Early Monastic Buddhism v1.c5.s5.1

v1.c5.s5.1

Strangely enough the Pāli texts as also the Buddhist-Sanskrit literature do not breathe a word about the Upanisads or the Upanisadic teachers. Now that it has been definitely settled that some of the Upanisads like the Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Aitareya, Kauśitakī, Taittirīya, Chāndogya, Kena are pre-Buddhistic,¹ the silence of the Buddhist texts needs some words of explanation. One explanation that may be offered is ‘that the Buddhists accepted the principal philosophic viewpoints of the Upanisads with certain modifications, and hence had nothing to say against them.