The Upanisads
The word ‘upanisad’ denotes a particular genre of texts; its literal meaning has however remained obscure. ‘Intimate teaching’ might be a possible explanation. These Upanisads have come down to us as part of a neat and tidily structured package: the Veda (as Indians would use the word).
In the previous chapter it was mentioned that over the centuries each Vedic sakhd acquired three genres of text: a Samhita, Brahmaria and Aranyaka. To these three we must add now the Upanisad. Indeed many of the genuinely old six or so texts belonging to this genre are simply known by the name of the sdkha to which they belong (like theAitareya- or Kausltaki-Upanisad). This applies only to the Rg-, Sama- and Yajur-Veda; but the Atharva-Veda also attracted later Upanisads. So we end up with a clear four-by-four structure. Moreover, another fourfold pattern is applied to this, that of the four stages in a man’s life (for which see below). The fourth stage, that of the ‘renouncer’ (samnydsl), is correlated to the fourth genre, that of the Upanisad.This is the way traditional Hinduism interprets the situation. But the very neatness of the structure raises doubts about its historical validity. In view of the general remarks made above it appears more likely that we are dealing here with material which attempts to correlate extraneous and recently accepted religious ideas with the conceptions expressed in the earlier portions of the Vedic corpus. This may be an extreme way of envisaging the situation, but whatever its shortcomings may be, it has the advantage of focusing more sharply on the central religious issues than the traditional assumption of a direct continuity.
The Chdndogya- and the Brhaddranyaka-Upanisads have been identified as some of the oldest, and indeed historically most important, Upanisads. The title of the latter, brhad-dranyaka, highlights that the boundaries of the genres are by no means clear-cut.
Thus the Upanisads also contain a large number of speculations on the One, along the cosmological lines of the earlier literature. And the aim is still to ‘come to know it’. But the purpose of such knowledge has changed. To ‘know it’ now means to achieve that qualitative leap into the realm of liberation. This is how a direct link with earlier Vedic thought could be established. In trying to define what such a transcendental reality could be, the Upanisads draw on the images, concepts, terms and symbols of earlier Vedic literature. Some more independent speculations around symbols like fire, water and air are also expressed, but without doubt the concept of brahman emerges from all this as the sole survivor. This nevertheless expanded the denotation of the term far beyond what the earlier literature meant by it. Now brahman was not just the ‘sacred’ power pervading the sacrifice and the Veda itself, and not just the One out of which the many arose, but also the One into which man merges back by achieving his liberation from the cycle of rebirths (samsdra). Moreover, brahman is an experiential reality, available through meditation.In more technical terms, this appears as follows. Ordinary man finds himself in samsdra, coursing from one life to the next. What remains constant is his innermost self, his dtman. But this dtman is surrounded and in fact imprisoned, not just by the different physical bodies which are cremated after death, but also by a subtle, invisible body. This suksma-s'arira absorbs the ‘qualities’ of all the Actions done in a given life, called karma, which after the disintegration of one body germinates, as it were, a new body appropriate in view of the past actions. This is by no means restricted to human bodies; rebirth as an animal, as one of those many categories of non-human beings known to ancient Indian folklore, or as a deva is equally well possible. Thus whatever status the deva may have possessed in earliest Vedic religion, it is now brought down to that of belonging to the transient order.
By eradicating karma and ‘coming to know’ brahman, the dtman can liberate itself, to become reunited with brahman, like the spark with the fire from which it arose. That is moksa or mukti, the state of liberation. The ‘coming to know’ itself is mentioned under different names, but eventually the common and well-known term ‘yoga’ becomes universally used to refer to such forms of meditation.The older Upanisads still lack a systematically defined terminology and neither, for that matter, do they draw on one coherent system of thought. The imagination coupled with critical, conceptual analysis is still at work to come to terms with the transcendental experience of brahman. Metaphor is one commonly used means of expression. When we thus find the relationship between brahman and the world (including man) envisaged as that of a fire and its sparks, or of a spider and its web, it is clear that an ‘ontological’ dependence is suggested between two real things: brahman and the multiple, variegated world of phenomena. Both are real, but the many derive from and depend on the One. There cannot be any question here of the world being an ‘illusion’, as some forms of later Hindu thought would present it. Other metaphors tell us about the achievement of liberation, It is like the merging of different rivers into the one ocean (in which they lose their identity and name), or the pollen of many flowers that make up the honey. This clearly suggests an ultimate identity ofdtman with brahman, an identity in which the former is absorbed into the latter. An expansion of the self is experienced in which the whole universe is encompassed. In this context the names of at least the two most important teachers appearing in the early Upanisads must be mentioned: Uddalaka and Yajnavalkya. In their teaching we encounter attempts at a more systematic exposition, which could be described as ‘progressive abstraction’. Thus Uddalaka has his disciple bisect a tree’s fruit, then its seed, until only an invisibly small particle remains.
