A History of Indian Literature v1.c8.s9.53

v1.c8.s9.53

Just as the doctrine of the Prāṇa and the Prāṇas is connected with the fundamental doctrine of the Ātman, the same doctrine also affords the poet-philosophers of the Upaniṣads a motive for magnificent philosophical poems, as they can best be called, on the fortunes of the individual Ātman, *i.e.*, the human soul, in the conditions of waking and of dreaming, of sleep and of death, and in its wanderings in the Beyond up to its final “emancipation,” *i.e.*, its complete absorption in the