Upanishadic Overview

The following is a summarization of the various study materials I

referred to in my course on Philosophy of Life – Perspectives from
the Upaniṣads.

Textual Learnings

The Upaniṣads are part of the Vedic corpus called as ‘śruti’, that
which is heard. The holiness of the śruti texts is underscored by
the reluctance to write them down; they are meant to be heard as they
are passed down orally from teachers to students, from generation
to generation. While manuscripts of the Rāmāyaṇa and the
Mahābhārata and later Purāṇas are plentiful in India, written
forms of the Vedas and the Upaniṣads are both rare and
chronologically quite late. The oldest extant manuscript of the
Ṛgveda is from the fourteenth century. Manuscripts of the
Upaniṣads can be dated to the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries,
almost two millennia after the texts’ probable date of composition.1

Each of the Vedas (Ṛg, Yajur, Sāma and Atharva) has as its
foundational text a “collection” (saṁhitā) of verses or liturgical
formulas and a prose text, Brāhmaṇa, explaining the meaning of the
liturgy. The Brāhmaṇas also contain some esoteric texts that are to
be recited outside the village; these were called Āraṇyakas.2 The
most philosophical texts among the Brāhmaṇas and Āraṇyakas
(sometimes Saṁhitās) are separately called the Upaniṣads, which is
the latest composition in the Vedic corpus. Based on the style and
flow of language, as well as the contents in them, the approximate
dates of composition of the principal Upaniṣads are estimated to be
from 1000 B.C. to 50 A.D. Each of the four Vedas has associated
Upaniṣads; viz.: Aitareya Upaniṣad is a part of Ṛg-veda, Bṛhad-
āraṇyaka Upaniṣad is a part of Yajur-veda, Kena Upaniṣad is a part
of Sāma-veda, etc. The principal Upaniṣads, being a part of a
particular branch (śākhā) of a Veda, carry some of the ideas of the
Veda of which they are a part of. This is not seen in most of the later
Upaniṣads.3
The ideas contained in the Upaniṣads have developed from the ideas
of the Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka sections of the Vedas. The concepts
such as karma, ātman, etc. have their predecessors in the Brāhmaṇa
and/or Āraṇyaka texts, which were thought upon by the sages of the
time, who then clarified and developed them into the doctrine of
karma, the innermost existence of ātman, etc. The Upaniṣads are
the almost inevitable outcome of the intellectual development of the
Brāhmaṇa period.4

Let us take for example the Upaniṣadic concept of karma. The older
Vedic idea involved an automatic, continuous cycle: death, a stay in
the world of the ancestors limited only by the amount of one’s ritual
actions, and a subsequent automatic rebirth, preferably within one’s
own clan and usually after the third or fourth generation. The
concept of karma, however, advocated the idea of a moral quality for
every action done by humans with an attached inevitable after-
effect. Thus now, not only ritualistic activities, but all human
actions had their automatic consequence. Thus, this concept of
karma broke the idea of automatic rebirth into one’s clan. According
to this dotrine, one would take birth according to the actions one has
performed in the present life.5

The Upaniṣadic idea of correlation between the ritual and the

cosmos, the human self and the ritual, also has its predecessors in
the Āraṇyakas. The sacrificial altar, the fire, the ghee offered in it,
the pole in the sacrificial area (yūpa), the sacrificial animal, the
soma juice, the mantras, etc. have internal equivalents, as
mentioned in an Āraṇyaka. For eg., the animal that is killed
represents the anger that should be destroyed.6 The Upaniṣads
develop these correlations further, with greater parameters, and
derive philosophical understandings from them. For eg., the Bṛhad-
āraṇyaka Upaniṣad correrates the body parts of the sacrificial horse
of the āśvamedha-yajña with the natural and metaphysical entities
like trees, clouds, sun, wind, rivers, etc. Later, the same Upaniṣad
correlates these natural and metaphysical entities with the senses,
mind, and body parts of human beings.7 This correlation is
developed much further in the Upaniṣads by advocating the same
entity to have two features as the metaphysical entities and the
corresponding senses, etc. in humans. This led to the development
of the doctrine of inwardness, as seen in the Upaniṣads.8 Also, as
said by Jonardan Ganeri quoting Signe Cohen: “The sacrifice
becomes a metaphor for the universe in late Vedic thought, and by
extension, the hidden power behind the sacrifice is also seen as the
hidden force behind the universe itself: brahman”.

