Upanishads: Origins of Ancient Indian Philosophy and Brahman

The Upanishads are the philosophical texts that close the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism. The earliest of them, composed in northern India between about 800 and 500 BC, asked new questions about the self, the universe, death and freedom, and introduced ideas such as brahman, atman, karma and rebirth. These ideas shaped all later Hindu philosophy and formed part of the world in which Buddhism and Jainism arose.

What the word means

The Sanskrit word upaniṣad is often explained as “sitting down near”, as a student sits near a teacher. Ancient usage suggests it also meant a hidden connection or secret teaching. Both senses fit texts that were taught privately to qualified students.

Each early Upanishad is attached to one of the four Vedas. The Brihadaranyaka belongs to the White Yajurveda, the Chandogya to the Samaveda, the Aitareya to the Rigveda, and the Mundaka and Prashna to the Atharvaveda. Because they come at the end of the Vedic corpus, they are also called Vedanta, “the end of the Veda”.

Dating and the main texts

Like other Vedic works, the Upanishads were composed and passed on orally, so their dates are approximate. Scholars such as Patrick Olivelle place the two oldest, the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya, in roughly the 7th–6th centuries BC, and in any case before the Buddha. They are long prose texts that grew out of discussions of ritual.

A second group, including the Taittiriya, Aitareya and Kaushitaki, also belongs to the late Vedic period. Verse Upanishads such as the Kena, Katha, Isha, Shvetashvatara and Mundaka followed over the next few centuries. The Mandukya, a short text on the syllable Om, is usually dated later still.

In total, more than 200 texts are called Upanishads. A traditional list, the Muktika canon, names 108. About 10 to 13 are recognised as the principal Upanishads.

The world that produced them

The early Upanishads come from the late Vedic period, when the centre of Vedic culture had moved into the Ganges plain. Kingdoms such as Kuru-Panchala in the west and Videha in the east competed for prestige, and kings sponsored debates between learned men.

Ritual had become extremely elaborate, and some thinkers began to ask what lay behind it. If a sacrifice could sustain the universe, what was the power that made it work? What was the self that performed it, and what happened to that self after death? The Upanishads move from outward ritual to inward knowledge.

Brahman and atman

The central concept of the Upanishads is brahman. In earlier texts the word meant the power of the sacred formula; in the Upanishads it came to mean the ultimate reality, the unchanging source and ground of everything that exists.

The second key idea is atman, the self or innermost essence of a person. The Upanishadic sages taught that atman is not the body, the senses or even the mind, but something deeper that witnesses them. Their most radical claim was that atman and brahman are one.

The Chandogya Upanishad expresses this through the teaching of Uddalaka Aruni to his son Shvetaketu. Using examples such as salt dissolved in water, he shows that an invisible essence pervades everything, and he repeats the phrase tat tvam asi, “you are that”. The Brihadaranyaka has the parallel statement aham brahmasmi, “I am brahman”.

Karma, rebirth and liberation

The Upanishads contain some of the earliest clear statements of rebirth (samsara) and karma. In the Brihadaranyaka the sage Yajnavalkya teaches that a person becomes what he does: good actions lead to a good rebirth and bad actions to a bad one. In the Chandogya and Brihadaranyaka the king Pravahana Jaivali describes different paths taken by the dead.

The goal of the wise is moksha, liberation from the cycle of birth and death. It is achieved not by ritual but by knowledge, the direct realisation of the identity of atman and brahman. Practices of meditation and renunciation are linked to this pursuit, and the later Katha and Shvetashvatara Upanishads contain early references to yoga.

Teachers and debates

The Upanishads are full of named teachers, and some of their most memorable scenes are debates. In the Brihadaranyaka, King Janaka of Videha offers a prize of a thousand cows to the most learned Brahmin, and Yajnavalkya is challenged by many opponents, including the woman philosopher Gargi Vachaknavi, who presses him with questions about what the world is woven upon.

Yajnavalkya’s wife Maitreyi also appears, asking whether wealth can make her immortal; he answers that it cannot, and teaches her about the self. Several teachers are Kshatriyas, members of the warrior class, which suggests that new religious thinking was not limited to priests. The Katha Upanishad frames its teaching as a dialogue between the boy Nachiketa and Yama, the god of death.

Influence and legacy

The Upanishads became the basis of Vedanta, one of the main schools of Hindu philosophy. In the 8th century AD the philosopher Shankara wrote commentaries on the principal Upanishads that founded Advaita (“non-dual”) Vedanta; later teachers such as Ramanuja and Madhva offered different interpretations. The Bhagavad Gita draws heavily on Upanishadic ideas.

The early Upanishads also form the background to the teachings of the Buddha and Mahavira, who accepted karma and rebirth but rejected the authority of the Vedas, and in the Buddha’s case the idea of a permanent self. India’s national motto, Satyameva Jayate, “truth alone triumphs”, comes from the Mundaka Upanishad.

Outside India, the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh had fifty Upanishads translated into Persian in 1657. A Latin version of this translation by the French scholar Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, published in 1801–1802, introduced them to European readers, including the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

Myths and facts

Myth: the Upanishads are a single book with one doctrine. They are a varied collection composed over many centuries by different schools. They contain different and sometimes conflicting views, which is why later philosophers could build rival systems on them.

Myth: they reject the Vedas. The Upanishads are themselves part of the Vedic corpus and often reinterpret rituals rather than abolishing them. They do, however, rank inner knowledge above sacrifice as the path to liberation.

Myth: they were written down from the beginning. Like the rest of the Vedas, they were transmitted orally in teaching lineages for centuries. The surviving manuscripts are much later than the texts themselves.

Fact: they include some of the earliest Indian accounts of meditation and yoga. The Katha Upanishad describes yoga as the firm control of the senses, and the Shvetashvatara gives practical advice on posture and breathing.

Timeline

• c. 800–500 BC: Composition of the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya Upanishads.
• c. 6th–5th centuries BC: Taittiriya, Aitareya and Kaushitaki Upanishads; teaching of the Buddha and Mahavira.
• c. 5th century BC onwards: Verse Upanishads such as the Kena, Katha and Isha.
• 8th century AD: Shankara writes commentaries founding Advaita Vedanta.
• 1657: Dara Shikoh’s Persian translation of fifty Upanishads.
• 1801–1802: Anquetil-Duperron publishes a Latin translation in France.

Why it matters

The Upanishads mark one of the great turning points in the history of thought. They shifted Indian religion from ritual towards inner knowledge and set out ideas about the self, karma and liberation that still shape the beliefs of hundreds of millions of people. They are also among the earliest philosophical texts anywhere in the world.