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NOVEMBER, 1928)
KATHAKA UPANISAD
203
karman, etc., the main tenets of the Aranyakas and the Upanişads-were imparted.20 It was used then to denominate those doctrines themselves and finally the collections of texts in which those doctrines were preserved. Thus upanişad by and by got its later meaning of
secret doctrine ' in general. There is absolutely nothing queer or bewildering in this development of the various meanings of the word.
Curiously enough the late Professor Oldenberg did not agree with this clear and indubitable explanation of the word upanipad.1 According to him the verb upa-ni-sad- should have exactly the same meaning as upa-ds- ; and consequently upanişad would mean 'reverence, worship. This worship, however, according to Oldenberg, was not the worship of the teacher, but that of Brahman-Atman, and of other things held in reverence by the doctrine of the Upanişads. In spite of the great authority of Oldenberg, this is quite wrong. For, if u panisad meant what he suggests, then it could, of course, only be applied to the lonely meditation of the yoni, the samadhi or samnydaa and in no case whatsoever to the interviews between a teacher and his pupil. Moreover, the way in which Oldenberg wants to translate, in some passages, the word u panişad is clearly out of the question. We Are quite prepared to admit that upanisad might, at times, mean something like 'reverence' but then it simply denotes the respectful attitude in which the pupil sits down next to his Guru in order to receive the secret doctrine from him.
Quite recently a Polish Sanskritist, Dr. Stanislaus Schayer, has tried to establish still another meaning of the word upanipad. According to him upanipad 'is the equivalence between two magical substances to be arrived at during the act of upasana.'23 From this original meaning of the word he derives the following secondary senses: (1) 'secret formula of equivalence, secret knowledge in general' (2) 'equivalence, substitute,' and (3) general interdependence between two substances, mutual interdependence, condition.' Besides transparent mistakes such as the curious misunderstanding of Panini i, 4, 79, or the entirely wrong explanation of Pali upaniod, Dr. Schayer's paper contains translations which are apparently sheer absurdities. Thus as concerns upa-08.14, when simple sentences like AV. X, 10, 26 : vasam mrtyum upåsate they adore the barren cow as Death'or Sat. Br. X, 6, 3, 12: satyam brahmety updsitawith the thought " truth is Brahman" one ought to worship it' are translated in the following way: 'sie umwerben (!) die Kuh als den Tod' and 'die Wahrheit ist das brahman, so muss man (die Wahrheit) umwerben (!). One could scarcely hit upon anything more erratio in the way of translation. And in the same way the author treats the word upanisad. In Sat. Br., xii, 2, 2, 13 we read : ahar iti sarvam samvatsaram saisd samvatsarasyopanisat, which, of course, means: the day is the whole year, that is the secret meaning of the year.' In the same way sámnam upanişat in Chånd. Up., i, 13, 4, means the secret (mystio) meaning of the samans'; of Dr. Schayer's equivalence' there is not the slightest trace anywhere.
These examples picked out quito at random sufficiently prove that the hypothesis of Dr. Schayer is untenable. There need not be the slightest doubt that upanipad has the
10 Wo know, of course, that much sittings were strictly secret. C4. e.g., Brh. Ar. Up., ili, 2, 13, where the great Yajnavalkys takes Artabhaga JAratkarava by the hand and leads him away to a place where they could speak between four eyes. And what they spoke of, that was karman, and what they praised, that was karman.'
31 ZDMG., 1, p. 457 sq.; cf. Die Lehre der Upanishaden und die Anfänge des Buddhismus (1915), pp. 37 sq., 155 sq., 348 sq.
13 Rocznik, Orjentalistyczny wydaje Polakie towarzystwo Orjentalistyoene, vol. iii, (Lwow 1927), p. 37 89.
38 This definition is not quito an my one. It is, howovor, founded on the extremely artificial and topky-turvy explanation of upa-de- suggested by Dr. Bohayer.
24 On upa.de in the Upanigade of. Senart, Morilegitan Milohior de Pogid (Paris 1909), p. 675 sq. His explanation of Upaniyad is, however, out of the question.
