A History of Sanskrit Literature c11.81

c11.81

According to its own statement, the *Çvetāçvatara Upanishad* derives its name from an individual author, and the tradition which attributes it to one of the schools of the *Black Yajurveda* hardly seems to have a sufficient foundation. Its confused arrangement, the irregularities and arbitrary changes of its metres, the number of interpolated quotations which it contains, make the assumption likely that the work in its present form is not the work of a single author. In its present form it is certainly later than the *Kāṭhaka*, since it contains several passages which must be referred to that work, besides many stanzas borrowed from it with or without variation. Its lateness is further indicated by the developed theory of *Yoga* which it contains, besides the more or less definite form in which it exhibits various Vedānta doctrines either unknown to or only foreshadowed in the earlier Upanishads. Among these may be mentioned the destruction of the world by Brahma at the end of a cosmic age (*kalpa*), as well as its periodic renewal out of Brahma, and especially the explanation of the world as an illusion (*māyā*) produced by Brahma. At the same time the author shows a strange predilection for the personified forms of Brahma as Savitṛi, Īçāna, or Rudra. Though Çiva has not yet become the name of Rudra, its frequent use as an adjective connected with the latter shows that it is in course of becoming fixed as the proper name of the highest god. In this Upanishad we meet with a number of the terms and fundamental notions of the Sānkhya, though the point of view is thoroughly Vedāntist; matter (*prakṛiti*), for instance, being represented as an illusion produced by Brahma.