailtiriyaka gives likewise the name of Varuni to the eighth and ninth Prapa/Aaka, while it calls the seventh Prapa/Aaka the Sawhiti, and the tenth Prapa/Aaka the Ya^/7iki-upanishad. That Anukiama?ii presupposes, however, a different text, as may be seen both from the number of Anuvakas, and from the position assigned to the Ya^iiiki as between the Sa/whiti and Vaiuwi Upanishads. ' See.M.M., Alphabctisches Verzeichniss der Upanishads. sarvam, and one paragraph added. In the eighth Anuvaka, we have the initial word, and the number of sections, viz. ten. In the ninth Anuvaka, there are the final words of one section, and six paragraphs. In the tenth Anuvaka, there is the initial word, and the number of paragraphs, viz. six. In the eleventh Anuvaka, we have the final words of four sections, and seven paragraphs, the first again forming an integral portion of the last section. The twelfth Anuvaka has one section, and five paragraphs. If five, then the j-anti would here have to be included, while, from what is said afterwards, it is clear that as the first word of the Valli is sa.m na//, so the last is vaktaram.

In the second Valli the index to each Anuvaka is given at the end of the Valli. I st Anuvaka : pratika : brahmavid, and some other catchwords, idam, ayam, idam. Number of sections, 21. 2nd Anuvaka : pratika: annad, and other catchwords; last word, pukk/^a. Sections, 26. 3rd Anuvaka: pratika: pra;/am, and other catchwords; last word, puH'//a. Sections, 22. 4th Anuvaka: pratika: yata//, and other catchwords; last word, pukk/ia.. Sections, 18. 5th Anuvaka : pratika : vi^/7anam, and other catchwords ; last word, pukk/ia.. Sections, 22. 6th Anuvaka: pratika: asanneva, then atha (deest in Taitt. Ar. 7). Sections, 28. 7th Anuvaka : pratika: asat. Sections, 16. 8th Anuvaka: pratika: bhishasmat, and other catchwords; last word, upasahkramati. Sections, 51. 9th Anuvaka : pratika: yata/^ — kutai-zJ-ana ; then tarn (deest in Taitt. Ar.). Sections, 11. In the third Valli the Anukramaz/i stands at the end. 1. The first word, bhr/gu//, and some other catchwords. 2. The first word, annam. Sections, 12. 3. The first word, pra//am. Sections, 12. 4. The first word, mana/^. Sections, 12. 5. The first word, vi^'anam, and some other words. Sec- 6. The first word, ananda, and some other words. Sec- 7. The first words, annaw na nindyat, pra;^a/<;, jariram.

8. The first words, anna;;^ na pariZ-akshita, apo gyoXMi. 9. The first words, annam bahu kurvita pr/thivim akaj-a. Sections, 11. ID. The first words, na ka^/^ana. Sections 61. The last words of each section are given for the tenth Anuvaka. This Upanishad has been so often edited and discussed that it calls for no special remarks. It forms part of the vSatapatha-brahma^a. In the Madhyandina-i-akha of that Brahma;/a, which has been edited by Professor Weber, the Upanishad, consisting of six adhyayas, begins with the fourth adhyaya (or third prapa//^aka) of the fourteenth book. There is a commentary on the Br/hadara;/yaka-upanishad by Dviveda^rinarayawasunu Dvivedagahga, which has been carefully edited by Weber in his great edition of the ^^atapatha-brahma/za from a MS. in the Bodleian Library, formerly belonging to Dr. Mill, in which the Upanishad is called Madhyandiniya-brahma;/a-upanishad. In the Ka/zva-i-akha the Br/hadara/zyaka-upanishad forms the seventeenth book of the 5atapatha-brahma«a, consisting of six adhyayas. As vSankara's commentary and the gloss of Anandatirtha, edited by Dr. Roer in the Bibliotheca Indica, follow the Ka;/va-jakha, I have followed the same text in my translation. Besides Dr. Roer's edition of the text, commentary, and gloss of this Upanishad, there is Foley's edition of the text. There is also a translation of it by Dr. Roer, with large extracts from 6"ankara's commentary.

The 5vetai-vatara-upanishad has been handed down as one of the thirty-three Upanishads of the Taittiriyas, and though this has been doubted, no real argument has ever been brought forward to invalidate the tradition which represents it as belonging to the Taittiriya or Black Ya^urveda. It is sometimes called KS'vetai-vatara/^am Mantropanishad (p. 274), and is frequently spoken of in the plural, as 6"vetaj-vataropanishada/^. At the end of the last Adhyaya we read that vSvetaj-vatara told it to the best among the hermits, and that it should be kept secret, and not be taught to any one except to a son or a regular pupil. It is also called 6"vetaj-va\ though, it would seem, for the sake of the metre only. The 5"veta.<-vataras are mentioned as a ^akha^, subordinate to the A'arakas ; but of the literature belonging to them in particular, nothing is ever mentioned beyond this Upanishad. vSveta^vatara means a white mule, and as mules were known and prized in India from the earliest times, wSvetaj-vatara, as the name of a person, is no more startling than Sveiksva., white horse, an epithet of Ar^-una. Now as no one would be likely to conclude from the name of one of the celebrated Vedic i?/shis, Sya.va.sva., 1. e. black horse, that negro influences might be discovered in his hymns, it is hardly necessary to say that all speculations as to Christian influences, or the teaching of white Syro-Christian missionaries, being indicated by the name of 6'vetai'vatara, are groundless '^

The vSvetaj-vatara-upanishad holds a very high rank among the Upanishads. Though we cannot say that it is quoted by name by Badarayawa in the Vedanta-sutras, ' Va^aspatyam, p. 1222. * Catal. Bodl. p. 271 a ; p. 222 a. ^ See Weber, Ind. Stud. I, pp. 400, 421. it is distinctly referred to as ^ruta or revealed ^ It is one of the twelve Upanishads chosen by Vidyara?/ya in his Sarvopanishad-arthanabhutiprakaj-a, and it was singled out by ^ankara as worthy of a special commentary. The ^veta^vatara-upanishad seems to me one of the most difficult, and at the same time one of the most interesting works of its kind. Whether on that and on other grounds it should be assigned to a more ancient or to a more modern period is what, in the present state of our knowledge, or, to be honest, of our ignorance of minute chronology during the Vedic period, no true scholar would venture to assert. We must be satisfied to know that, as a class, the Upanishads are presupposed by the KalpasCitras, that some of them, called Mantra-upanishads, form part of the more modern Sa;//hitas, and that there are portions even in the Rig-veda-sa;«hita- for which the name of Upanishad is claimed by the Anukrama;ns. We find them most frequent, however, during the Brahma/zaperiod, in the Brahmawas themselves, and, more especially, in those portions which are called Ara;^yakas, while a large number of them is referred to the Atharva-veda. That, in imitation of older Upanishads, similar treatises were composed to a comparatively recent time, has, of course, long been known -^

But when we approach the question whether among the ancient and genuine Upanishads one may be older than the other, we find that, though we may guess much, we can prove nothing. The Upanishads belonged to Parishads or settlements spread all over India. There is a stock of ideas, even of expressions, common to most of them. Yet, the ideas collected in the Upanishads cannot all have grown up in one and the same place, still less in regular succession. They must have had an independent growth, determined by individual and local influences, and opinions which in one village might seem far advanced, would in another be looked upon as behind the world. We may ' See Deussen, Vedanta, p. 24 ; Ved. S'utra I, 1, 11 ; I, 4, 8 ; II, 3, 22. " See Sacred Books of the East, vol. i, p. Ixvi. " Loc. cit. p. Ixvii. admire the ingeniousness of those who sometimes in this, sometimes in that pecuharity see a clear indication of the modern date of an Upanishad, but to a conscientious scholar such arguments are really distasteful for the very sake of their ingeniousness. He knows that they will convince many who do not know the real difficulties ; he knows they will have to be got out of the way with no small trouble, and he knows that, even if they should prove true in the end, they will require very different support from what they have hitherto received, before they can be admitted to the narrow circle of scientific facts.

While fully admitting therefore that the 6'vetaj'vataraupanishad has its peculiar features and its peculiar difficulties, I must most strongly maintain that no argument that has as yet been brought forward, seems to me to prove, in any sense of the word, its modern character. It has been said, for instance, that the 5veta^vataraupanishad is a sectarian Upanishad, because, when speaking of the Highest Self or the Highest Brahman, it applies such names to him as Hara (I, lo), Rudra (11, 17; HI, 2 ; 4 ; IV, 12; 21 ; 22), ^iva (III, 14; IV, 10), Bhagavat (III, 14}, Agni, Aditya, Vayu, &c. (IV, 2). But here it is simply taken for granted that the idea of the Highest Self was developed first, and, after it had reached its highest purity, was lowered again by an identification with mythological and personal deities. The questions whether the conception of the Highest Self was formed once and once only, whether it was formed after all the personal and mythological deities had first been merged into one Lord (Pra^apati), or whether it was discovered behind the veil of any other name in the mythological pantheon of the past, have never been mooted. Why should not an ancient Rishi have said : What we have hitherto called Rudra, and what we worship as Agni, or Siva., is in reality the Highest Self, thus leaving much of the ancient mythological phraseology to be used with a new meaning ? Why should we at once conclude that late sectarian worshippers of mythological gods replaced again the Highest Self, after their fathers had discovered it, by their own sectarian names.? If we adopt the former ['5] C

view, the Upanishads, which still show these rudera of the Incient temples, would have to be considered as more primitive even than those in which the idea of the Brahman or the Highest Self has reached its utmost purity. It has been considered a very strong argument in support of the modern and sectarian character of the 5vetajvatara-upanishad, that 'it inculcates what is called Bhakti\ or implicit reliance on the favour of the deity worshipped.' Now it is quite true that this Upanishad possesses a very distinct character of its own, by the stress which it lays on the personal, and sometimes almost mythical character of the Supreme Spirit ; but, so far from inculcating bhakti, in the modern sense of the word, it never mentions that word, except in the very last verse, a verse which, if necessary, certain critics would soon dispose of as a palpable addition. But that verse says no more than this : ' If these truths (of the Upanishad) have been told to a high-minded man, who feels the highest devotion for God, and for his Guru as for God, then they will shine forth indeed.' Does that prove the existence of Bhakti as we find it in the ^a«^/ilya-sutras- ?

