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The Philosophy of the Upanishads c6.s3: 4. The most important Collections of Upanishads

The Philosophy of the Upanishads c6.s3

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English

4. The most important Collections of Upanishads

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The further history of the Upanishad tradition is for a time shrouded in darkness, and only conjecturally are we able from the existing collections of Upanishads to draw some conclusions as to their origin. These collections or lists fall from the outset into two classes, in so far as they either contain the Upanishads in their entirety, or limit themselves (at least as far as the original design is concerned) to the Upanishads of the Atharvaveda. Of the former class is the Canon of the Muktikâ and the Oupnek’hat, of the latter that of Colebrooke and Nârâyaṇa.

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Since the Upanishads of the three older Vedas continued to live in the tradition of the S’âkhâs, as long as these survived the secure transmission of the Upanishads concerned was assured. It was otherwise with the Atharvaveda, which was not employed at the sacrifice, and in consequence had no such firmly established tradition of the schools as the text of the three older Vedas upon which to rely for its preservation. This is shown not only by the indifference from which its Saṃhitâ has suffered, but also by the freedom with which it admitted new compositions. The latter would assuredly have been impossible as long as the tradition was under the protection of regular Vedic schools, maintaining themselves from generation to generation according to the rules of their guild. Hence is to be explained the extensive irruption of newly composed Upanishads into the Atharvaveda. As early as S’ankara we find the Muṇḍaka and Pras’na united together (sup. p. 32), and on these as foundation a collection of Atharva Upanishads appears to have been gradually built up, which eventually comprised 34 pieces from Muṇḍaka to Nṛisiṃhatāpanīya, and included also some whose claim to the name of Upanishads had never been previously recognised; just as in the judgement of Śaṅkara the Kārikā of Gauḍapāda on the Māṇḍūkya Upanishad, and indeed this treatise itself (sup. pp. 30, 33), had no claim to the position of an Upanishad. These 34 primary Upanishads of Colebrooke’s list were later extended to 52 by the addition not only of a number of recent compositions, but most remarkably by the side of and among them of seven of the recognised texts of the older Vedas, viz.—35–36 Kāṭhaka, 37 Kena, 39–40 Bṛihannārāyaṇa (= Taitt. Ār. x.), 44 Ānandavallī (= Taitt. Up. 2), and 45 Bhriguvallī (= Taitt. Up. 3). In this manner the collection of 52 Upanishads first made known by Colebrooke originated, the strange combination of which we attempted to explain¹ on the hypothesis that at the time and in the region where this collection was finally put together the three older Vedas were cultivated only in the Śākhās of the Aitareyins, Tāṇḍins (to which the Chāndogya Upanishad belongs), and Vājasaneyins. Accordingly the Upanishads of the remaining Śākhās (with the exception of the Kaushītaki, Śvetāśvatara, and Maitrāyaṇīya, which were perhaps already lost or not recognised) were inserted in the existing collection of Atharva Upanishads with a view to their safe preservation.²

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¹ Deussen, Upan., p. 537.

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² An apparently older list has been preserved in the Atharva-parisiṣṭa 2. 13 (Berliner Handschriften, 2. 88), which reckons only 28 Atharva Upanishads, omitting the texts of the older Vedas, but in other respects, as far as it goes, agrees with the lists of Colebrooke and Nārāyaṇa with a single exception.

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The collection of Nārāyaṇa is in exact agreement with that of Colebrooke, apart from a few variations in the order of the later treatises. The 52 Upanishads of Colebrooke are however reduced to 45, seven sectarian texts being then added to form Nos. 46–52, viz.—two *Gopâlatâpanîya*, *Kṛishṇa*, *Vâsudeva* with *Gopîc’andana*, *Svetâs’vatara*, and two *Varadatâpanîya*. This interrelation is to be explained on the theory that the number 52 had already gained a kind of canonical authority before the desire was felt to insert seven additional texts, which had now for the first time come into existence or obtained recognition. The end was attained by uniting portions that had originally belonged together, and so reducing the existing 52 numbers to 45. Thus room was found for the seven new texts within the number of the 52, thereby facilitating the recognition of the complete list as canonical.

