A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c7.13

c7.13

9. When we come to discuss the relation between the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgītā, we must observe at the outset that a full discussion of this problem cannot be attempted at the short space at our disposal in this chapter. The problem is so interesting and so wide that a full discussion of it could be attempted only in a separate treatise. It is necessary for us nevertheless to indicate the main lines of the relation between the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgītā at this place. There is an amount of truth in the famous verse which tells us that "the Upanishads are like a cow, Kṛṣṇa like a milk-man, Arjuna like the calf that is sent to the udders of the cow before milking, and the Bhagavadgītā like the milk-nectar that is churned from the udders of the cow." As illustrations of the way in which the Bhagavadgītā borrows ideas, phrases and even sentences from the Upanishads, we have to note how the verse from the Kaṭhopanishad which tells us that "the Ātman is never born nor is ever killed, he neve comes from anything, nor becomes anything, he is unborn, imperishable, eternal, has existed from all eternity, and is not killed even when the body is killed" (S. 13. a) is reproduced almost word for word in Bhagavadgītā II. 20; as well as that other verse from the Kaṭha which tells us that "when a killer thinks he is killing and when the killed thinks he is being killed, neither of them verily knows, for the Ātman is neither killed nor ever kills," (S. 13. b) is reproduced in those very words in Bhagavadgītā II. 19. Then again we see how a verse from the Kaṭhopanishad which tells us that "the Ātman is not even so much as heard of by many, that even hearing Him people do not know Him, that the speaker of the Ātman is a miracle, that the obtainer of Him must have exceeding insight, that he who comes to know him after being instructed by such a wise man is himself a miracle" (S. 13. c) is paraphrased and adopted in Bhagavadgītā II. 29; while another verse from the same Upanishad "What word the Vedas declare, what word the penances busy themselves about, what word inspires the life of spiritual discipleship, that word, briefly I tell thee, is Om" (S. 13. d) is also reproduced almost word for word in Bhagavadgītā VIII. 13. Finally, the conception of Devayāna and Pitṛiyāṇa, the path of the Gods and the path of the Fathers (S. 13. e), which the Upanishads, as we have seen, themselves borrowed from the Vedas, was handed over by them to the Bhagavadgītā, which, in a very crisp description of the two paths (VIII. 24-25), tells us, in the very same strain as the Upanishads, that those who move by the path of the Gods move towards Brahman, while those who go by the path of the Fathers return by the path by which they have gone.