Again, it has been said that the ^veta^vatara-upanishad is sectarian in a philosophical sense, that it is in fact an Upanishad of the Sahkhya system of philosophy, and not of the Vedanta. Now I am quite willing to admit that, in its origin, the Vedanta philosophy is nearer to the Vedic literature than any other of the six systems of philosophy, and that if we really found doctrines, peculiar to the Sahkhya, and opposed to the Vedanta, in the vSvetajvataraupanishad, we might feel inclined to assign to our Upanishad a later date. But where is the proof of this ? No doubt there are expressions in this Upanishad which remind us of technical terms used at a later time in the Saiikhya system of philosophy, but of Sahkhya doctrines, which I had myself formerly suspected in this Upanishad, * Weber, Ind. Stud. I, 422; and History of Indian Literature, p. 238. * The Aphorisms of 6'a«(/ilya, or the Hindu Doctrine of Faith, translated by E. B. Cowell, Calcutta, 187S.' I can on closer study find very little. I think it was Mr. Gough who, in his Philosophy of the Upanishads, for the first time made it quite clear that the teaching of our Upanishad is, in the main, the same as that of the other Upanishads. ' The ^vetaxvatara-upanishad teaches,' as he says, 'the unity of souls in the one and only Self; the unreality of the world as a series of figments of the selffeigning world-fiction ; and as the first of the fictitious emanations, the existence of the Demiurgos or universal soul present in every individual soul, the deity that projects the world out of himself, that the migrating souls may find the recompense of their works in former lives.'

I do not quite agree with this view of the l^vara, whom Mr. Gough calls the Demiurgos, but he seems to me perfectly right when he says that the ^vetaj-vatara-upanishad propounds in Sankhya terms the very principles that the Saiikhya philosophers make it their business to subvert. One might doubt as to the propriety of calling certain terms ' Sankhya terms ' in a work written at a time when a Sankhya philosophy, such as we know it as a system, had as yet no existence, and when the very name sankhya meant something quite different from the Sankhya system of Kapila. Sankhya is derived from sankhya, and that meant counting, number, name, corresponding very nearly to the Greek Xoyos. Sankhya, as derived from it, meant originally no more than theoretic philosophy, as opposed to yoga, which meant originally practical religious exercises and penances, to restrain the passions and the senses in general. All other interpretations of these words, when they had become technical names, are of later date. But even in their later forms, whatever we may think of the coincidences and differences between the Sankhya and Vedanta systems of philosophy, there is one point on which they are diametrically opposed. Whatever else the Sankhya may be, it is dualistic ; whatever else the Vedanta may be, it is monistic. In the Sankhya, nature, or whatever else we may call it, is independent of the purusha ; in the Vedanta it is not. Now the 5veta.fvatara-upanishad states distinctly that nature, or what in the Sankhya philosophy

is intended by Pradhana, is not an independent power, but a power (^akti) forming the very self of the Deva. ' Sages,' we read, 'devoted to meditation and concentration, have seen the power belonging to God himself, hidden in its own What is really peculiar in the 5vetaj-vatara-upanishad is the strong stress which it lays on the personality of the Lord, the tj-vara. Deva, in the passage quoted, is perhaps the nearest approach to our own idea of a personal God, though without the background which the Vedanta always retains for it. It is God as creator and ruler of the world, as i^vara, lord, but not as Paramatman, or the Highest Self. The Paramatman constitutes, no doubt, his real essence, but creation and creator have a phenomenal character only ^. The creation is maya, in its original sense of work, then of phenomenal work, then of illusion. The creator is mayin, in its original sense of worker or maker, but again, in that character, phenomenal only^. The Gu//as or qualities arise, according to the Vedanta, from praknti or maya, within, not beside, the Highest Self, and this is the very idea which is here expressed by ' the Self-power of God, hidden in the guwas or determining qualities.' How easily that sakti or power may become an independent being, as Maya, we see in such verses as :

Sarvabhuteshu sarvatman ya jaktir aparabhava Guwa^raya namas tasyai jai'vatayai pare^-vara^. But the important point is this, that in the 5vetaj-vataraupanishad this change has not taken place. Throughout the whole of it we have one Being only, as the cause of everything, never two. Whatever Sankhya philosophers of a later date may have imagined that they could discover in that Upanishad in support of their theories \ there is not one passage in it which, if rightly interpreted, not by itself, but in connection with the whole text, could be quoted in • Prathamam isvaratmana mayirupe«avatish<Aate brahma; see p. 2S0, 1. 5. • Mayi 9,ngato sarvam etat. ' See p. 270, 1. 5. Sarvatman seems a vocative, like parejvara. • iSee Sarvadarsanasangraha, p. 152. support of a dualistic philosophy such as the Sarikhya, as a system, decidedly is. If we want to understand, what seems at first sight contradictory, the existence of a God, a Lord, a Creator, a Ruler, and at the same time the existence of the super-personal Brahman, we must remember that the orthodox view of the Vedanta^ is not what we should call Evolution, but Illusion. Evolution of the Brahman, or Pariwama, is heterodox, illusion or Vivarta is orthodox Vedanta. Brahman is a concept involving such complete perfection that with it evolution, or a tendency towards higher perfection, is impossible. If therefore there is change, that change can only be illusion, and can never claim the same reality as Brahman. To put it metaphorically, the world, according to the orthodox Vedantin, does not proceed from Brahman as a tree from a germ, but as a mirage from the rays of the sun. The world is, as we express it, phenomenal only, but whatever objective reality there is in it, is Brahman, 'das Ding an sich,^ as Kant might call it.

Then what is Ij-vara or Deva, the Lord or God ? The answers given to this question are not very explicit. Historically, no doubt, the idea of the Ijvara, the personal God, the creator and ruler, the omniscient and omnipotent, \ existed before the idea of the absolute Brahman, and .' after the idea of the Brahman had been elaborated, the / difficulty of effecting a compromise between the two ideas, had to be overcome. Ij-vara, the Lord, is Brahman, for what else could he be ? But he is Brahman under a semblance, the semblance, namely, of a personal creating and governing God. He is not created, but is the creator, an office too low, it was supposed, for Brahman. The power which enabled ti-vara to create, was a power within him, not independent of him, whether we call it Devatma.mkti, Maya, or Prakr/ti. That power is really inconceivable, and it has assumed such different forms in the mind of different Vedantists, that in the end Maya herself is represented as the creating power, nay, as having created li-vara himself. 1 Vedantaparibhasha, in the Pandit, vol. iv, p. 496. In our Upanishad, however, tj-vara is the creator, and though, philosophically speaking, we should say that he was conceived as phenomenal, yet we must never forget that the phenomenal is the form of the real, and li-vara therefore an aspect of Brahman ^ 'This God,' says Pramada Dasa Mitral 'is the spirit conscious of the universe. Whilst an extremely limited portion, and that only of the material universe, enters into my consciousness, the whole of the conscious universe, together, of course, with the material one that hangs upon it, enters into the consciousness of God.' And again, 'Whilst we (the ^ivatmans) are subject to M^ya, Maya is subject to l^ara. If we truly know l^vara, we know him as Brahman ; if we truly know ourselves, we know ourselves as Brahman. This being so, we must not be surprised if sometimes we find tjvara sharply distinguished from Brahman, whilst at other times li-vara and Brahman are interchanged.'

Another argument in support of the sectarian character of the 6"veta^vatara-upanishad is brought forward, not by European students only, but by native scholars, namely, that the very name of Kapila, the reputed founder of the Sahkhya philosophy, occurs in it. Now it is quite true that if we read the second verse of the fifth Adhyaya by itself, the occurrence of the word Kapila may seem startling. But if we read it in connection with what precedes and follows, we shall see hardly anything unusual in it. It says : ' It is he who, being one only, rules over every germ (cause), over all forms, and over all germs ; it is he who, in the beginning, bears in his thoughts the wise son, the fiery, whom he wished to look on while he was born.' Now it is quite clear to me that the subject in this verse is the same as in IV, ii, where the same words are used, and where yo yonbn yonim adhitish//^aty eka/i refers clearly to Brahman. It is equally clear that the prasuta, the son, the offspring of Brahman, in the Vedanta sense, can only be the same person who is elsewhere called Hirawyagarbha,

* Savisesham Brahma, or sabalam Brahma. * Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1878, p. 40. the personified Brahman. Thus we read before, III, 4, ' He the creator and supporter of the gods, Rudra, the great seer (maharshi), the lord of all, formerly gave birth to Hira/zyagarbha;' and in IV, 11, we have the very expression which is used here, namely, 'that he saw Hira;/yagarbha being born.' Unfortunately, a new adjective is applied in our verse to Hiraz/yagarbha, namely, kapila, and this has called forth interpretations totally at variance with the general tenor of the Upanishad. If, instead of kapilam, reddish, fiery ^, any other epithet had been used of Hiraz/yagarbha, no one, I believe, would have hesitated for a moment to recognise the fact that our text simply repeats the description of Hira;/yagarbha in his relation to Brahman, for the other epithet rtshim, like maharshim, is too often applied to Brahman himself and to Hira;/yagarbha to require any explanation. But it is a well known fact that the Hindus, even as early as the Brahmawa-period, were fond of tracing their various branches of knowledge back to Brahman or to Brahman Svayambhu and then through Pra^apati, who even in the Rig-veda (X, 121, 10) replaces Hira;/yagarbha, and sometimes through the Devas, such as Mrityu, Vayu, Indra, Agni"^, &c., to the various ancestors of their ancient families.

In the beginning of the Mu//<^akopanishad we are told that Brahman told it to Atharvan, Atharvan to Aiigir, Angir to Satyavaha Bharadva^a, Bharadva^a to Ahgiras, Ahgiras to 5aunaka. Manu, the ancient lawgiver, is called both Hairawyagarbha and Svayambhuva, as descended from Svayambhu or from Hirawyagarbha^ Nothing therefore was more natural than that the same tendency should have led some one to assign the authorship of a great philosophical system like the Saiikhya to Hirawyagarbha, if not to Brahman Svayambhu. And if the name of Hira;/yagarbha had been used already for the ancestors of other sages, and the inspirers of other systems, what could be more natural than that another name of the same Hirawya- > Other colours, instead of kapila, are nila, harita, lohitaksha ; see IV, i; 4. 2 See Vawsa-brahma;ia, ed. Burnell, p. 10; Bnhadara«yaka-up. pp. 185, 224. 3 See M. M., India, p. 372. garbha should be chosen, such as Kapila. If we are told that Kapila handed his knowledge to Asuri, Asuri to TslhksLslkha, this again is in perfect keeping with the character of literary tradition in India. Asuri occurs in the Va;;zj-as of the 6'atapatha-brahma;/a (see above, pp. 187, 226) ; Tailka.- jikha^ having five tufts, might be either a general name or a proper name of an ascetic, Buddhist or otherwise. He is quoted in the Sahkhya-sutras, V, 32 ; VI, 6<S.

