The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c40.s1.3

Language: English

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When, therefore, we seek for an origin of the term which will not defy the laws of etymology, it is necessary to find something which will accord with this essential nature of secrecy. The word is derived obviously from the prefixes *upa-ni* and *sad*, 'sit', and the only natural meaning is a session, a sitting down near some person, who naturally is assumed to be the teacher. This accords with the mode of teaching followed in India, which, as we have seen, involved the sitting of the pupil and the teacher facing each other, while the latter repeated the lesson to be learned by the former. The lessons of the teacher to his pupil were not public in the ordinary sense of the word: to be practicable they naturally required quiet, but the ritual texts show us more than that: they bear witness that certain texts of special importance were to be taught to the pupil in the forest, and not in the normal place, the abode of the teacher. With this accords admirably the fact that the Upaniṣads form parts of, or are attached in the case of the most important and old of these works to, texts which tradition gives the names of Āraṇyaka.² The name must clearly, as held by Oldenberg, have been derived from the fact that the discussions contained in these works were studied in the forest;

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the alternative view ³ that the Āraṇyakas were specially intended for study by the Vānaprasthas, men who, after serving their apprenticeship as Brahman students and having performed as householders their duties, retire to the forests to study, is clearly a more advanced conception than that obtained in the early Upaniṣads. The later view is an artificial conception, and one which grew up only with the strict division of stages of life enjoined on Brahmans, if not always observed. Naturally, however, the Āraṇyakas, in so far as they are texts of allegorical interpretation of the sacrifice, were studied by such Vānaprasthas more than were the Brāhmaṇas proper, which were rather ritual in their interest, and presumed that the sacrifice was actually being performed. The Āraṇyakas in their more distinctive portions deal with the meaning of the offering, without necessarily assuming that it will be performed : they sometimes suggest modes of performing the sacrifice by meditation and repetition—as of the Hotṛ formulae only. But the distinction of Brāhmaṇa and Āraṇyaka is not an absolute one : in no case have we in the works handed down to us Brāhmaṇas which always suppose the performance of ritual, or Āraṇyakas which assume that it is not to be performed.

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Nor can we see why the distinction, which was probably the real one between the Brāhmaṇas and the Āraṇyakas, the comparative sanctity of their contents, should have attached itself to precisely the ceremonies to which it did so attach itself. The ritual texts of the different Vedas show us clearly the fact that certain rites and texts were regarded as especially sacred, to be performed outside the village, and these texts are contained not merely in Āraṇyakas but even in the Saṁhitā form.¹ Thus the Pravargya rite is treated in this fashion in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka iv and v, while the Mantras concerned are also to be found in the later part of the Vājasaneyi Saṁhitā,² in which they are followed by other Mantras, containing certain dread names of the Maruts and certain invocations of formidable character used in the horse sacrifice. The Āraṇyagāna of the Sāmaveda and the Āraṇyaka Saṁhitā contain the secret texts of that Veda,³ and the Aitareya ⁴ and Çāṅkhāyana Āraṇyakas ⁵ present the secret texts of the Rigveda, of which the most important is that concerning the Mahāvrata, an old and popular rite, while the former contains also the Mahānāmnī verses,⁶ which appear in a form strange to the manner of the Rigveda and akin to that of the Sāmaveda, in which they are also found. Both texts contain also certain mystic doctrines regarding the Saṁhitā form of the text of the Rigveda, and the Çāṅkhāyana deals also with the Mantha.

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Both also include, like the Taittirīya, philosophical Upaniṣads. The Aitareyins and the Kauṣītakins of the Rigveda placed the Mahāvrata ceremony in the rank of a fit subject for an Āraṇyaka, but the Yajurveda allowed it to appear in the Saṁhitā, and the Sāmaveda treats of it in the Pañcaviṅça and Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇas. But we can realize how from their superior sanctity the tendency grew for these treatises to be used as the places of the record of the secret doctrines, which gradually, in the mind of the priests, took the place of the more material performance of the ritual.