Upnishad

SR No.: 007670
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Max Muller
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1879
Total Pages: 1835
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 35 MB

Page 102

INTRODUCTION.
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how certain portions of the Mahâvrata, as described in the first Aranyaka, can be made to suggest a deeper meaning, and ought to lead the mind of the sacrificer away from the purely outward ceremonial to meditation on higher subjects. Without a knowledge of the first Aranyaka therefore the first Upanishad would be almost unintelligible, and though its translation was extremely tedious, it could not well have been omitted.
The second and third Upanishads are not connected with the ceremonial of the Mahâvrata, but in the fourth and fifth Aranyakas the Mahâvrata forms again the prin. cipal subject, treated, however, not as before in the style of the Bråhmanas, but in the style of Satras. The fourth Aranyaka contains nothing but a list of the Mahânâmnî hymns, but the fifth describes the Mahâvrata again, so that if the first Aranyaka may be looked upon as a portion of the Aitareya-brahmanas, the fifth could best be classed with the Satras of Åsvalayana.
To a certain extent this fact, the composite character of the Aitareya-aranyaka, is recognised even by native scholars, who generally do not trouble themselves much on such questions. They look both on the Aitareya-brahmana and on the greater portion of Aitareya-aranyaka as the works of an inspired Rishi, Mahidasa Aitareya?, but they consider the fourth and fifth books of the Aranyaka as contributed by purely human authors, such as Åsvalayana and Saunaka, who, like other Satrakâras, took in verses belonging to other Sakhâs, and did not confine their rules to their own Sakha only.
There are many legends about Mahidåsa, the reputed author of the Aitareya-brahmana and Aranyaka. He is
See Boehtlingk and Roth, s.v. Nean Vedische Verse die in ihrem vollständigen Wortlaut aber noch nicht nachgewiesen sind.' Weber, Indische Studien VIII, 68. How these hymns are to be employed we learn from the Åsvalâyanasůtras VII, 12, 10, where we are told that if the Udgatris sing the Sâkvara Såman as the Prishshastotra, the nine verses beginning with Vid& maghavan, and known by the name of Mahånâmni, are to be joined in a peculiar manner. The only excuse given, why these Mahânâmnis are mentioned here, and not in the Brahmana, is that they are to be studied in the forest.
7 M.M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, pp. 177, 335.
and
as the Prishichache we are told throyed we learn from
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