But after all this was settled, after Kapila had been accepted, like Hira«yagarbha, as the founder of a great system of philosophy, there came a reaction. People had now learnt to believe in a real Kapila, and when looking out for credentials for him, they found them wherever the word Kapila occurred in old writings. The question whether there ever was a real historical person who took the name of Kapila and taught the Sahkhya-sutras, does not concern us here. I see no evidence for it. What is instructive is this, that our very passage, which may have suggested at first the name of Kapila, as distinct from Hirawyagarbha Kapila, was later on appealed to to prove the primordial existence of a Kapila, the founder of the Sahkhya philosophy. However, it requires but a very slight acquaintance with Sanskrit literature and very little reflection in order to see that the author of our verse could never have dreamt of elevating a certain Kapila, known to him as a great philosopher, if there ever was such a man, to a divine rank^. Hirawyagarbha kapila may have given birth to Kapila, the hero of the Sahkhya philosophers, but Kapila, a real human person, was never changed into Hira/^yagarbha kapila.

Let us see now what the commentators say. 6"ahkara first explains kapilam by kanakaw ^' kapilavar;/am .... Hira;/yagarbham. Kapilo 'gra^a iti pura//ava>('anat. Kapilo Hirawyagarbho va nirdii'yate. But he afterwards quotes some verses in support of the theory that Kapila was a * For fuller information on Paw^-arikha, Kapila, &c., see F. Hall's Preface to Sahkhya-prava^ana-bhashya, p. 9 seq. ; Weber, Ind. Stud. I, p. 433. '■' Weber, Hist, of Indian Literature, p. 236. ' This ought to be Kanakavarwam, and I hope will not be identified with the name of Buddha in a former existence. Paramarshi, a portion of Vish/m, intended to destroy error in the Krita. Yuga, a teacher of the Sahkhya philosophy. Vi^«anatman explains the verse rightly, and without any reference to Kapila, the Sankhya teacher. 5ankarananda goes a step further, and being evidently fully aware of the misuse that had been made of this passage, even in certain passages of the Mahabharata (XII, 13254, 13703), and elsewhere, declares distinctly that kapila cannot be meant for the teacher of the Sankhya (na tu sankhyapra//eta kapila/^ namamatrasamyena tadgraha7/e syad atiprasaiiga/^). He is fully aware of the true interpretation, viz. avyakrztasya prathamakaryabhutaw kapila;;/ vi^itravar;/a;;z ^^lanakriya^-aktyatmaka;;/ Hira;;yagarbham ityartha//, but he yields to another temptation, and seems to prefer another view which makes Kapila Vasudevasyavatarabhtata;;/ Sagaraputra;za;;/ dagdharam, an Avatara of Vasudeva, the burner of the sons of Sagara. What vast conclusions may be drawn from no facts, may be seen in Weber's Indische Studien, vol. i, p. 430, and even in his History of Indian Literature, published in 1878.

Far more difficult to explain than these supposed allusions to the authors and to the teaching of the Sankhya philosophy are the frequent references in the 5veta.yvataraupanishad to definite numbers, which are supposed to point to certain classes of subjects as arranged in the Sankhya and other systems of philosophy. The Sahkhya philosophy is fond of counting and arranging, and its very name is sometimes supposed to have been chosen because it numbers (saiikhya) the subjects of which it treats. It is certainly true that if we meet, as we do in the vSvetawatara-upanishad, with classes of things \ numbered as one, two, three, five, eight, sixteen, twenty, forty-eight, fifty and more, and if some of these numbers agree with those recognised in the later Sahkhya and Yoga systems, we feel doubtful as to whether these coincidences are accidental, or whether, if not accidental, they are due to borrowing on the part of those later systems, or on the part of the Upanishads. I feel 1 See I, 4 ; 5 ; VI, 3- it impossible to come to a decision on this point. Even so early as the hymns of the Rig-veda we meet with these numbers assigned to days and months and seasons, rivers and countries, sacrifices and deities. They clearly prove the existence of a considerable amount of intellectual labour which had become fixed and traditional before the composition of certain hymns, and they prove the same in the case of certain Upanishads. But beyond this, for the present, I should not like to go ; and I must say that the attempts of most of the Indian commentators at explaining such numbers by a reference to later systems of philosophy or cosmology, are generally very forced and unsatisfactory.

One more point I ought to mention as indicating the age of the vSvetaj-vatara-upanishad, and that is the obscurity of many of its verses, which may be due to a corruption of the text, and the number of various readings, recognised as such, by the commentators. Some of them have been mentioned in the notes to my translation. The text of this Upanishad was printed by Dr. Roer in the Bibliotheca Indica, with 5ahkara's commentary. I have consulted besides, the commentary of Vi^>7anatman, the pupil of Paramaha;;zsa-parivra^aka/^arya-i-rima^-6^«anottamaMrya, MS. I. O. 1133; and a third commentary, by vSahkarananda, the pupil of Paramaha7;^sa-parivra^akaMryanandatman, MS. I. O, 1878. These were kindly lent me by Dr. Rost, the learned and liberal librarian of the India Office. This Upanishad is called the Frasna. or Sha/-praj^7aupanishad, and at the end of a chapter we find occasionally iti pra^>7aprativa/('anam, i. e. thus ends the answer to the question. It is ascribed to the Atharva-veda, and occasionally to the Pippalada-i-akha, one of the most important jakhas of that Veda. Pippalada is mentioned in the Upanishad as the name of the principal teacher. vSahkara, in the beginning of his commentary, says: Mantroktasyarthasya vistaranuvadidam Brahmawam arabhyate, which would mean ' this Brahmawa is commenced as more fully repeating what has been declared in the Mantra.' This, however, does not, I believe, refer to a Mantra or hymn in the Atharva-veda-sawhita, but to the Mu;/^aka-upanishad, which, as written in verse, is sometimes spoken of as a Mantra, or Mantropanishad. This is also the opinion of Anandagiri, who says, ' one might think that it was mere repetition (punarukti), if the essence of the Self, which has been explained by the Mantras, were to be taught here again by the Brahma;/a.' For he adds, ' by the Mantras " Brahma devanam," &c.,' and this is evidently meant for the beginning of the Mu//^aka-upanishad,' Brahma devanam.' Anandagiri refers again to the Muw/aka in order to show that the Frasua. is not a mere repetition, and if 5ahkara calls the beginning of it a Brahma7/a, this must be taken in the more general sense of 'what is not Mantra^' Mantropanishad is a name used of several Upanishads which are written in verse, and some of which, like the tsa., have kept their place in the Sawhitas.

In the case of this Upanishad we must first of all attempt to settle its right title. Professor Cowell, in his edition and translation of it, calls it Maitri or Maitraya;nya-upanishad, and states that it belongs to the Maitraya;nya-.fakha of the Black Yagur-veda, and that it formed the concluding portion of a lost Brahmawa of that 5akha, being preceded by the sacrificial (karma) portion, which consisted of four books. In his MSS. the title varied between Maitry-upanishad and Maitri-.yakha-upanishad. A Poona MS. calls it Maitrayamya-.yakha-upanishad, and a MS. copied for Baron von Eckstein, Maitrayawiyopanishad. I myself in the Alphabetical List of the Upanishads, published in the Journal of > Mantravyatiriktabhage tu brahma«asabdaA, Rig-veda, Saya«a's Introduction, vol. i, p. 23. the German Oriental Society, called it, No. 104, Maitraya;?a or Maitri-upanishad, i.e. either the Upanishad of the Maitraya;/as, or the Upanishad of Maitri, the principal teacher. In a MS. which I received from Dr. Burnell, the title of our Upanishad is Maitraya//i-brahma«a-upanishad, varying with Maitraya7zi-brahma;/a-upanishad, and vSriya^ujsakhayam Maitraya;nya-brahma;/a-upanishad. The next question is by what name this Upanishad is quoted by native authorities. Vidyara;^ya, in his Sarvopanishad-arthanubhutipraka^a^ v. i, speaks of the Maitrayawiyanamni ya^ushi j-akha, and he mentions Maitra (not Maitri) as the author of that .Sakha (vv. 5^^ 150).

In the Muktika-upanishad^ we meet with the name of Maitraya/^i as the twenty- fourth Upanishad, with the name of Maitreyi as the twenty-ninth ; and again, in the list of the sixteen Upanishads of the Sama-veda, we find Maitraya;n and Maitreyi as the fourth and fifth. Looking at all this evidence, I think we should come to the conclusion that our Upanishad derives its name from the 5akha of the Maitraya;/as, and may therefore be called Maitrayawa-upanishad or Maitraya«i Upanishad. Maitraya;/a-brahma«a-upanishad seems likewise correct, and Maitraya«i-brahma;/a- upanishad, like Kaushitaki-brahma;/a-upanishad and Va^asaneyi-sawhitopanishad, might be defended, if Maitrayanin were known as a further derivative of Maitrayawa. If the name is formed from the teacher Maitri or Maitra, the title of Maitri-upanishad would also be correct, but I doubt whether Maitri-upanishad would admit of any grammatical justification ^ Besides this Maitraya«a-brahma;/a-upanishad, however, I possess a MS. of what is called the Maitreyopanishad, sent to me likewise by the late Dr. Burnell. It is very short, and contains no more than the substance of the first Prapa//^aka of the Maitraya«a-brahma;/a-upanishad. I give ' See Cowell, Maitr. Up. pref. p. iv. " Calcutta, 1 791 (,1869), P- 4; also as quoted in the Mahavakya-ratnavali, p. 2^

^ One expects asthaya. * This seems better than the Maitraya^/a text. He went near a Muni, viz. iSakayanya. ^ This seems imnecessary. * There may be an older reading hidden in this, from which arose the reading of the Maitraya-Ja B. U. tn«avanaspatayodbhutapradhva?nsina/4, or yo bhiltapradhva/nsinaA. j-ikhariwam prapatanaw dhruvasya pra/l'alanaw vataru;/a;;/ nima^^anam przthivya/^ sthanapasara/^aw sura;/am. So 'ham ity etadvidhe 'smin sawsare kbn kamopabhogair yair evaj-ritasya sakr/d avartanaw dmyata ity uddhartum arhasi tyandodapanabheka ivaham asmin sam Bhagavas tvaw gatis tvam no gatir iti. 7 Ayarti^ agnir vauvanaro yo 'yam anta/^ purushe yenedam annam pakyate yad idam adyate tasyaisha ghosho bhavati yam etat kamav apidhaya snnoti, sa yadotkramishyan '^ bhavati nainaw ghoshaw srmoti. 8 Yatha^ nirindhano vahnl/i svayonav upaj-amyati. 9* Sa s'lva/i so 'nte vaii-vanaro bhutva sa dagdhva sarva;/i bhutani przthivyapsu praliyate^, apas te^asi liyante*^, te^o vayau praliyate'^, vayur akaj-e viliyate^, akai-am indriyeshv, indriya;n tanmatreshu, tanmatra;/i bhutadau viliyante^, bhutadi mahati viliyate^'^, mahan avyakte viliyate^S avyaktam akshare viliyate^^, aksharam tamasi viliyate^^, tama ekibhavati parasmin, parastan na^* san nasan na sad ityetan nirvawam anui-asanam iti vedanuj-asanam. We should distinguish therefore between the large Maitraya«a-brahma;m-upanishad and the smaller Maitreyopanishad. The title of Maitreyi-brahma;/a has, of course, a totally different origin, and simply means the Brahma;<!a which tells the story of Maitreyi^^.