Yet it is here, beyond the range of the human eye, in the ‘essence’ of the tree, that brahman is present, and ‘that you are’ is the famous conclusion drawn from it. With Yajnavalkya we find similar instances of such abstraction. From seeing to hearing to thinking to ‘true knowledge’ we are led along the scale of most immediate and object-bound information about reality to its most abstract, direct and non-objective form. In a famous passage (Brhaddranyaka II, 4) he removes his wife’s doubts about this. Once thedtman has reunited with that which lies at the heart of all things and all events in the world (including perception itself), it makes no more sense to speak of a subject-object relationship, and the form of awareness that is connected with such a relationship is transcended in pure, that is non-objective, consciousness. Dream appears in such explorations as a useful metaphor, and more so, as an intermediary stage between the experience of brahman and ordinary consciousness. For in it we can already witness a degree of demolition, as far as the ordinary relationship between phenomena in the space-time-matter continuum are concerned. Following the logic of this first transition, brahman, as much as the experience associated with it, then appears as altogether outside that continuum. A famous formula summarises all this by describing brahman through the attributes of pure being (sat), consciousness (cit) and bliss (ananda). But we also detect a note of despair in all this mystical exuberance, despair about the limitations of human thought and language when it comes to grasping brahman. Thus neti neti is suggested as the most appropriate way of referring to brahman: all that can be said about it is ‘not, not’.What has been sketched so far is typical of the older, genuinely sakha-associated Upanisads. But in terms of the literary history of the genre, this was merely the beginning of many further developments. Thus, still well within the âñå period, Upanisads were produced in which the thinking took on a more systematic form, on the basis of what would seem to be somewhat different premisses.
We are in fact dealing here with early expressions of a system, the Samkhya, which will be discussed further in its appropriate context, that of the Hindu philosophical traditions. Still somehow linked to sdkhds, yet another type of Upanisad evolved. By now we are probably in the last few centuries âñå. In works like theSvetdsvatara-Upanisad we encounter for the first time a type of religion that can be styled monotheistic. More on this will be found in the section on the gods and God. By now the genre had established itself as most prestigious, and a large number of further Upanisads was produced over the next centuries. Few religious movements resisted the attempt to point at an Upanisad as the final authority for their particular beliefs. Even the famous Bhagavadgita of the Mahabharata epic presented itself as ‘the Upanisad sung by Bhagavan’, although this particular claim was never accepted by the Hindu traditions. In most cases, such late Upanisads were nominally connected with the Atharva-Veda—another sign that this Veda played a role separate from that of the other three Vedas.It is not known from what period onwards attempts began to be made to survey the older, originally sdkhd-specific Upanisads and treat them as constituting one coherent corpus of teaching. The Brahma- or Veddnta-stltras ascribed to Badarayana became the most prestigious work offering such a survey. It provided the basis for the most important of the so-called six schools of Hindu philosophy, the Vedanta. But later forms of Hinduism have taken recourse to the thought of the Upanisads in many other ways. On the one hand linked to the Veda, and on the other hand enormously variegated in content, the Upanisads offered the most obvious basis for any claim of‘Vedic orthodoxy’.
In the chapter on Vedic religion, mention was made of the ideal of the orthodox, Vedic life. Taken in its most radical form, the teaching of the Upanisads would have to appear in direct contrast to the this-worldly ritual religion of earlier Vedic literature.
Indeed, we still find traces of a conscious mockery of sacrifices to the devas expressed in some Upanisads. The ideal of renunciation challenged all conceptions of a life, however ‘pious’, which included wealth, sexuality, a home and possessions. But the Upanisads did not just externally draw on Vedic speculation about the One and attach themselves to the V edic s'dkhds. An internal decision was implied in this: that both religious attitudes could be combined. Eventually this was conceptualised as the four stages in a man’s life (the ds'ramas), and somehow overlapping with this, as the four human goals (purusdrthas). Together with the assumption of a fourfold division of society (the four varnas), all this crystallised in the concept of dharma, a cosmic order which set the norms for human behaviour and action. Provided that a man belongs to one of the higher three varnas (which means that he is a true ‘Ary a’), his life should proceed in four stages. First there is a period of celibate studentship, dedicated to the study of the Vedas. Then follows marriage, enjoyment of sexuality, procreation of children and pursuit of wealth. After this, a gradual withdrawal from the world should begin, culminating in rejecting all ties with family and home and becoming asamnydst, a ‘renouncer’. Whilst during the earlier stages Vedic ritual religion is appropriate, the quest for brahman along the lines of the Upanisads characterises the final stage. Moksa is now the only legitimate purusdrtha; dharma (in the sense of Vedic religious activities), artha (pursuit of wealth) and kama (sexuality) cease to be relevant. This general pattern is further differentiated according to the specific requirements made of the different varnas. Thus a brahmin’s primary link is with dharma and religion, a ksatriya’s with warfare, and a vaisya’s with trade and agriculture. The s'iidra is left out of all this; Vedic religion is not available to him, and only through serving the other three groups can he hope to be reborn into a varna where Vedic religion and brahman are cultivated. This is in a nutshell the conventional understanding of the (yarnds'rama-) dharma. A vast amount of critical, literary activity evolved around it in India. The very brief summaries of early discussions contained in the Dharma-sutras were replaced by lengthy treatises, the Dharma-sdstras. The one attributed to Manu (from around the beginning of the Common Era?) is the most famous one. But other such treatises show that no final, positive definition o£dharma in terms of universally accepted specific norms evolved. This remained an area of discussion and divergent views. But there are further restrictions on the application of this material to the real life. On the whole, this is normative thought, suggesting an ideal, not a social reality. As we shall see, Jainism and Buddhism reject all this outright, recommending renunciation exclusively. On the other hand, it is by no means the case that the tradition advocating dharma unanimously accepts the ideal oimoksa or renunciation. Holding on to views from a period prior to the emergence of the renouncer traditions, many strands of the dharma literature advocate man’s ‘fulfilment’ directly through the adherence to the three goals dharma, artha and kama alone. Much more generally, the actual relevance even of beliefs in samsdra and karma was quite restricted. There is ample evidence in Hindu scriptures of later periods to suggest that such ideas were not necessarily always at the forefront of the religious consciouness.