Also, it is seen that the Upaniṣads borrow some ideas from each
other; as seen from some sections of the Īśāvāsya and Bṛhad-
āraṇyaka Upaniṣads, as well as Kaṭha and Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣads,
assisted by the fact that they are part of the Śukla-Yajurveda and
Kṛṣṇa-Yajurveda respectively. But it could be that these Upaniṣads
derive texts from a common source that is no longer available.9

The style of the Upaniṣadic discourse is mainly a ‘question and

answer’ form of discussion between a student and a teacher. The
oral nature of the texts is evident by instances as when the author
uses deictic pronouns ‘this’ and ‘this’ to refer to his two eyes, or ‘this
(here)’ and ‘that (over there)’ to refer to the earth (or something on
earth) and the sun. The writing down of these documents did not
take place for perhaps a thousand years, but the transmission was,
nonetheless, very faithful, more accurate than most manuscript
traditions.10

The main ideas of the Upaniṣads must have been epitomized by

sages in terse phrases such as ‘tat tvam asi’ which, when
communicated to tried disciples, were accompanied by oral
explanations. These explanations got more or less standardised
later and out of them have developed the texts as they are now
known to us.11 Compared to the darśanas that claim the Upaniṣads
as their source, the Upaniṣads themselves do not contain a
systematically delineated philosophy. The Upaniṣads are rather a
polymorphous collection of anecdotes, parables, and dialogues that
have a broad theme and elements of common vision.12

1. Signe Cohen, Introduction, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide

2. Patrick Olivelle, Introduction, The Early Upaniṣads
3. Signe Cohen, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide
4. Michael Witzel, The Upaniṣads, The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
5. Ibid.
6. We learnt it in our IKS course. Also indicated by Ibid.
7. Jonardon Ganeri, The Upaniṣadic Episteme, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide
 8. P.T. Raju, Development of Vedic Thought from Polytheistic Outwardness to Monistic
Inwardness, Introduction to Comparative Philosophy
9. Signe Cohen, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide
10. Patrick Olivelle, Introduction, The Early Upaniṣads
11. M. Hiriyanna, Introduction, Popular Essays on Indian Philosophy
12. Jonardon Ganeri, The Upaniṣadic Episteme, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide

Social Learnings

The commonly accepted theory of an Āryan migration from Europe

or Central Asia through northwest India has been challenged
recently by several archaeologists.1 This is in line with the absence
of any evidence from the Vedic texts of any such migration. The
society during the Vedic times was mainly agrarian based with
animal rearing, prominently of cattle.2 The people were not living in
towns or cities, but in rural settlements. The society was divided
into (1) the intellectual class (brāhmaṇas), (2) the martial class
(kṣatriyas), (3) the mercantile class (vaiśyas), and (4) the labourer
class (śūdras). These groups were not as watertight as the later caste
divisions of Indian society, and there appears to have been some
mobility across the groups. The varṇa division of society, however,
has remained from the vedic period until modern times the primary
theological and theoretical conception of society in India, and it
underlies much of the discussion in the Upaniṣads.3

The vast geography known to the Upanisads indicates the relative

ease of travel and commerce across much of northern India. People
traveled long distances not only to trade but also to acquire
knowledge (BU 3.3.1). There are very few agricultural metaphors
and images in the Upaniṣads, while examples derived from crafts
such as weaving, pottery, and metallurgy are numerous. These
crafts, of course, could appear in village life, but the dominance of
craft metaphors at least suggests a milieu somewhat removed from
the agricultural routine of villages. A close reading of these texts
suggests that, by and large, their social background consists of court and
crafts, rather than village and agriculture.4

By the late vedic period, the chiefdoms that had developed during
the vedic period had been sufficiently consolidated so that we can
speak of the emergence of kingdoms and a monarchical form of
government along the Ganges. During the period of the first
Upaniṣads, many relatively large kingdoms had been created. Kings
and royalty, as the Upanisadic evidence itself indicates, began to
play an increasing role both in the political economy of northern
India and in the area of religious thinking and institutions.5