As Professor Cowell, in the Preface to his edition and translation of the Maitrayawa-brahmawa-upanishad, has discussed its peculiar character, I have little to add on that subject. I agree with him in thinking that this Upanishad has grown, and contains several accretions. The Sanskrit commentator himself declares the sixth and seventh chapters to be Khilas or supplementary. Possibly the Maitreya-upanishad, as printed above, contains the earliest framework. Then we have traces of various recensions. Professor Cowell (Preface, p. vi) mentions a MS., copied ' Maitr. Up. II, 6; p. 32. ^ kramishyan, m, ^ Yadlia, m. * Maitr. Up. VI, 34 ; p. 178. * lipyate. * lipyante. '' liyyate. * liyyatc. " liyante. *" liyyate. " lipyate. ^^ liyyate. '' liyyate. '* tanasanna. ^' See A'Aand. Up. p. 623. for Baron Eckstein, apparently from a Telugu original, which contains the first five chapters only, numbered as four. The verses given in VI, 34 (p. 177), beginning with atreme jloka bhavanti, are placed after IV, 3. In my own MS. these verses are inserted at the beginning of the fifth chapter^ Then follows in Baron Eckstein's MS. as IV, 5, what is given in the printed text as V, i, 3 (pp. 69-76). In my own MS., which likewise comes from the South, the Upanishad does not go beyond VI, 8, which is called the sixth chapter and the end of the Upanishad.

We have in fact in our Upanishad the first specimen of that peculiar Indian style^ so common in the later fables and stories, which delights in enclosing one story within another. The kernel of our Upanishad is really the dialogue between the Valakhilyas and Pra^apati Kratu. This is called by the commentator (see p. 331, note) a Vyakhyana, i. e. a fuller explanation of the Sutra which comes before, and which expresses in the few words, ' He is the Self, this is the immortal, the fearless, this is Brahman,' the gist of the whole Upanishad. This dialogue, or at all events the doctrine which it was meant to illustrate, was communicated by Maitri (or Maitra) to 5akayanya, and by 5akayanya to King B/'zhadratha Aikshvaka, also called Marut (II, i ; VI, 30). This dialogue might seem to come to an end in VI, 29, and likewise the dialogue between vSakayanya and Br/hadratha ; but it is carried on again to the end of VI, 30, and followed afterwards by a number of paragraphs which may probably be considered as later additions. But though admitting all this, I cannot bring myself to follow Professor Cowell in considering, as he does, even the earlier portion of the Upanishad as dating from a late period, while the latter portions are called by him comparatively modern, on account of frequent Vaish/zava quotations. What imparts to this Upanishad, according to my opinion, an exceptionally genuine and ancient character, is the preservation in it of that peculiar Sandhi which,

^ See p. 303, note i ; p. 305, note i ; p. 312, note i. thanks to the labours of Dr. von Schroeder, we now know to be characteristic of the Maitraya;/a-^akha. In that 5akha final unaccented as and e are changed into a, if the next word begins with an accented vowel, except a. Before initial a, however, e remains unchanged, and as becomes o, and the initial a is sometimes elided, sometimes not. Some of these rules, it must be remembered, run counter to Pacini, and we may safely conclude therefore that texts in which they are observed, date from the time before Pacini. In some MSS., as, for instance, in my own MS. of the Maitraya^zabrahmawa-upanishad, these rules are not observed, but this makes their strict observation in other MSS. all the more important. Besides, though to Dr. von Schroeder belongs, no doubt, the credit of having, in his edition of the Maitrayawi Sa;«hita, first pointed out these phonetic peculiarities, they were known as such to the commentators, who expressly point out these irregular Sandhis as distinctive of the Maitraya;n i'akha. Thus we read Maitr. Up. II, 3 (p. iS), that tigmate^asa urdhvaretaso, instead of tigmate^asa, is evawvidha eta/^/^//akhasahketapa///ai" k/iandasa/^ sarvatra, i.e. is throughout theVedic reading indicatory of that particular wSakha, namely the Maitraya;/i.

A still stranger peculiarity of our 6"akha is the change of a final t before initial s into n. This also occurs in our Upanishad. In VI, 8, we read svan ^arirad ; in VI, 27, ya/l .yarirasya. Such a change seems phonetically so unnatural, that the tradition must have been very strong to perpetuate it among the Maitraya;/as. Now what is important for our purposes is this, that these phonetic peculiarities run through all the seven chapters of our Upanishad. This will be seen from the following list : I. Final as changed into a before initial voweP : II, 3, tigmategaj-a urdhvaretaso (Comm. eta-^Makhasahketapa/Z/aj- k/idndasa/i sarvatra). II, 5, vibodha evam. II, 7, avasthita iti. ' 1 have left out tlie restriction as to the accent of the vowels, because they are disregarded in the Upanishad. It should be observed that this peculiar Sandhi occurs in the Upanishad chiefly before ili. III, 5, etair abhibhuta iti*. IV, i, vidyata iti. VI, 4, pra;/ava iti ; bhumyadaya eko. VI, 6, aditya iti ; ahavaniya iti ; sArya iti ; ahaiikara iti ; vyana iti. VI, 7, bharga iti. VI, 7, sannivish/a iti. VI, 23, deva onkaro. VI, 30, prayata iti. VI, 30, vinirgata iti.

II. Final e before initial vowels becomes a. For instance : I, 4, dmyata iti. II, 2, nishpadyata iti. III, 2, apadyata iti. Ill, 2, pushkara iti. IV, I, vidyata iti. VI, 10, bhurikta iti. VI, 20, ajnuta iti. VI, 30, eka ahur. Even prsigrihya. e is changed to a in — VI, 23, eta upasita, i. e. ete uktalaksha;/e brahmawi. In VI, 31, instead of te etasya, the commentator seems to have read te va etasya. III. Final as before a, u, and au becomes a, and is then contracted. For instance : I, 4, vanaspatayodbhuta, instead of vanaspataya udbhuta. (Comm. Sandhij- ^//andaso va, ukaro vatra lupto drash/avya//.) II, 6, devaush;/yam, instead of deva aushwyam. (Comm. Sandhij >^//andasa//.) VI, 24, atamavish/am, instead of atama-avish/am (Comm. Sandhij' Mandasa//) ; cf. AV^and. Up. VI, 8, 3, ai-anayeti (Comm. visar^aniyalopa/^). IV. Final e before i becomes a, and is then contracted. For instance : VI, 7, atma ^aniteti for ^anita iti. (Comm. ^anite, ^anati.) VI, 28, ava/aiva for avata iva. (Comm. Sandhi- V. Final au before initial vowels becomes a. For instance : II, 6, yena va eta anugrzTiita iti. VI, 22, asa abhidhyata. On abhibhilyamanay iva, see p. 295, note 2. V, 2, asa atma (var. iect. asav atma).

VI. Final o of atho produces elision of initial a. For instance : III, 2, atho 'bhibhutatvat. (Comm. ^andhij- kJAn- dasa//.) Various reading, ato 'bhibhutatvat. VI, I, so antar is explained as sa u. VII. Other irregularities : VI, 7, apo pyayanat, explained by pyayanat and apyayanat. Might it be, apo "py ayanat? VI, 7, atmano tma neta. II, 5, so tmanam abhidhyatva. VI, '>f^, dvidharmondham for dvidharmandham. (Comm. Mandasa.) VI, '>^^, te^asendham, i.e. te^asa-iddhan. (In explaining other irregular compounds, too, as in I, 4, the commentator has recourse to a Z'/zandasa or pramadika licence.) VI, \, hira;/yavasthat for hirawyavasthat. Here the dropping of a in avasthat is explained by a reference to Bhaguri (vash/i Bhagurir allopam avapyor upasargayo/^). See Vopadeva III, 171. VII, 2, brahmadhiyalambana. (Comm. vii-lish/apathai- /?^//andasa/^.) VI, '>^^, apyay ahkura for apy ahkura. (Comm. yakara// pramadapa//nta//.) On the contrary VI, '^^, vliyante for viliyante. If on the grounds which we have hitherto examined there seems good reason to ascribe the Maitraya7^a-brahma;zaupanishad to an early rather than to a late period, possibly to an ante-Pa;nnean period, we shall hardly be persuaded to change this opinion on account of supposed references to Vaish;/ava or to Bauddha doctrines which some scholars have tried to discover in it.

As to the worship of Vish;/u, as one of the many manifestations of the Highest Spirit, we have seen it alluded to in other Upanishads, and we know from the Brahmawas that the name of Vish;m was connected with many of the earliest Vedic sacrifices. As to Bauddha doctrines, including the very name of Nirva;/a (p. xlvi, 1. 19), we must remember, as I have often remarked, that there were Bauddhas before Buddha. Br/haspati, who is frequently quoted in later philosophical writings .as the author of an heretical philosophy, denying the authority of the Vedas, is mentioned by name in our Upanishad (VII, 9), but we are told that this Bnhaspati, having become vSukra, promulgated his erroneous doctrines in order to mislead the Asuras, and thus to insure the safety of Indra, i.e. of the old faith. The fact that the teacher of King Br/hadratha in our Upanishad is called ^akayanya, can never be used in support of the idea that, being a descendant of 5aka\ he must have been, hke 5akyamuni, a teacher of Buddhist doctrines. He is the very opposite in our Upanishad, and warns his hearers against such doctrines as we should identify with the doctrines of Buddha. As I have pointed out^on several occasions, the breaking through the law of the Aj-ramas is the chief complaint which orthodox Brahmans make against Buddhists and their predecessors, and this is what 5akayanya condemns. A Brahman may become a Sannyasin, which is much the same as a Buddhist Bhikshu, if he has first passed through the three stages of a student, a householder, and a Vanaprastha. But to become a Bhikshu without that previous discipline, was heresy in the eyes of the Brahmans, and it was exactly that heresy which the Bauddhas preached and practised. That this social laxity was gaining ground at the time when our Upanishad was written is clear (see VII, 8). We hear of people who wear red dresses (like the Buddhists) without having a right to them ; we even hear of books, different from the Vedas, against which the true Brahmans are warned. All this points to times when what we call Buddhism was in the air, say the sixth century B. C, the very time to which I have always assigned the origin of the genuine and classical Upanishads.

