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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JUNE, 1915
SOME REMARKS ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF THE UPANISHADS.
BY ROBERT ZIMMERMANN, S. J., BOMBAY. It has become almost a common place with scholars that it is next to, if not wholly, impossible to arrive at a satisfactory chronology of the Upanishads. Even F. Max Müller, whose genius seldom felt baffled at a question, says: “ Though it is easy to see that these Upanishads belong to very different periods of Indian thought, any attempt to fix their rc'ative age seems to me for the present almost hopeless."1 A. Bartha and A. E. Gough3 speak nearly in the same strain. And yet as early as 1852 Albrecht Weber had, with reference to the whole Sanskrit literature, expressed the hope of establishing an internal, relative chronology-"the only chronology that is possible," --though the inquiry into the saine might be completely checked for a lengthened period. This was only too true st a time when a great many of the Upanishads were known to European scholars merely by their titles, and every year added not a few new names to the "canon" of this section of sacred literature. Acting upon the principle of internal chronology, L. von Schroeders classed the Atharva veda Upanishads in three roughly outlined categories.
Any attempt, indeed, at constructing an absolute historical chronology would in most cases be doomed to fail from the very outset for want of external historical data. Nor are we, in general, to expect external data even for a relative chronology. We are thus thrown back upon internal criteria, such as grammar, style, metre, ideas religious and philosophical, quotations from one another, a. 8. f. Keeping then within the limits of possibility,--that is to say, aiming for the time only at internal relative chronology,--the question is not whether we can, but how we are to arrive at the resuit desired. In other words, the problem reduces itself to a question of the proper critical method. And, indeed, it would seem extremely strange, if in the whole compass of Upanishad literature, we were not to find a footing from which to get on to some historical ground, in order to determine the absolute age of a good many, if not all, Upanishads with satisfactory certainty and accuracy. Some of these principles have been hinted at by E. W. Hopkins with reference to the different classes of sacred literature, and have been applied, in a few cases, by P. Deussen. True, it must be frankly admitted that one or other internal criterion applied by itself alone may lead to no, or even contradictory, results; thus, M. Müller and P. Deussen have come to different conclusions about the age of the Maitrayana Upanishad.10 But if we take them collectively and, in case of diverging results, balance their respective weight against one another, these criteria ought to be the proper means of ascertaining what has been, and, in all likelihood, will ever be denied to a more direct way of research.
1 Sacred Books of the East, Vol. I, p. LXIX.
The Religions of India by A. Barth. Authorised Translation by Rev. F. Wood, London 1906, p. 187-188.
The Philosophy of the Upanishada and Ancient Indian Metaphysics. By Archibald Edward Gough, M.A. Third Ed., London 1903, p. VII ff.
Akademische Vorlesungen über indische Literaturgeschichte. Berlin 1862, pp. iii and 6.
6 Indiens Litteratur und Cultur in historischer Entwicklung, Von Dr. Leopold von Schroeder, Leipzig 1889, p. 191.
6 The Religions of India by Edward Washburn Hopkins. Boston (1894), pp. 3-4.
Sechzig (panishad'a des Veda, aus dem Sanskrit überadzt.... von Dr. Paul Deusden, Pro. tessor an der Universität Kiel, 2. Aufl., Leipz g 1905.
8 8. B. E. Vol. XV, p. xlvii. 9 Sechzig Upanishad's p. 312.
10 In a good many, especially the older, Upanishads we are to distinguish between the original teaching of the Upanishad handed down from one generation to another and the final wording of the tenet deposited in the version of the manuscripts we happen to have. In such cases the result will, as a matter of course, be a seemingly contradictory one, the contents being older than the form in which it has come down to us.
