Vedānta

UpaniṢads

More than two hundred texts call themselves Upaniṣads, but they include even such recent works as the Christopaniṣad and the Allopaniṣad. The Muktikopaniṣad gives a traditional list of 108 Upaniṣads, but, even out of these, many texts seem to have been called Upaniṣads only by courtesy. Usually 13 Upaniṣads, namely, Iśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍada, Māṇḍūkya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Chāndogya, Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Svetāśvatara, Kauṣītaki, and Maitrāyaṇī, are regarded as the principal Upaniṣads (eighth to fourth century BCE). They are traditionally connected with one Vedic school (śākhā) or another, and several of them actually form part of a larger literary complex.

The Upaniṣads do not, by any means, constitute a systematic philosophical treatise. They rather represent the fearless quest for truth by essentially uninhibited minds. They seek, among other things, to investigate the ultimate reality "from which, verily, these beings are born, by which, when born, they live, and into which, when departing, they enter" (Taittirīya Upaniṣad 3.1.1), to delve into the mystery of the ātman "by whom one knows all this" but whom one cannot know by the usual means of knowledge (Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 4.5.15), and generally to promote "that instruction by which the unheard becomes heard, the unperceived becomes perceived, and the unknown becomes known" (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.1.3).

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