The Upanishads are to my mind the germs of Buddhism, ^ -Sakayanya means a grandson or further descendant of <Saka ; see Gawaratnavali (^Baroda, 1874), p. 57". while Buddhism is in many respects the doctrine of the Upanishads carried out to its last consequences, and, what is important, employed as the foundation of a new social system. In doctrine the highest goal of the Vedanta, the knowledge of the true Self, is no more than the Buddhist Samyaksambodhi ; in practice the Sannyasin is the Bhikshu, the friar, only emancipated alike from the tedious discipline of the Brahmanic student, the duties of the Brahmanic householder, and the yoke of useless penances imposed on the Brahmanic dweller in the forest. The spiritual freedom of the Sannyasin becomes in Buddhism the common property of the Sahgha, the Fraternity, and that Fraternity is open alike to the young and the old, to the Brahman and the 5udra, to the rich and the poor, to the wise and the foolish. In fact there is no break between the India of the Veda and the India of the Tripi/aka, but there is an historical continuity between the two, and the connecting link between extremes that seem widely separated must be sought in the Upanishads \

* As there is room left on this page, I subjoin a passage from the Abhidharma-kosha-vyakhya, ascribed to the Bhagavat, but which, as far as style and thought are concerned, might be taken from an Upanishad : Uktaw hi Bhagavata : Pr/thivi bho Gautama kutra pratish/Aita ? Pnthivi Brahma??a ahmandale pratish.'/iita. Abma«(falam bho Gautama kva pratish^Aitam ? Vayau pratish- /Ailam. Vayur bho Gautama kva pratish/Aita/^ ? Akase pratish'^itaA. Akasam bho Gautama kutra pratish^Aitam ? Atisarasi Mahabrahma^ja, atisarasi Mahabrahmana. Akasam Brahmanapratish^Aitam, analambanam iti vistaraA. Tasmad asty akasam iti VaibhashikaA. (See Br/had-Ar. Up. Ill, 6, 1. Burnouf, Introduction a I'histoire du Buddhisme, p. 449.) ' For it is said by the Bhagavat : " O Gautama, on what does the earth rest ?'* "The earth, O Brahmana, rests on the sphere of water." "O Gautama, on what does the sphere of water rest?" "It rests on the air." " O Gautama, on what does the air rest?" "It rests on the ether (akasa)." "O Gautama, on what does the ether rest?" "Thou goest too far, great Brahma'^a ; thou goest too far, great Brahma^^a. The ether, O Brahmana, does not rest. It has no support." Therefore the Vaibhashikas hold that there is an ether,' &c.

1. Vagasravasa^ desirous (of heavenly rewards), surrendered (at a sacrifice) all that he possessed. He had a son of the name of Na/C'iketas. 2. When the (promised) presents were being given (to the priests), faith entered into the heart of Na/^iketas, who was still a boy, and he thought : 3. 'Unblessed^, surely, are the worlds to which a man goes by giving (as his promised present at a sacrifice) cows which have drunk water, eaten hay, given their milk ^, and are barren,' 4. He (knowing that his father had promised to give up all that he possessed, and therefore his son also) said to his father : ' Dear father, to whom wilt thou give me ?' ^ Va^ajravasa is called Aru«i Auddalaki Gautama, the father of NaMetas. The father of ^vetaketu, another enlightened pupil (see ^Mnd. Up. VI, 1,1), is also called Arum (Uddalaka^ comm. Kaush. Up. I, i) Gautama. 6'vetaketu himself is called Aruweya, i. e. the son of Aru«i, the grandson of Aru«a, and likewise Auddalaki, Auddalaki is a son of Uddalaka, but -Sahkara (KaZ/^.Up. I. i^i) takes Auddalaki as possibly the same as Uddalaka. See Br/h. Ar. Up. Ill, 6, I. ^ As to ananda, unblessed, see Brih. Ar. Up. IV, 4, 1 1 ; Va^as. Samh. Up. 3 (Sacred Books of the East, vol. i, p. 311).

^ Anandagiri explauis that the cows meant here are cows no longer able to drink, to eat, to give milk, and to calve.

He said it a second and a third time. Then the father replied (angrily): ' I shall give thee ^ unto Death.' (The father, having once said so, though in haste, had to be true to his word and to sacrifice his son.) 5. The son said : ' I go as the first, at the head of many (who have still to die) ; I go in the midst of many (who are now dying). What will be the work of Yama (the ruler of the departed) which to-day he has to do unto me ^ ? '■- — ■ - ■ ■ ■ — — ■ ■■ ■ -.- * ^ Dadami, I give, with the meaning of the future. Some MSS. write dasyami. 2 I translate these verses freely, i. e. independently of the commentator, not that I ever despise the traditional interpretation which the commentators have preserved to us, but because I think that, after having examined it, we have a right to judge for ourselves. 6'ahkara says that the son, having been addressed by his father full of anger, was sad, and said to himself: 'Among many pupils I am the first, among many middling pupils I am the middlemost, but now^here am I the last. Yet though I am such a good pupil, my father has said that he will consign me unto death. What duty has he to fulfil toward Yama which he means to fulfil to-day by giving me to him ? There may be no duty, he may only have spoken in haste. Yet a father's word must not be broken.' Having considered this, the son comforted his father, and exhorted him to behave hke his forefathers, and to keep his word. I do not think this view of ^ahkara's could have been the view of the old poet. He might have made the son say that he was the best or one of the best of his father's pupils, but hardly that he was also one of his middHng pupils, thus implying that he never was among the worst. That would be out of keeping with the character of Na/^iketas, as drawn by the poet himself. Na/('iketas is full of faith and wishes to die, he would be the last to think of excuses why he should not die. The second half of the verse may be more doubtful. It may mean what ^'afikara thinks it means, only that we should get thus again an impHed complaint of Na^^iketas against his father, and this is not in keeping with his character. The mind of Na/^iketas is bent on what is to come, on what he will see after death, and on what Yama will do unto him. ' What has Yama to do,' he asks, 'what can he do, what is it that he will to-day do unto

I ADHYAYA, I VALl!, 9. 3 6. ' Look back how it was with those who came before, look forward how it will be with those who come hereafter. A mortal ripens like corn, like corn he springs up again ^.' (Na/^iketas enters into the abode of Yama Vaivasvata, and there is no one to receive him. Thereupon one of the attendants of Yama is supposed to say :) 7. ' Fire enters into the houses, when a Brahma/^a enters as a guests That fire is quenched by this peace-offering ; — bring water, O Vaivasvata ^! 8. * A Brahma;^a that dwells in the house of a foolish man without receiving food to eat, destroys his hopes and expectations, his possessions, his righteousness, his sacred and his good deeds, and all his sons and cattle ^' (Yama, returning to his house after an absence of three nights, during which time Na/^iketas had received no hospitality from him, says :) 9. ' O Brahma/^a, as thou, a venerable guest, hast dwelt in my house three nights without eating, me ?' This seems to me consistent with the tenor of the ancient story, while -Sankara's interpretations and interpolations savour too much of the middle ages of India.

^ Sasya, corn rather than grass ; eia, rj'iov, Benfey ; Welsh haidd, according to Rhys ; different from ^ash-pa, ces-pes, Benfey. ^ Cf VasishMa XI, 13 ; Sacred Books of the East, vol. xiv, p. 51. ^ Vaivasvata, a name of Yama, the ruler of the departed. Water is the first gift to be offered to a stranger who claims hospitality. * Here again some words are translated differently from ^ahkara. He explains a^a as asking for a wished-for object, pratiksha as looking forward with a view to obtaining an unknown object. Sahgata he takes as reward for intercourse with good people ; sunr2'ta, as usual, as good and kind speech; ish/a as rewards for sacrifices; purta as rewards for public benefits.

therefore choose now three boons. Hail to thee ! and welfare to me!' 10. NaZ'iketas said: 'O Death, as the first of the three boons I choose that Gautama, my father, be pacified, kind, and free from anger towards me ; and that he may know me and greet me, when I shall have been dismissed by thee.' 11. Yama said: 'Through my favour Auddalaki Aru;2i,thy father, will know thee, and be again towards thee as he was before. He shall sleep peacefully through the night, and free from anger, after having seen thee freed from the mouth of death.' 1 2. Na/^iketas said : ' In the heaven-world there is no fear ; thou art not there, O Death, and no one is afraid on account of old age. Leaving behind both hunger and thirst, and out of the reach of sorrow, all rejoice in the world of heaven.' 13. 'Thou knowest, O Death, the fire-sacrifice which leads us to heaven ; tell it to me, for I am full of faith. Those who live in the heaven-world reach immortality, — this I ask as my second boon.' 14. Yama said: * I tell it thee, learn it from me, and when thou understandest that fire-sacrifice which leads to heaven, know, O Na/C'iketas, that it is the attainment of the endless worlds, and their firm support, hidden in darkness^.'

15. Yama then told him that fire-sacrifice, the beeinninor of all the worlds ^ and what bricks are ^ Tiie commentator translates: '1 tell it thee, attend to me who knows the heavenly fire.' Here the nom. sing, of the participle would be very irregular, as we can hardly refer it to bravimi. Then, ' Know this fire as a means of obtaining the heavenly world, know that fire as the rest or support of the world, when it assumes the form of Vira^^', and as hidden in the heart of men.' ''■ 6'aiikara : the first embodied, in the shape of Vir%-. I ADHYAYA, I VALli, 2 1, required for the altar, and how many, and how they are to be placed. And Na/§iketas repeated all as it had been told to him. Then M?^/tyu, being pleased with him, said again : 1 6. The generous \ being satisfied, said to him: * I give thee now another boon ; that fire-sacrifice shall be named after thee, take also this manycoloured chain ^.' 17. 'He who has three times performed this Na/'iketa rite, and has been united with the three (father, mother, and teacher), and has performed the three duties (study, sacrifice, almsgiving) overcomes birth and death. When he has learnt and understood this fire, which knows (or makes us know) all that is born of Brahman ^, which is venerable and divine, then he obtains everlasting peace.'