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The collection of 108 Upanishads, which the *Muktikâ* itself regards as later, appears to belong to an entirely different region (probably the south of India), and to a considerably more recent time. This collection includes all the treatises of Colebrooke (except the *Nîlarudra*, *Piṇḍa*, *Mahânârâyaṇa*, *Âs’rama*) and of Nârâyaṇa (except the *Varadatâpanîya*), although for the most part under different names and sometimes expanded by later additions to thirty or forty times their original extent. Added to these are the 11 Upanishads of the three older Vedas complete, with the exception of the *Mahânârâyaṇa*, and about seventy new texts found nowhere else. The circumstance that in this collection the Upanishads of the three older Vedas also find a place, and that at the very beginning of it, points to a time and region in which a living and reliable tradition of the *S’âkhâs* no longer existed; of which fact a further and yet stronger proof is the bold attempt, made without a shadow of justification, to assign 10 of these 108 Upanishads to the *Ṛigveda*, 19 to the White and 32 to the Black Yajurveda, 16 to the Sâmaveda, and 31 to the Atharvaveda, — a procedure against which the ancient Vedic schools would have strenuously protested. In other respects this collection is of great interest for the later history of the Vedânta (perhaps mainly or exclusively among the Telugu Brâhmans), and deserves closer examination now that it has been made accessible in the Devanâgarî edition of 1896. Previously there had existed only an edition in the Telugu character. It is worthy of note also that S'ankarânanda's readings often agree with those of the 108 Upanishads against those of the 52 and of Nârâyaṇa.

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A position apart both from the 52 and the 108 Upanishads is occupied by that collection of 50 Upanishads which, under the name of Oupnek'hat, which was translated from the Sanskrit into Persian in the year 1656 at the instance of the Sultan Mohammed Dara Shakoh, and from the Persian into Latin in 1801–02 by Anquetil Duperron. The Oupnek'hat also, like the Muktikâ collection, professes to be a general collection of Upanishads. It contains under twelve divisions the Upanishads of the three older Vedas, and with them twenty-six Atharva Upanishads that are known from other sources. It further comprises eight treatises peculiar to itself, five of which have not up to the present time been proved to exist elsewhere, and of which therefore a rendering from the Persian-Latin of Anquetil is alone possible.¹ Finally, the Oupnek'hat contains four treatises from the Vâj. Saṃh. 16. 31. 32. 34, of which the first is met with in a shorter form in other collections also as the Nilarudra Upanishad, while the three last have nowhere else found admission.² The reception of these treatises from the Saṃhitâ into the body of the Upanishads, as though there were danger of their otherwise falling into oblivion, makes us infer a comparatively late date for the Oupnek'hat collection itself, although as early as 1656 the Persian translators made no claim to be the original compilers, but took the collection over already complete. They seem, indeed, to have regarded it as originating in a period long past.¹ Owing to the excessive literality with which Anquetil Duperron rendered these Upanishads word by word from the Persian into Latin, while preserving the syntax of the former language,—a literality that stands in striking contrast to the freedom with which the Persian translators treated the Sanskrit text,—the Oupnek'hat is a very difficult book to read; and an insight as keen as that of Schopenhauer was required in order to discover within this repellent husk a kernel of invaluable philosophical significance, and to turn it to account for his own system.²

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¹ See Deussen, Upan., p. 838 f.

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² These, as belonging to the early history of the Upanishads, I have translated and discussed sup. I. 1 pp. 156 f., 290 f., 291 f., 335.

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¹ See Deussen, *Upan.*, p. 535.

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² Schopenhauer's judgement on the Oupnek'hat is quoted in Deussen, *Upan.*, p. vi.

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An examination of the material placed at our disposal in the Oupnek'hat was first undertaken by A. Weber, *Ind. Stud.*, i., ii., ix., on the basis of the Sanskrit text. Meanwhile the original texts were published in the Bibliotheca Indica in part with elaborate commentaries, and again in the Ânandâsrama series. Max Mûller translated the twelve oldest Upanishads in *Sacred Books of the East*, vols. i., xv. The two longest and some of the shorter treatises have appeared in a literal German rendering by O. Böhtlingk. And my own translation of the 60 Upanishads (Leipzig, 1897) contains complete texts of this character which, upon the strength of their regular occurrence in the Indian collections and lists of the Upanishads, may lay claim to a certain canonicity. The prefixed Introductions and the Notes treat exhaustively of the matter and composition of the several treatises, and there is therefore no necessity to enter here further into these literary questions.

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