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Ixvi
UPANISHADS,
It is true, no doubt, that the stratum of literature which contains the Upanishads is later than the Samhitas, and later than the Brahmanas, but the first germs of Upanishad doctrines go back at least as far as the Mantra period, which provisionally has been fixed between 1000 and 800 B.C. Conceptions corresponding to the general teaching of the Upanishads occur in certain hymns of the Rig-veda-samhità, they must have existed therefore before that collection was finally closed. One hymn in the Samhitå of the Rig-veda (I, 191) was designated by Katyayana, the author of the Sarvanukramanikå, as an Upanishad. Here, however, upanishad means rather a secret charm than a philosophical doctrine. Verses of the hymns have often been incorporated in the Upanishads, and among the Oupnekhats translated into Persian by Dârå Shukoh we actually find the Purusha-sukta, the goth hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda, sorming the greater portion of the Bark'heh Soukt. In the Samhita of the Yągur-veda, however, in the Vågasaneyisâkhå, we meet with a real Upanishad, the famous Iså or Isâvâsya-upanishad, while the Sivasamkalpa, too, forms part of its thirty-fourth book %. In the Bråhmanas several Upanishads occur, even in portions which are not classed as Åranyakas, as, for instance, the well-known Kena or Talavakara-upanishad. The recognised place, however, for the ancient Upanishads is in the Aranyakas, or forest-books, which, as a rule, form an appendix to the Brahmanas, but are sometimes included also under the general name of Brahmana. Brâhmana, in fact, meaning originally the sayings of Brahmans, whether in the general sense of priests, or in the more special of Brahman-priest, is a name applicable not only to the books, properly so called, but to all old prose traditions, whether contained in the Samhitås, such as the Taittiriya-samhita, the Brahmanas, the Aranyakas, the Upanishads, and even, in certain cases, in the Sotras. We shall see in the introduction to the Aitareya-aranyaka, that that Åranyaka is in the beginning
See Weber, Indische Studien, IX, p. I seq. * See M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 317.
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