18. ' He who knows the three Na/('iketa fires, and knowing the three, piles up the NaZ'iketa sacrifice, he, having first thrown off the chains of death, rejoices in the world of heaven, beyond the reach of grief.' 19. 'This, O Na/t-iketas, is thy fire which leads to heaven, and which thou hast chosen as thy second boon. That fire all men will proclaim ^ Choose now, O Na/^iketas, thy third boon.' 20. Na/^iketas said : ' There is that doubt, when a man is dead, — some saying, he is ; others, he is not. This I should like to know, taught by thee ; this is the third of my boons.' 21. Death said: 'On this point even the gods ^ Verses 16-18 seem a later addition. ^ This arises probably from a misunderstanding of verse II, 3. ^ G^atavedas. * Tavaiva is a later addition, caused by the interpolation of verses 15-18.

have doubted formerly ; it is not easy to understand. That subject is subtle. Choose another boon, O Na/C'iketas, do not press me, and let me off that boon.' 2 2. Na/nketas said: 'On this point even the gods have doubted indeed, and thou, Death, hast declared it to be not easy to understand, and another teacher like thee is not to be found : — surely no other boon is like unto this.' 23. Death said : 'Choose sons and grandsons who shall live a hundred years, herds of cattle, elephants, gold, and horses. Choose the wide abode of the earth, and live thyself as many harvests as thou desirest.' 24. 'If you can think of any boon equal to that, choose wealth, and long life. Be (king), Na/6iketas, on the wide earth \ I make thee the enjoyer of all desires.' 25. ' Whatever desires are difficult to attain among mortals, ask for them according to thy wish ; — these fair maidens with their chariots and musical instruments,— such are indeed not to be obtained by men, — be waited on by them whom I give to thee, but do not ask me about dying.' 26. Na/^iketas said : ' These things last till tomorrow, O Death, for they wear out this vigour of all the senses. Even the whole of life is short. Keep thou thy horses, keep dance and song for thyself.'

2 7. ' No man can be made happy by wealth. Shall we possess wealth, when we see thee ? Shall we live, ^ Mahabhumau, on the great earth, has been explained also by maha bhumau, be great on the earth. It is doubtful, however, whether maha for mahan could be admitted in the Upanishads, and whether it would not be easier to write mahan bhumau. I ADHYAYA, I VALl!, 29. as long as thou rulest ? Only that boon (which I have chosen) is to be chosen by me.' 28. * What mortal, slowly decaying here below, and knowing, after having approached them, the freedom from decay enjoyed by the immortals, would delight in a long life, after he has pondered on the pleasures which arise from beauty and love^?' 29. ' No, that on which there is this doubt, O Death, tell us what there is in that great Hereafter. Na/^iketas does not choose another boon but that which enters into the hidden world.' ^ A very obscure verse. iSankara gives a various reading kva tadastha/z for kvadha>^stha/^,in the sense of 'given to these pleasures,' which looks like an emendation. I have changed a/iryatam into a^aryatam, and take it for an ace. sing., instead of a gen. plur., which could hardly be governed by upetya.

1. Death said: 'The good is one thing, the pleasant another ; these two, having different objects, chain a man. It is well with him who clings to the good ; he who chooses the pleasant, misses his end.' 2. ' The good and the pleasant approach man : the wise goes round about them and distinguishes them. Yea, the wise prefers the good to the pleasant, but the fool chooses the pleasant through greed and avarice.' 3. ' Thou, O Na-^iketas, after pondering all pleasures that are or seem delightful, hast dismissed them all. Thou hast not gone into the road^ that leadeth to wealth, in which many men perish.' 4. 'Wide apart and leading to different points are these two, ignorance, and what is known as wisdom. I believe NaX'iketas to be one who desires knowledge, for even many pleasures did not tear thee away 2.' 5. ' Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round, staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind ^' 6. 'The Hereafter never rises before the eyes of the careless child, deluded by the delusion of wealth. " This is the world," he thinks, "there is no other ;" — thus he falls again and again under my sway.'

7. ' He (the Self) of whom many are not even able ' Cf. I, 16. ^ The commentator explains lolupanta/z by yiM/ieda.m krz'tavanta^. Some MSS. read lolupante and lolupanti, but one expects either lolupyante or lolupati, ' Cf. Uwid. Up. II, 8. to hear, whom many, even when they hear of him, do not comprehend ; wonderful is a man, when found, who is able to teach him (the Self) ; wonderful is he who comprehends him, when taught by an able teacher ^' 8. ' That (Self), when taught by an inferior man, is not easy to be known, even though often thought upon^; unless it be taught by another, there is no way to it, for it is inconceivably smaller than what is small ^' 9. ' That doctrine is not to be obtained^ by argument, but when it is declared by another, then, O dearest, it is easy to understand. Thou hast obtained it now^ ; thou art truly a man of true resolve. May we have always an inquirer like thee ^\ ' 10. NaX^iketas said : T know that what is called a treasure is transient, for that eternal is not obtained by things which are not eternal. Hence the Na/6iketa fire(-sacrifice) has been laid by me (first) ; then, by means of transient things, I have obtained what is not transient (the teaching of Yama)^'

11. Yama said: 'Though thou hadst seen the fulfilment of all desires, the foundation of the world, the endless rewards of good deeds, the shore where ^ Cf. Bhag. Gita II, 29. ^ cf. Mund. Up II, 4- ^ I read a/zupramawat. Other interpretations : If it is taught byone who is identified with the Self, then there is no uncertainty. If it has been taught as identical with ourselves, then there is no perception of anything else. If it has been taught by one who is identified with it, then there is no failure in understanding it (agati). * Apaneya; should it be apanaya, as afterwards sugnanaya? ^ Because you insist on my teaching it to thee. ^ Unless no is negative, for Yama, at first, does not like to communicate his knowledge. "^ The words in parentheses have been added in order to remove the otherwise contradictory character of the two lines. there is no fear, that which is magnified by praise, the wide abode, the rest ^ yet being wise thou hast with firm resolve dismissed it all.' 1 2. * The wise who, by means of meditation on his Self, recognises the Ancient, who is difficult to be seen, who has entered into the dark, who is hidden in the cave, who dwells in the abyss, as God, he indeed leaves joy and sorrow far behind^.'

13. * A mortal who has heard this and embraced it, who has separated from it all qualities, and has thus reached the subtle Being, rejoices, because he has obtained what is a cause for rejoicing. The house (of Brahman) is open, I believe, O Na/^iketas.' 14. Na/^-iketas said: 'That which thou seest as neither this nor that, as neither effect nor cause, as neither past nor future, tell me that.' 15. Yama said: 'That word (or place) which all the Vedas record, which all penances proclaim, which men desire when they live as religious students, that word I tell thee briefly, it is Om ^' 16. ' That (imperishable) syllable means Brahman, that syllable means the highest (Brahman); he who knows that syllable, whatever he desires, is his.' 1 7. ' This is the best support, this is the highest support ; he who knows that support is magnified in the world of Brahma.' 18. 'The knowing (Self) is not born, it dies not; it sprang from nothing, nothing sprang from it. The ' Cf. ^/^and. Up.VII, 12, 2. ^ Yama seems here to propound the lower Brahman only, not yet the highest. Deva, God, can only be that as what the Old, i. e. the Self in the heart, is to be recognised. It would therefore mean, he who finds God or the Self in his heart. See afterwards, verse 21.

3 Cf. 6-vet. Up, IV, 9; Bhag. Gita VIII, 11. Ancient is unborn, eternal, everlasting ; he is not killed, though the body is killed ^' 19. 'If the killer thinks that he kills, if the killed thinks that he is killed, they do not understand ; for this one does not kill, nor is that one killed.' 20. 'The Self^, smaller than small, greater than great, is hidden in the heart of that creature, A man who is free from desires and free from grief, sees the majesty of the Self by the grace of the Creator ^' 21.' Though sitting still, he walks far; though lying down, he goes everywhere ^ Who, save myself, is able to know that God who rejoices and rejoices not ? ' 22. 'The wise who knows the Self as bodiless within the bodies, as unchanging among changing things, as great and omnipresent, does never grieve.' 23. ' That Self ^ cannot be gained by the Veda, nor by understanding, nor by much learning. He whom the Self chooses, by him the Self can be gained. The Self chooses him (his body) as his own.' 24. ' But he who has not first turned away from his wickedness, who is not tranquil, and subdued, or whose mind is not at rest, he can never obtain the Self (even) by knowledge.'

25. 'Who then knows where He is. He to whom the Brahmans and Kshatriyas are (as it were) but food ^ and death itself a condiment ?' ^ As to verses 18 and 19, see Bhag. Gita II, 19, 20. 2 Cf. Svet. Up. Ill, 20; Taitt. Ar. X, 12, i. ^ The commentator translates 'through the tranquillity of the senses,' i. e. dhatuprasadat, taking prasada in the technical sense of samprasada. As to kratu, desire, or rather, will, see Brih. Ar. ' a. Tal. Up. 5. ^ Cf. I, 7-9 ; Mund. Up. Ill, 2, 3 ; Bhag. Gita I, 53. « In whom all disappears, and in whom even death is swallowed up. 1. 'There are the two\ drinking their reward in the world of their own works, entered into the cave (of the heart), dwelHng on the highest summit (the ether in the heart). Those who know Brahman call them shade and light ; likewise, those householders who perform the Tri;2a/^iketa sacrifice.' 2. ' May we be able to master that Na/^iketa rite which is a bridge for sacrificers ; also that which is the highest, imperishable Brahman for those who wish to cross over to the fearless shore ^.'

3. ' Know the Self to be sitting in the chariot, the body to be the chariot, the intellect (buddhi) the charioteer, and the mind the reins ^' 4. ' The senses they call the horses, the objects of the senses their roads. When he (the Highest Self) is in union with the body, the senses, and the mind, then wise people call him the Enjoyer.' 5. ' He who has no understanding and whose mind ^ The two are explained as the higher and lower Brahman, the former being the light, the latter the shadow. 7?/ta is explained as reward, and connected with sukrz'ta, lit. good deeds, but frequently used in the sense of svakr/ta, one's own good and evil deeds. The difficulty is, how the highest Brahman can be said to drink the reward (r/tapa) of former deeds, as it is above all works and above all rewards. The commentator explains it away as a metaphorical expression, as we often speak of many, when we mean one. (Cf. Mnnd. Up. Ill, I, I.) I have joined sukr/tasya with loke, loka meaning the world, i. e. the state, the environment, which we made to ourselves by our former deeds.

