by Paliath Narendran

The Upanishads are the philosophical crown of the Vedic tradition — ancient texts that gave rise to Vedanta, the school of thought centred on the unity of Atman and Brahman. In the early days of Usenet, scholars and practitioners gathered on soc.religion.eastern to share what they knew, passing along the kind of introductory knowledge that was otherwise locked in specialist libraries. This note by Paliath Narendran of SUNY Albany, posted in March 1991, is a compact and reliable orientation: which of the principal Upanishads belong to which Veda, how the commentarial tradition works, and what the word "Upanishad" itself means.

It is one of the earliest attempts to bring structured reference knowledge about Indian philosophy to an open internet forum.

The Upanishads have an important place in Indian philosophical/religious thought, especially in the school known as Vedanta. The word "upanishad" means "secret teaching" or "the secret meaning of the Vedas." (There are some other meanings as well.) There is some debate as to whether the upanishads are part of the Vedas or merely appendices in some sense. In any case they are now found in various sections of the Vedas towards the end (and hence the name "Vedanta" — Veda + anta, "end" — for the school of philosophy).

The Ten Principal Upanishads

All except Mandukya are believed to be pre-Buddha. Chhandogya and Brhad-aranyaka are also believed to be older than the rest.

There are two more upanishads which, though not considered as important as the above ten, are quite ancient:

There are many more upanishads, but most of them are more recent than these. It also seems that they (the later ones) only have the status of smriti (tradition) and not that of sruti (revelation) in many schools of thought. The principal ones are accepted to be sruti by all the Vedanta schools. (It should be mentioned here that there is no general consensus on what is sruti and what is smriti. This in itself is a fascinating subject.)

The Commentarial Tradition

Sri Sankara ("Sankaracharya") has written bhashyas (commentaries or exegeses) for the ten principal ones named above. He seems to have been the first one to do so. Svetaasvatara also has a bhashya believed to have been written by Sankara. I do not think Ramanuja has written any commentaries on the Upanishads. Madhva has written commentaries on the above ten.

Upanishad Brahma Yogin (who was also the spiritual guru of the great composer Thyagaraja) of Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, has written commentaries on 108 upanishads, including the major ten.

Most of the information here was obtained from some books in Malayalam. I have not mentioned anything about the subject matter of the upanishads, because I have not read any of them in their entirety except for Kena (#2), which is short and sweet. The contents of most of them are metaphysical, but there are also stories and maxims for ethical living in them.

Dates of the Major Commentators

Sankara, Ramanuja and Madhva are the most famous exponents of (different schools of) Vedanta philosophy.

Colophon

Written by Paliath Narendran ([email protected]), Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Albany. Posted to soc.religion.eastern, 4 March 1991. One of the earliest open-access introductions to the Upanishadic canon circulated on the public internet.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].

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