A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4.s1.7

Language: English

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7. Having cleared the Upanishadic view of revelation, let us try to arrange in a chronological order the Upanishads which are going to be the subject-matter of the present Volume. It must be remembered at the outset that we must make a clear division between the Old Upanishads and the New Upanishads, the Old batch comprising the Thirteen Upanishads to be enumerated presently, while the New Upanishads contain such of the remaining Upanishads as can be proved to be authentic by higher literary criticism. The four Upanishads which Dr. Schrader has discovered recently, namely, the Bāshkala, the Chhāgaleya, the Ārsheya and the Śaunaka will not concern us in the present Volume, because their authenticity has not yet been universally accepted. The Mahānārāyaṇopanishad has also been recently proved to be obviously of a later date, and hence it cannot be included in our Older batch of the Upanishads. The Thirteen Upanishads, which will be the subject-matter of the present Volume, may be arranged according to the order of the Muktika canon as Īśa, Keṇa, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍukya, Taittirīya, Aitareya, Chhāndogya, Bṛihadāraṇyaka, Śvetāśvatara, Kaushītaki and Maitri. This, however, is an order which does not take the chronological sequence of the Upanishads into account, and it thus becomes necessary in the light of modern literary criticism and a historico-philological evaluation of the Upanishads to arrange them in proper chronological perspective.

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The problem has been so thoroughly treated by us elsewhere that it would be redundant to go over once more into the problem of the chronological arrangement of these Upanishads. We shall merely content ourselves with mentioning the conclusions that have been arrived at. Considering the Upanishadic age to have been placed somewhere between 1200 B. C., and 600 B. C., it becomes necessary to distribute the Upanishadic literature into chronological periods within the general limits that have been so fixed. Various tests have been employed as to the chronological arrangement of these Upanishads. (1) The language, the style, the vocabulary, the inflection and other grammatical peculiarities are one obvious test for determining the age of an Upanishad; but this cannot be a final test, because an old Upanishad may have been written in a fairly lucid style, while a newer Upanishad may have been composed in an almost archaic style. (2) Nor is the distinction between prose and verse a sufficient criterion for the chronological arrangement of the Upanishads. It seems to have been taken for granted by critics like Deussen that the oldest of these Upanishads were written in prose, that others which followed them were written in verse, and that a few others that remained came to be written in prose again. This is a gratuitous assumption which in the light of modern criticism does not seem to hold much water.

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(3) A third test, namely that of a successive elaboration of detail, is a fairly good test though it is not absolutely conclusive. Thus it may not be entirely incorrect to find the chronological order of certain Upanishads according to the elaboration of detail of the story of the "War of the Senses" as found in them. This story occurs in the Chhāndogya, the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, the Aitareya, the Kaushītaki and the Praśna Upanishads, and it must be legitimate to argue for the precedence or sequence of any of these Upanishads according to the elaboration of the detail of the story. (4) A fourth and a more difficult test, namely that of a regular ideological development, is not without its use.

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Thus, for example, the development of the idea of the relation of the "Two Souls," the Individual Soul and the Universal Soul, which occurs in the Kaṭhopanishad, the Muṇḍakopanishad and the Śvetāśvataropanishad could be regarded as a legitimate test for the chronological sequence of these Upanishads in that order, inasmuch as in the story of the Kaṭhopanishad the two Souls are regarded as being on a par with each other as enjoying equally the fruits of their action, while in the Muṇḍaka only one is described as tasting of the fruits of action, the other being described simply as an on-looker, while finally in the Śvetāśvatara an addition is made to the conception in the Muṇḍaka, namely that of the unborn Prakṛiti, consisting of the three qualities, the red, the white and the black, which the Individual Soul enjoys, but which the Universal Soul leaves off (S. 7). (5) A fifth test, which is only a particular case of the last test, but which deserves separate mention on account of the importance it has attained at the hands of certain modern writers, especially Prof. Keith, centres itself round the development of the idea of Transmigration in the Upanishads.

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Just as a similar attempt has been made in regard to the chronological arrangement of the Dialogues of Plato on the basis of the development of the doctrine of Ideas as found in them, similarly, an attempt is here made to find out the chronological sequence of the Upanishads on the basis of the development of the idea of Transmigration. It must be remembered, however, that this test comes very often to base itself upon negations, instead of positive assertions. Absence of the idea of Transmigration does not necessarily prove the priority of an Upanishad, because, it may be, that the idea may not form the subject-matter of that Upanishad, while the Upanishad itself may not be amenable to the postulation of that idea. Prof. Keith has argued, and many others have followed him in saying, that the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, especially its older portion, must be regarded as very old indeed, because the idea of Transmigration does not occur in it. These writers seem to argue in a circle, because they hold that the older portion of the Āraṇyaka must be separated from the newer portion on account of the absence of the idea of Transmigration in it, and then they say that the idea of Transmigration must be regarded as late because it does not occur in the older portion.

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Now even supposing that we can succeed in making a division between the older portion and the newer portion of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka, the absence of the idea of Transmigration in the older portion can be regarded as no argument for its chrnonological severance from the newer portion ; while it is necessary to remember that the Fifth Chapter of the Second Section of the Aitareya Āraṇyaka does definitely assert the fact of Transmigration when it describes a man as veritably coming to life after death—a fact which it calls his “third birth”. (6) Finally, the only test which may be regarded as being absolutely definite about the chronological arrangement of the Upanishads is that of inter-quotation. Thus we may say that the Taittirīya is definitely later than the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, inasmuch as the Taittirīya refers to the Bṛihadāraṇyaka in the very words in which this latter Upanishad states the doctrine of “quintuple existence” (S. 8). But this test can have no universal significance because we find only few definite inter-quotations among the Upanishads. Moreover, if we just take into account the different strata of composition in the various Upanishads, and divide each of the Upanishads according to the sub-units of which it may be composed, the problem of a general chronological arrangement of these sub-units becomes a hard one indeed;

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but if we make all the allowance that we can for the existence of these strata in the Upanishads, and judge of the Upanishads as a whole, we may say that the Thirteen Upanishads, which we have mentioned above and which will form the theme of our present Volume, may be classed together into the following five different groups:—