The Upanishads: the search for the self
Teachers in the forests and courts of north India turn from ritual to the question of the self, giving Hinduism its ideas of brahman, atman, karma and liberation.
- Upaniṣads (Oxford World's Classics) — Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Oxford University Press (1996)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
From around the seventh century BCE, as cities and kingdoms grew in the Ganges plain, some thinkers began to ask what lay behind the Vedic rituals. Their dialogues, the Upanishads, were attached to the end of the Vedas, which is why their philosophy is called Vedanta, “the end of the Veda”. The oldest, the Brihadaranyaka and Chandogya, probably predate the Buddha.
- Upaniṣads (Oxford World's Classics) — Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Oxford University Press (1996)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The Upanishads teach that behind the changing world is one reality, brahman, and that the innermost self, atman, is in some sense identical with it. A father teaching his son in the Chandogya repeats: tat tvam asi, “you are that”. They also set out the ideas of rebirth (samsara) driven by action (karma) and liberation (moksha) through knowledge. Strikingly, they feature debates in which kings and women such as Gargi and Maitreyi question the sages.
- Upaniṣads (Oxford World's Classics) — Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Oxford University Press (1996)
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
The same age produced the Buddha and Mahavira, founder of Jainism, who shared some of these ideas but rejected the authority of the Vedas. A Persian translation commissioned by the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh in 1657 later reached Europe in Latin and fascinated the philosopher Schopenhauer.
- An Introduction to Hinduism — Gavin Flood, Cambridge University Press (1996)
- Upaniṣads (Oxford World's Classics) — Patrick Olivelle (trans.), Oxford University Press (1996)
Why it matters today
The Upanishads are the foundation of Vedanta, the philosophy most Hindus and most Westerners think of as "Hindu thought". Their teaching that the self is one with ultimate reality lies behind modern Hindu claims that all religions point to one truth.