The Upaniṣads appear to lend support to the view that some of the
doctrines such as those of karma and the five fires were originated
by those belonging to the kṣatriya class. Olivelle has speculated that
there must have been political, religious, economic, and even
literary reasons for the brāhmaṇas to include or create these
episodes that glorify the kṣatriya class within the Upaniṣadic texts.
He suggests that the brāhmaṇa community itself was not a
monolithic entity.6 What these stories of kings teaching new
doctrines to brāhmaṇas point to, Olivelle believes, is the divide that
existed within the brāhmaṇa tradition between the village
brāhmaṇas clinging to the old ritual religion and the urbanized
brāhmaṇas who were were influenced both by the dramatic socio-
economic changes of urbanization and by the rising prestige and
influence of non-Brahmanical religious movements such as
asceticism, etc. Both the anti-ritual doctrines of the Upanisads and
the āśrama system probably originated within the latter class of
brāhmaṇas.7 There is another opinion that mentioning of the topic
by a king is rather a literary device which merely underlines the
importance of the theme.8 Regarding the involvement of women in
Upaniṣadic discourse of the time, the fact that women such Gārgī
and Maitreyī are introduced as participants in philososophical
discussions without any attempt to justify or to explain how women
could be engaged in philosophical matters suggests the relatively
high social and religious position of at least women of some social
strata during this period. This is confirmed by a ritual for obtaining
‘a learned daughter’ recorded in BU 6.4.17.9

Regarding the geographical location of the composition of the

Upaniṣads, Olivelle is very confident that they were all the product
of the geographical center of ancient Brahmanism, comprising the
regions of Kuru-Pancala (Haryana, western U.P.) and Kosala-
Videha (eastern U.P., Bihar), together with the areas directly to the
south and west of these. According to Witzel, the Kosala-Videha
area was one of great mixture of peoples due to various movements
of tribes and individuals, and consequently also of ideas. It also was
a part of the spread-zone of the western, Kuru type Vedic
orthopraxy. Some late- or post-Vedic immigrants such as the Malla,
Vṛji, or especially the Śākya, may be Iranian tribes who may have
transmitted (para-) Zoroastrian influence. Further, there was
admixture of local Muṇḍa peoples (AB 7.18), of older, eastern Indo-
Aryan settlers, and of contemporaneous immigrants including many
western Vedic brāhmaṇas. Finally, there was the social ferment
created by the contemporaneously emerging cities. All of these
admixtures supplied the ideal breeding ground for the meeting of ideas
and the development of new concepts. The new stratified and partly
aristocratic, oligarchic and urban society of the East witnessed the
emergence of many of the typically Upaniṣadic ideas.10

1. Refer J. Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein, The concepts of “cultural tradition” and

“paleoethnicity” in South Asian archaeology, The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, and
Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-European Origins
2. J. Shaffer and D. Lichtenstein in Ibid.
3. Patrick Olivelle, Introduction, The Early Upaniṣads
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Patrick Olivelle, Introduction, The Aśrama System: The History and Hermeneutics of a
Religious Institution
8. Michael Witzel, The Upaniṣads, The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
9. Patrick Olivelle, Introduction, The Early Upaniṣads
10. Michael Witzel, The Upaniṣads, The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism

Philosophical Learnings

The fundamental idea of the Upaniṣads is that there are hidden

connections between things, and that knowing what these
connections are is a profound source of insight.1 Central to all
Upaniṣads is the idea that all humans are bound to an unsatisfying
experience due to our ignorance, and that true knowledge is the path
to liberation. Knowledge is a profound understanding of the reality
underlying all appearance.2 The Upaniṣads deal with the eternal
problems of humankind, that is: where do we come from, why we are
here, where go? In other words, they deal with the nature of body
and soul, their fate after a death, and their position in the Universe.3
A possible translation of the word upaniṣad is “that which lies (ṣad)
beneath,” or “underlying reality.” The Upaniṣads are intensely
occupied with the process of enlightenment as a gradual progression
toward the ultimate, underlying reality. It is possible that this
central Upaniṣadic idea of a quest for another level of reality
beneath the visible world inspired the name of these texts. This
interpretation is supported by several Upaniṣadic passages:

As a spider sends out its thread, and as sparks spring from the fire,
so do all the breaths, all worlds, all gods, and all beings spring from
the ātman. Its upaniṣad is the real behind the real …(BU 2.1.20)

When someone knows the upaniṣad that is brahman in this way,

the sun does not rise or set for him; it is always day for him. (CU
3.11.3)4

The Upaniṣadic philosophy is a philosophy of the inwardness of the

Absolute Reality. The Universal Spirit, which is the Absolute
Reality, is inward; and when turned outwards the world of nature
appears.5

As Joel Brereton puts it very well: “Each Upaniṣadic teaching

creates an integrative vision, a view of the whole which draws
together the separate elements of the world and of human
experience and compresses them into a single form. To one who has
this larger vision of things, the world is not a set of diverse and
disorganised objects and living beings, but rather forms a totality
with a distinct shape and character.”