^ These two verses may be later additions. ' The simile of the chariot has some points of similarity with the well-known passage in Plato's Phsedros, but Plato did not borrow this simile from the Brahmans, as little as Xenophon need have consulted our Upanishad (II, 2) in writing his prologue of Prodikos. (the reins) is never firmly held, his senses (horses) are unmanageable, like vicious horses of a charioteer.' 6. ' But he who has understanding and whose mind is always firmly held, his senses are under control, like good horses of a charioteer.' 7. ' He who has no understanding, who is unmindful and always impure, never reaches that place, but enters into the round of births.' 8. ' But he who has understanding, who is mindful and always pure, reaches indeed that place, from whence he is not born again.' 9. ' But he who has understanding for his charioteer, and who holds the reins of the mind, he reaches the end of his journey, and that is the highest place of Vish;ai.' 10. ' Beyond the senses there are the obj ects, beyond the objects there is the mind, beyond the mind there is the intellect, the Great Self is beyond the intellect.'

II.' Beyond the Great there is the Undeveloped, beyond the Undeveloped there is the Person (purusha). Beyond the Person there is nothing — this is the goal, the highest road.' 12. ' That Self is hidden in all beings and does not shine forth, but it is seen by subtle seers through their sharp and subtle intellect.' 13. 'A wise man should keep down speech and mind ^ ; he should keep them within the Self which is knowledge ; he should keep knowledge within the Self which is the Great ; and he should keep that (the Great) within the Self which is the Quiet.' 14. 'Rise, awake! having obtained your boons ^ 1 ^ankara interprets, he should keep down speech in the mind. 2 Comm., excellent teachers. understand them! The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over ; thus the wise say the path (to the Self) is hard.' 15. ' He who has perceived that which is without sound, without touch, without form, without decay, without taste, eternal, without smell, without beginning, without end, beyond the Great, and unchangeable, is freed from the jaws of death.' 16. * A wise man who has repeated or heard the ancient story of Na>('iketas told by Death, is magnified in the world of Brahman.'

17. 'And he who repeats this greatest mystery in an assembly of Brahmans, or full of devotion at the time of the ^'raddha sacrifice, obtains thereby infinite rewards.' 1. Death said: 'The Self-existent pierced the openings (of the senses) so that they turn forward : therefore man looks forward, not backward into himself. Some wise man, however, with his eyes closed and wishing for immortality, saw the Self behind.' 2. * Children follow after outward pleasures, and fall into the snare of wide-spread death. Wise men only, knowing the nature of what is immortal, do not look for anything stable here among things unstable.' 3. ' That by which we know form, taste, smell, sounds, and loving touches, by that also we know what exists besides. This is that (which thou hast asked for).' 4. ' The wise, when he knows that that by which he perceives all objects in sleep or in waking is the great omnipresent Self, grieves no more.' 5. * He who knows this living soul which eats honey (perceives objects) as being the Self, always near, the Lord of the past and the future, henceforward fears no more. This is that.' 6. ' He who (knows) him^ who was born first from

^ The first manifestation of Brahman, commonly called Hira;?yagarbha, which springs from the tapas of Brahman, AfterAvards only water and the rest of the elements become manifested. The text of these verses is abrupt, possibly corrupt. The two accusatives, tish//;antam and tish/Z/antim, seem to me to require veda to be supplied from verse 4. the brooding heat^ (for he was born before the water), who, entering into the heart, abides therein, and was perceived from the elements. This is that.' 7. '(He who knows) Aditi also, who is one with all deities, who arises with Pra;^a (breath or Hira;/yagarbha), who, entering into the heart, abides therein, and was born from the elements. This is that.' 8. ' There is Agni (fire), the all-seeing, hidden in the two fire-sticks, well-guarded like a child (in the womb) by the mother, day after day to be adored by men when they awake and bring oblations. This is that.' 9. 'And that whence the sun rises, and whither it goes to set, there all the Devas are contained, and no one goes beyond. This is that^' 10. ' What is here (visible in the world), the same is there (invisible in Brahman) ; and what is there, the same is here. He who sees any difference here (between Brahman and the world), goes from death to death.'

11. 'Even by the mind this (Brahman) is to be obtained, and then there is no difference whatsoever. He goes from death to death who sees any difference here.' 12.' The person (purusha), of the size of a thumbs stands in the middle of the Self (body?), as lord of the past and the future, and henceforward fears no more. This is that' 13. ' That person, of the size of a thumb, is like a light without smoke, lord of the past and the future, he is the same to-day and to-morrow. This is that.' ' Cf. s;7sh/ikrama. 2 cf_ y, 8. 3 ^vet. Up. 111,13. 11 ADHYAYA, 4 VALlJ, 1 5. 17 14. * As rain-water that has fallen on a mountainridge runs down the rocks on all sides, thus does he, who sees a difference between qualities, run after them on all sides.' 15. * As pure water poured into pure water remains the same, thus, O Gautama, is the Self of a thinker who knows.' 1 . ' There is a town with eleven ^ gates belonging to the Unborn (Brahman), whose thoughts are never crooked. He who approaches it, grieves no more, and liberated (from all bonds of ignorance) becomes free. This is that.'

2. * He (Brahman)^ is the swan (sun), dwelling in the bright heaven ; he is the Vasu (air), dwelling in the sky; he is the sacrificer (fire), dwelling on the hearth; he is the guest (Soma), dwelling in the sacrificial jar; he dwells in men, in gods (vara), in the sacrifice (rz'ta), in heaven ; he is born in the water, on earth, in the sacrifice (ma), on the mountains ; he is the True and the Great.' 3. * He (Brahman) it is who sends up the breath (pra/2a), and who throws back the breath (apana). All the Devas (senses) worship him, the adorable (or the dwarf), who sits in the centre.' 4. 'When that incorporated (Brahman), who dwells in the body, is torn away and freed from the body, what remains then ? This is that' 5. * No mortal lives by the breath that goes up and by the breath that goes down. We live by another, in whom these two repose.' 6. ' Well then, O Gautama, I shall tell thee this mystery, the old Brahman, and what happens to the Self, after reaching death.' * Seven apertures in the head, the navel, two below, and the one at the top of the head through which the Self escapes. Cf. Svet Up. Ill, 18; Bhag. Gita V, 13.

'■^ Cf. Rig-veda IV, 40, 5. 7. ' Some enter the womb in order to have a body, as organic beings, others go into inorganic matter, according to their work and according to their knowledge ^' 8. * He, the highest Person, who is awake in us while we are asleep, shaping one lovely sight after another, that indeed is the Bright, that is Brahman, that alone is called the Immortal. All worlds are contained in it, and no one goes beyond. This is that^' 9. ' As the one fire, after it has entered the world, though one, becomes different according to whatever it burns, thus the one Self within all things becomes different, according to whatever it enters, and exists also without ^' 10. 'As the one air, after it has entered the world, though one, becomes different according to whatever it enters, thus the one Self within all things becomes different, according to whatever it enters, and exists also without.' 11. ' As the sun, the eye of the whole world, is not contaminated by the external impurities seen by the eyes, thus the one Self within all things is never contaminated by the misery of the world, being himself without ^'

12. ' There is one ruler, the Self within all things, who makes the one form manifold. The wise who perceive him within their Self, to them belongs eternal happiness, not to others ^' 13. 'There is one eternal thinker, thinking non- 1 Cf. Bnh. Ar. II, 2, 13. ^ q^ jy, 9 ; VI, i. 3 Cf. Bnh. Ar. II, 5, 19. " Cf. Bhag. Gita XIII, 52. ^ Cf. ^vet.Up.VI, 12. eternal thoughts, who, though one, fulfils the desires of many. The wise who perceive him within their Self, to them belongs eternal peace, not to others ^' 14. ' They perceive that highest indescribable pleasure, saying, This is that. How then can I understand it ? Has it its own light, or does it reflect light ? ' 15. ' The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars, nor these lightnings, and much less this fire. When he shines, everything shines after him ; by his light all this is lighted 2.' 1 Cf. ^vet. Up.VI, 13. 2 Cf. 5vet.Up.VI, 14; Muw^. Up.II, 2, 10; Bhag. Gita XV, 6. 1. 'There is that ancient tree\ whose roots grow upward and whose branches grow downward ; — that^ indeed is called the Bright ^ that is called Brahman, that alone is called the ImmortaH. All worlds are contained in it, and no one goes beyond. This is that/

2. ' Whatever there is, the whole world, when gone forth (from the Brahman), trembles in its breath ^. That Brahman is a great terror, like a drawn sword. Those who know it become immortal.' 3. ' From terror of Brahman fire burns, from terror the sun burns, from terror Indra and Vayu, and Death, as the fifth, run away ^.' 4. * If a man could not understand it before the falling asunder of his body, then he has to take body again in the worlds of creation ''.' ^ The fig-tree which sends down its branches so that they strike root and form new stems, one tree growing into a complete forest. 2 Cf. Bhag. Gita XV, 1-3. ' Cf. V, 8. * The commentator says that the tree is the world, and its root is Brahman, but there is nothing to support this view in the original, where tree, roots, and branches are taken together as representing the Brahman in its various manifestations. ^ According to the commentator, in the highest Brahman. « Cf. Taitt. Up. II, 8, I. '' The commentator translates: 'If a man is able to understand (Brahman), then even before the decay of his body, he is liberated. If he is not able to understand it, then he has to take body again in the created worlds.' I doubt whether it is possible to supply so much, and should prefer to read iha /'en na^akad, though I find it difficult to explain how so simple a text should have been misunderstood and corrupted.

5. ' As in a mirror, so (Brahman may be seen clearly) here in this body ; as in a dream, in the world of the Fathers ; as in the water, he is seen about in the world of the Gandharvas; as in light and shaded in the world of Brahma.' 6. ' Having understood that the senses are distinct^ (from the Atman), and that their rising and setting (their waking and sleeping) belongs to them in their distinct existence (and not to the Atman), a wise man grieves no more. 7. ' Beyond the senses is the mind, beyond the mind is the highest (created) Being ^ higher than that Being is the Great Self, higher than the Great, the highest Undeveloped.' 8. * Beyond the Undeveloped is the Person, the all-pervading and entirely imperceptible. Every creature that knows him is liberated, and obtains immortality.' 9. 'His form is not to be seen, no one beholds him with the eye. He is imagined by the heart, by wisdom, by the mind. Those who know this, are immortals' 10. ' When the five instruments of knowledge stand still together with the mind, and when the intellect does not move, that is called the highest state.'

