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They are pre-Buddhist and may be placed in the 7th to 6th centuries BCE, give or take a century or so. In terms of a chronology for the early Upaniṣads, or Principle Upaniṣads, Patrick Olivelle sites the Brhadaranyaka and Chandogya as the two earliest. For the most part, Vedantic philosophy is placed in a male, theist, Vedic world. All the texts are written by Brahmin men so the perspective is very narrow. Most were composed from the last centuries of 1 BCE through 15 CE and the New Upaniṣads, beyond the 108 in the Muktika canon,continued to be composed through the modern era. Patrick Olivelle, in his book The Early Upaniṣads, says that “in spite of claims made by some, in reality, any dating of these documents that attempts a precision closer than a few centuries is as stable as a house of cards.” It’s probably safe to say that the early Upaniṣads all predate the Common Era and five of them are believed to be pre-Buddhist (6th century BCE). Scholars are uncertain about when the Upaniṣads were composed. For centuries, the Upaniṣads were memorised by each generation and passed down orally. The later Upaniṣads recorded in the Muktika canon belong to an entirely different region, probably southern India, and are considerably more recent. This region covers modern Bihar, Nepal, Uttar Pradesh, Uttrakand, Himachel Pradesh, Haryana, eastern Rajasthan, and northern Madhya Pradesh. And this could occur through your own ‘direct perception’, like a Rishi ‘seeing,’ the embodied the Truth, rather than through the mediator of a Brahmin priest.ġ08 Upaniṣads are known, of which the first dozen are the oldest, and most important, and are referred to as the Principal Upaniṣads.They are considered to have been composed in northern India, bound on the west by the upper Indus valley, on the east by lower Ganges region, on the north by the Himalayan foothills, and on the south by the Vindhya mountain range.
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Rituals and sacrifice are still the happening in the early Upaniṣads and it isn’t until the later Upaniṣads (700 BCE – ) that people are concerned with liberation through the path of Knowledge (Jnana). The Upaniṣads are the path of KNOWLEDGE, as opposed to a path of ACTION in the Vedas. The Upaniṣads ask The Big Questions: What is the Self? What happens after death? What is real and what is not? It was a time of discernment and Jnana (wisdom) that could lead to liberation.Ībove, Sitting down at the feet of the guru to hear the teachings. Upanishad means ‘sitting down near ’ people discoursing at the edges of towns, or at the feet of the guru, about the existence of the soul ( Ātman) and retreating to the forests to practice yoga and experience Ultimate Truth and attain liberation ( Mokṣa). Upaniṣads are also known as Vedānta. Veda + anta = Vedānta = end of the Veda. The ancient Upaniṣads are technically still part of the Vedas,but everything from this point forward – the epics like Ramayana, Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita, and Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras – are known as Smriti that which are remembered and shared by human creators. They are commonly known as Vedānta or as the ‘end of the Vedas’. They are the last bit of ‘divinely revealed’ teachings known as Shruti. They reveal liberating insight and experiential wisdom, and contain the first descriptions of yoga practice. They are divinely revealed philosophical teachings that search for the ‘truth’ the reality underlying the world of manifest reality of experience. The Upaniṣads (800-200 BCE)are the foundational philosophical texts of Hinduism and played an important role in the development of spiritual ideas in ancient India, marking a transition from Vedic ritualism to new innovative ideas in terms of philosophy and practice. It’s a daunting task to try to distill the essence of the Upaniṣads. T H E U P A N I S H A D I C A G E \ P R E – C L A S S I C A L Y O G A Spiritual Practice, Yoga and Buddhism, Yoga in India, Yoga TTC Yoga Philosophy and Practice: Part 4 – Upaniṣads A yoga history in a mustard seed by Heather Elton