Vinaya Texts

SR No.: 007684
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: T W Rhys Davids, Hermann Oldenberg
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1881
Total Pages: 2523
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 47 MB

Page 448

xxxii
UPANISHADS.
it is distinctly referred to as sruta or revealed! It is one of the twelve Upanishads chosen by Vidyâranya in his Sarvopanishad-arthânabhàtiprakâsa, and it was singled out by Sankara as worthy of a special commentary.
The Svetâsvatara-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 Kalpasůtras, that some of them, called Mantra-upanishads, form part of the more modern Samhitâs, and that there are portions even in the Rig-veda-samhitâ for which the name of Upanishad is claimed by the Anukramanîs. We find them most frequent, however, during the Brâhmanaperiod, in the Brâhmanas themselves, and, more especially, in those portions which are called Aranyakas, 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
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See Deussen, Vedanta, p. 24; Ved. Sûtra I, 1, 11; I, 4, 8; II, 3, 22. ? See Sacred Books of the East, vol. i, p. lxvi. * Loc. cit. p. Ixvii.
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