11. ' This, the firm holding back of the senses, is what is called Yoga. He must be free from thoughtlessness then, for Yoga comes and goes ^' ^ Roer : 'As in a picture and in the sunshine.' "^ They arise from the elements, ether, &c. ^ Buddhi or intellect, cf. Ill, 10. * Much better in ^vet.Up. IV, 20: 'Those who know him by the heart as being in the heart, and by the mind, are immortal.' ^ 6'ahkara explains apyaya by apaya. 12. 'He (the Self) cannot be reached by speech, by mind, or by the eye. How can it be apprehended except by him who says : " He is ? '" 13. 'By the words "He is," is he to be apprehended, and by (admitting) the reahty of both (the invisible Brahman and the visible world, as coming from Brahman). When he has been apprehended by the words " He is," then his reality reveals itself.' 14. ' When all desires that dwell in his heart cease, then the mortal becomes immortal, and obtains Brahman.' 15. 'When all the ties^ of the heart are severed here on earth, then the mortal becomes immortal — here ends the teaching 2.'

16. ' There are a hundred and one arteries of the heart^, one of them penetrates the crown of the head'*. Moving upwards by it, a man (at his death) reaches the Immortal ^ ; the other arteries serve for departing in different directions.' 1 7. ' The Person not larger than a thumb, the inner Self, is always settled in the heart of men ^ Let a man draw that Self forth from his body with steadi- ^ Ignorance, passion, &c. Cf. lAxxnd. Up. II, i, 10; II, 2, 9. 2 The teaching of the Vedanta extends so far and no farther. (Cf. Prajna Up. VI, 7.) What follows has reference, according to the commentator, not to him who knows the highest Brahman, for he becomes Brahman at once and migrates no more ; but to him who does not know the highest Brahman fully, and therefore migrates to the Brahmaloka, receiving there the reward for his partial knowledge and for his good works. 3 Cf. iTHnd.Up.VIII, 6, 6. * It passes out by the head. s The commentator says : He rises through the sun Qsimid. Up. I, 2, 1 1) to a world in which he enjoys some kind of immortality, « 6'vet. Up. Ill, 13.

ness, as one draws the pith from a reed^ Let him know that Self as the Bright, as the Immortal; yes, as the Bright, as the Immortal ^.' 1 8. Haying received this knowledge taught by Death and the whole rule of Yoga (meditation), Na/^iketa became free from passion ^ and death, and obtained Brahman. Thus it will be with another also who knows thus what relates to the Self. 19. May He protect us both! May He enjoy us both ! May we acquire strength together ! May our knowledge become bright! May we never quarrel^! Om ! Peace ! peace ! peace ! Hari/^, Om ! ^ Roer : ' As from a painter's brush a fibre/ * This repetition marks, as usual, the end of a chapter. ^ Virata, free from vice and virtue. It may have been vi^ara, free from old age. See, however, Mund. Up. I, 2, 11. * Cf. Taitt. Up, III, I ; III, 10, note. 1. Brahma was the first of the Devas, the maker of the universe, the preserver of the world. He told the knowledge of Brahman, the foundation of all knowledge, to his eldest son Atharva \ 2. Whatever Brahma told Atharvan, that knowledge of Brahman Atharvan formerly told to Ahgir; he told it to Satyavaha Bharadva^a, and Bharadva^a told it in succession to Angiras.

3. vSaunaka, the great householder, approached Angiras respectfully and asked : ' Sir, what is that through which, if it is known, everything else becomes known ? ' 4. He said to him : 'Two kinds of knowledge must be known, this is what all who know Brahman tell us, the higher and the lower knowledge.' 5. ' The lower knowledge is the i?/g-veda, Ya^irveda, Sama-veda, Atharva-veda, ^iksha (phonetics), Kalpa (ceremonial), Vyakara;^a (grammar), Nirukta (etymology), A'//andas (metre), 6^yotisha (astronomy) ^ ; 1 The change between Atharva and Atharvan, like that between NaMetas and Na/i'iketa, shows the freedom of the phraseology of the Upanishad, and cannot be used for fixing the date of the constituent elements of the Upanishad. 2 Other MSS. add here itihasa-pura«a-nyaya-mima»zsa-dharma- but the higher knowledge is that by which the Indestructible (Brahman) is apprehended.' 6. ' That which cannot be seen, nor seized, which has no family and no caste \ no eyes nor ears, no hands nor feet, the eternal, the omnipresent (allpervading), infinitesimal, that which is imperishable, that it is which the wise regard as the source of all beings.' 7. * As the spider sends forth and draws in its thread, as plants grow on the earth, as from every man hairs spring forth on the head and the body, thus does everything arise here from the Indestructible.'

8. ' The Brahman swells by means of brooding (penance) ^ ; hence is produced matter (food) ; from matter breathy mind, the true*, the worlds (seven), and from the works (performed by men in the worlds), the immortal (the eternal effects, rewards, and punishments of works).' ^ I translate varwa by caste on account of its conjunction with gotra. The commentator translates, ' without origin and without qualities.' We should say that which belongs to no genus or species. ^ I have translated tap as by brooding, because this is the only word in English which combines the two meanings of warmth and thought. Native authorities actually admit two roots, one tap, to burn, the other tap, to meditate; see commentary on Parajara-smnti, p. 39^ (MS. Bodl.), Tapa^ kr/^'/^/^ray^andrayawadirupewaharavar^anam. Nanu Vyasena tapo 'nyatha smaryate, tapa^ svadharma-vartitva»i jau^aw sahganibarha?zam iti ; nayaw dosha-^, kr//('Mrader api svadharmavijeshat. Tapa sa/;itapa ity asmad dhator utpannasya tapa/^-jabdasya dehajoshawe vrz'ttir mukhya. . . . Yat tu tatraivoktawz, ko 'yam moksha/z kathawi tena sa/«saram pratipannavan ity alo^anam artha^nas tapa^ jawsanti pa«/ita iti so 'nya eva tapa>^jabda>^, tapa alo>^ana ity asmad dhator utpanna^. ' Hirawyagarbha, the living world as a whole. Comm. * Satya, if we compare KaM, VI, 7 and III, 10, seems to mean buddhi. Here it is explained by the five elements.

I MUiVDAKA, I KHAiVDA, 9. 29 9. ' From him who perceives all and who knows all, whose brooding (penance) consists of knowledge, from him (the highest Brahman) is born that Brahman ^ name, form ^, and matter (food).' 2 Namarupam, a very frequent concept in Buddhistic literature.

1. This is the truth ^ : the sacrificial works which they (the poets) saw in the hymns (of the Veda) have been performed in many ways in the Treta age^. Practise^ them diHgently, ye lovers of truth, this is your path that leads to the world of good works *! 2. When the fire is lighted and the flame flickers, let a man ofl"er his oblations between the two portions of melted butter, as an offering with faith. 3. If a man's Agnihotra sacrifice ^ is not followed ^ In the beginning of the second Kha.nda, the lower knowledge is first described, referring to the performance of sacrifices and other good deeds. The reward of them is perishable, and therefore a desire is awakened after the higher knowledge. * The Treta age is frequently mentioned as the age of sacrifices. I should prefer, however, to take treta in the sense of trayi vidya, and santata as developed, because the idea that the Tret^ age was distinguished by its sacrifices, seems to me of later origin. Even the theory of the four ages or yugas, though known in the Ait. Brahmawa, is not frequently alluded to in the older Upanishads. See Weber, Ind. Stud. I, p. 283.

^ The termination tha for ta looks suspiciously Buddhistic ; see ' Sanskrit Texts discovered in Japan,' J. R. A. S. 1880, p. i8o. * Svakn'ta and sukr/ta are constantly interchanged. They mean the same, good deeds, or deeds performed by oneself and believed to be good. ^ At the Agnihotra, the first of all sacrifices, and the type of many others, two portions of a^ya are sacrificed on the right and left side of the Ahavantya altar. The place between the two is called the Avapasthana, and here the oblations to the gods are to be offered. There are two oblations in the morning to Surya and Pra^apati, two in the evening to Agni and Pra^apati. Other sacrifices, such as the Dar^a and Purwamasa, and those mentioned in verse 3, are connected with the Agnihotra. I MUNDAKA, 2 KUANDA, 7. T^l by the new-moon and full-moon sacrifices, by the four-months' sacrifices, and by the harvest sacrifice, if it is unattended by guests, not offered at all, or without the Vai^vadeva ceremony, or not offered according to rule, then it destroys his seven worlds \ 4. Kali (black), Karalt (terrific), Mano^ava (swift as thought), Sulohita (very red), Sudhumravar;^a (purple), Sphulihgini (sparkling), and the brilliant Vijvartapi ^ (having all forms), all these playing about are called the seven tongues (of fire).

5. If a man performs his sacred works when these flames are shining, and the oblations follow at the right time, then they lead him as sun-rays to where the one Lord of the Devas dwells. 6. Come hither, come hither ! the brilliant oblations say to him, and carry the sacrificer on the rays of the sun, while they utter pleasant speech and praise him, saying : * This is thy holy Brahma-world (Svarga), gained by thy good works.' 7. But frail, in truth, are those boats, the sacrifices', the eighteen, in which this lower ceremonial has been told^. Fools who praise this as the highest good, are subject again and again to old age and death. ^ The seven worlds form the rewards of a pious sacrificer, the first is Bhu^, the last Satya. The seven worlds may also be explained as the worlds of the father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, of the son, the grandson, and great-grandson, and of the sacrificer himself. ^ Or Vijvaru/^i, if there is any authority for this reading in Mahidhara's commentary to the Va^as. Sa^^ihita XVII, 79. The Rajah of Besmah's edition has vij-varuki, which is also the reading adopted by Rammohun Roy, see Complete Works, vol. i, p. 579.

^ The commentator takes the eighteen for the sixteen priests, the sacrificer, and his wife. But such an explanation hardly yields a satisfactory meaning, nor does plava mean perishable. 8. Fools dwelling in darkness, wise in their own conceit, and puffed up with vain knowledge, go round and round staggering to and fro, like blind men led by the blind \ 9. Children, when they have long lived in ignorance, consider themselves happy. Because those who depend on their good works are, owing to their passions, improvident, they fall and become miserable when their life (in the world which they had gained by their good works) is finished. 10. Considering sacrifice and good works as the best, these fools know no higher good, and having enjoyed (their reward) on the height of heaven, gained by good works, they enter again this world or a lower one. 11. But those 2 who practise penance and faith in the forest, tranquil, wise, and living on alms, depart free from passion through the sun to where that immortal Person dwells whose nature is imperishable^. 12. Let a Brahma;^a, after he has examined all these worlds which are gained by works, acquire freedom from all desires. Nothing that is eternal (not made) can be gained by what is not eternal (made). Let him, in order to understand this, take