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The Upaniṣads

The Upaniṣads close the Vedic corpus. The early prose texts, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and the Chāndogya, date from c. 700–500 BCE, before the Buddha; the later verse texts, among them the Kaṭha and the Muṇḍaka, from c. 300–100 BCE. Much of them is dialogue, and the questions about knowledge are put by those who want it.

The Muṇḍaka opens on “the knowledge of Brahman, the foundation of all knowledge” (1.1.1). Śaunaka comes to the sage Aṅgiras and asks: “Sir, what is that through which, if it is known, everything else becomes known?” Aṅgiras answers that “two kinds of knowledge must be known … the higher and the lower knowledge”. The lower is the four Vedas and the auxiliary sciences, phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology, metre and astronomy; some manuscripts add logic (nyāya) and exegesis (mīmāṃsā). “But the higher knowledge is that by which the Indestructible (Brahman) is apprehended” (1.1.3–5, tr. Müller). All Vedic learning, logic and exegesis included, stands below the one knowledge on which the rest depends.

What that knowledge is for, the Chāndogya shows in a scene. Nārada comes to Sanatkumāra and lists everything he has learned: the Vedas, grammar, logic, the sciences. Then he says: “with all this I know the Mantras only … I do not know the Self. I have heard … that he who knows the Self overcomes grief. I am in grief” (7.1.2–3, tr. Müller). Learning that does not reach the Self leaves the learner where he was; knowing the Self (ātmavid) is how grief is crossed.

It is not reached by works. Having “examined all these worlds which are gained by works”, and seeing that “nothing that is eternal (not made) can be gained by what is not eternal (made)”, the seeker is to “take fuel in his hand and approach a Guru who is learned and dwells entirely in Brahman” (Muṇḍaka 1.2.12). In the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Yājñavalkya tells Maitreyī: “Verily, the Self is to be seen, to be heard, to be perceived, to be marked” (2.4.5, tr. Müller). Centuries later Śaṅkara read the verse as a method in three steps: hearing (śravaṇa) from the teacher and the scripture, reflection by reasoning (manana), and meditation (nididhyāsana). The verse itself has four verbs, and seeing comes first.

For Vedānta the Upaniṣads are scripture, and its inquiry into Brahman starts from them (Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta).