A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s8.37

v1.c8.s8.37

With the exception of the Mahā-Nārāyaṇa-Upaniṣad, which was only added to the Taittirīya-Āraṇyaka at a later period, all the above-named Upaniṣads belong to the oldest works of this kind. In language and style they resemble the Brāhmaṇas, component parts of which they are, or to which they are immediately attached. It is the same simple, slightly clumsy *prose*, but—especially in the narrative portions—by no means lacking in beauty. Only half of the Kena-Upaniṣad is metrical, and it is the latest of the Upaniṣads enumerated.) (Although each one of the great Upaniṣads contains, as Deussen¹ says, "earlier and later texts side by side, hence the age of each individual piece must be determined separately," yet even the later portions of the above-mentioned Upaniṣads may claim great antiquity, if only on linguistic grounds.²) [We may take it that the greater Upaniṣads, like the Bṛhadāraṇyaka- and the Chāndogya-Upaniṣad, originated in the *fusion* of several longer or shorter texts which had originally been regarded as separate Upaniṣads. This would also explain the fact that the same texts are sometimes to be found in several Upaniṣads. The individual texts of which the greater Upaniṣads are composed, all belong to a period which cannot be very far removed from that of the Brāhmaṇas and the Āraṇyakas, and is before Buddha and before Pāṇini. For this reason the six above-mentioned Upaniṣads,—Aitareya, Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Taittirīya, Kauṣītaki and Kena—undoubtedly represent the earliest stage of development in the literature of the Upaniṣads. They contain the so-called Vedānta doctrine in its pure, original form.)