A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c4.s1.7.2

c4.s1.7.2

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.