This order-inducing totality is what is called ‘the Upaniṣadic

episteme.’ By episteme we mean the total set of relations that unite
the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures,
sciences, and possibly formalized systems.6 It is the primary grid or
pre-knowledge by which we know different objects related to it. For
eg: the chess-board is the basis by which we arrange the figures and
have the rules for playing chess. Thus episteme is the substratum
which facilitates the existence and functioning of different objects.
For the Upaniṣadic seers, that is called brahman or ātman. As
Brereton continues:

“The Upaniṣads create an integrative vision by identifying a single,

comprehensive and fundamental principle which shapes the world
… For later followers of the Vedānta, the brahman has a particular
definition and a specific character, but for the Upaniṣads, the
brahman remains an open concept. It is simply the designation
given to whatever principle or power a sage believes to lie behind
the world and to make the world explicable. It is the reality sought
by the householder who asks a sage: Through knowing what, sir,
does this whole world become known (Muṇḍaka 1.13)”.7

The Upaniṣads see the world and beyond as one reality. Thus it sees
everything as interconnected. The human body is seen as a
microcosmic representation of the macrocosm as gleaned by the
different correlations made between the senses and the
metaphysical entities as shown earlier. The sacrificial ritual
involving the sacred fire is also correlated with the cosmic order.
Thus the doctrine of one ultimate reality meanifesting itself in
various ways is conceived of. The ultimate reality is called brahman
or ātman. The word ātman is of course used to mean a variety of
things including one’s body, the mind, the Self, the trans-material
self, according to the context.

The idea of one underlying reality has also been philosophized in the
doctrine of creation or beginnings. The world is thought to be issued
out of Brahman in a sequence. When Brahman turns outward, first
the pradhāna manifests, then the mahat with the three qualities of
sattva, rajas and tamas, then the ego, then progressively grosser
elements manifest from the subtler elements. Because of this
inward or the super-subjective8 nature of the ultimate reality and
because of the peculiar correlation of man and the world, the
common roots of the subject and the object of experience, the
Upaniṣadic philosophy has become essentially idealistic, in spite of
all the differences between the Vedantic schools.9

The Upaniṣads aim at freeing the human self from the ignorance of
identification with what it is not and understand itself in its pure
constitutional situation. This amounts to mokṣa or liberation from
the false identification, and thus from further births and deaths in
this mundane realm of existence. Thus vairāgya or detachment from
mundane pleasures is an ongoing theme in the Upaniṣads as
well.10 The path of asceticism has its stronghold in the Upaniṣads.
Detachment helps to put the knowledge of the transcendental
nature of ātman into practice, which results in the strengthening of
knowledge, leading to clear understanding which nourishes the
process of mystic meditation, which ultimately results in realizing
the knowledge of one’s relationship with Brahman.

Also, the sages who were the seers of the Upaniṣads arrived at the
understanding of ātman or brahman in stages. The Taittiriya
Upaniṣad explains the arriving at the essential understanding of the
ātman by Bhṛgu in five stages. This forms the doctrine of five
sheaths of human existence. Another significant doctrine is of the
four states of the ātman; the waking, dreaming, deep-sleep, and
transcendental (fourth). The most influential doctrine of karma has
already been mentioned earlier. Another important doctrine is that
of distinction betwee higher and lower knowledge. Higher
knowledge is the knowledge of the inward reality and deals with
mokṣa (liberation), and lower knowledge is that of the outward and
deals with the arts and sciences pertaining to this world. Also, the
prāna or vital powers moving in the body have gained significant
attention in the Upaniṣads. The cavity of the heart is the seat of the
vital airs and the self and plays a central role in the explanations of
the three states of awareness and of death.

1. Jonardon Ganeri, The Upaniṣadic Episteme, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide

2. Signe Cohen, Introduction, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide
3. Michael Witzel, The Upaniṣads, The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism
4. Signe Cohen, Introduction, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide
5. P.T. Raju, Central Ideas of the Upaniṣads, Introduction to Indian Philosophy
6. Jonardon Ganeri, The Upaniṣadic Episteme, The Upaniṣads – A Complete Guide
7. Ibid.
8. The individual self is the subject, the experiencer; and since it is situated in or derived
from Brahman, Brahman is the super-subject.
9. P.T. Raju, Development of Vedic Thought from Polytheistic Outwardness to Monistic
Inwardness, Introduction to Comparative Philosophy
10. M. Hiriyanna, The Upaniṣads, Popular Essays in Indian Philosophy