The Upanishads
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THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST [15] 1: THE UPANISHADS TRANSLATED BY F. MAX MiJLLER PART II THE KAr^A-UPANISHAD / THE MUiVZ>AKA-UPANISHAD THE TAITTIRIYAKA-UPANISHAD THE Bie/HADARAiVYAKA-UPANISHAD THE ^VETA^VATARA-UPANISHAD v' THE PRA^iVA-UPANISHAD THE MAITRAYAiVA-BRAHMAiVA-UPANISHAD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1884 \_All rights reserved ] L CL pt. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction . ... ix Ka//2a-upanishad . xxi Mu</aka-upanishad . xxvi Taittiriyaka-upanishad xxvii Brzhadara^/yaka-upanishad . XXX ^vetai'vatara-upanishad xxxi Pra^Tia-upanishad xlii Maitrayawa-brahmawa-upanishad xliii Translation of the KAr^A-uPANisHAD ^6 Translation of the Mua^zjaka-upanishad 27 Translation of the Taittiriyaka-upanishad 45 Translation of the B/e/HADARAA^VAKA-uPANisHAD 73 ^-^ Translation of the ^vETAi-vATARA-uPANisHAD . 231 Translation of the PRA^-iVA-uPANisHAD . 271 Translation of the MAiTRAYAA^A-BRAHMAiVA-uPANisHAD 287 Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets adopted for the Trans- lations of the Sacred Books of the East . .347 INTRODUCTION. This second volume completes the translation of the principal Upanishads to which 6'ahkara appeals in his great commentary on the Vedanta-Sutras^, viz, : T. i^T/^andogya-upanishad, 2. Talavakara or Kena-upanishad, 3. Aitareya-upanishad, 4. Kaushitaki-upanishad, 5. Va^asaneyi or tja-upanishad, 6. Ka//za-upanishad, 7. Muw^aka-upanishad, 8. Taittiriyaka-upanishad, 9. Brz'hadarawyaka-upanishad, 10. 6'vetaj'vatara-upanishad, 1 1 . Praj/Ta-upanishad. These eleven have sometimes^ been called the old and genuine Upanishads, though I should be satisfied to call them the eleven classical Upanishads, or the fundamental Upanishads of the Vedanta philosophy. Vidyarawya^, in his 'Elucidation of the meaning of all the Upanishads,' Sarvopanishadarthanubhuti-prakai-a, con- fines himself likewise to those treatises, dropping, however, the tsk, and adding the Maitrayawa-upanishad, of which I have given a translation in this volume, and the Nrz- si7hottara-tapaniya-upanishad, the translation of which had to be reserved for the next volume. ^ See Deussen, Vedanta, Einleitung, p. 38. 6'ankara occasionally refers also to the Paingi, Agnirahasya, Gabala, and Narayawlya Upanishads. ^ Deussen, loc. cit. p. 82, ^ I state this on the authority of Professor Cowell. See also Fitzedward Hall, Index to the Bibliography of the Indian Philosophical Systems, pp. 116 and 236. UPANISHADS. of the It is more difficult to determine which Upanishads were chosen by 5ahkara or deserving the honour of a special on the eleven commentary. We possess his commentaries with the of the Upanishads mentioned before \ exception his commen- Kaushitaki ^-upanishad. We likewise possess but we do not know for tary on the Ma;/^ukya-upanishad, certain whether he left commentaries on any of the other statements Upanishads. Some more or less authoritative have been made that he wrote commentaries on some of the minor Upanishads, such as the Atharva^iras, Atharva-i-ikha, the and the Nrzsiwhatapani^ But as, besides 5ahkaraHrya, the of disciple of Govinda, there is 5ankarananda, disciple Anandatman, another writer of commentaries on the Upa- nishads, it is possible that the two names may have been confounded by less careful copyists *. With regard to the Nr/si;;2hatapani all uncertainty might seem to be removed, after Professor Ramamaya Tarka- ratna has actually published its text with the commentary of vSankara/^arya in the Bibliotheca Indica, Calcutta, 1871. But some uncertainty still remains. While at the end of each Kha.7ida, of the Nrzsi;;/ha-purvatapani we read that the Bhashya was the work of the Paramaha;^^sa-parivra- ^aka>^arya 5ri-5ankara, the pupil of Govinda, we have no such information for the Nrzsi;;/ha-uttaratapani, but are told on the contrary that the words ^ri-Govindabhagavat &c. have been added at the end by the editor, because he thought fit to do so. This is, to say the least, very suspicious, and we must wait for further confirmation. There is another commentary on this Upanishad by Narayaabha//a, the son of Bha//a Ratnakara ^, who is well known as the author of Dipikas on several Upanishads. * They have been published by Dr. Roer in the Bibliotheca Indica. ^ Dr. Weber's statement that 5ahkara wrote a commentary on the Kaushitaki- has been upanishad corrected by Deussen, loc. cit. p. 39. ^ See Deussen, loc. cit, p. 39. * A list long of works ascribed to ^ankara may be seen in Regnaud, Philo- de sophie I'Inde, p. 34, chiefly taken from Fitzedward Hall's Index of Indian Philosophical Systems. ^ See Tarkaratna's Vi^;7apana, p. 3, 1. 5. INTRODUCTION. XI I subjoin a list of thirty of the smaller Upanishads, pub- lished by Professor Ramamaya Tarkaratna in the Biblio- theca Indica, with the commentaries of Naraya;/abha//a. I. ^""ira-upanishadjpp.i-io; DipikabyNaraya;/a,pp.42-6o. 2. Garbha-upanishad, pp. 11-15 j pp. 60-73. 3. Nadavindu-upanishad, pp. 15-17 > pp. 73-78. 18-30 4. Brahmavindu-upanishad, pp. ; pp. 78-82. 5. Amrztavindu-upanishad; pp. 21-25 ; pp. 83-101. 6. 26-28 Dhyanavindu-upanishad,pp. ; pp. 102-114. 7. Te^ovindu-upanishad, pp. 29-30 ; pp. 114-118. 8. 1 18-122. Yogaj-ikha-upanishad, pp. 31-32 ; pp. 9. Yogatattva-upanishad, pp. 33-34 ; pp. 122-127. 10. Sannyasa-upanishad, pp. 35-39 ; pp. 128-184. 1 1. Aru;^eya-upanishad, pp. 39-41 ; pp. 184-196. 12. ibidem. Brahmavidya-upanishad, pp. 197-203 ; 13. Kshurika-upanishad, pp. 203-218 ; 14. ii'ulika-upanishad, pp. 219-228 ; 1 5. Atharvaj-ikha-upanishad, pp. 229-238 ; 16. Brahma-upanishad, pp. 239-259 ; 17. Prawagnihotra-upanishad, pp. 260-271 ; 18. Nilarudra-upanishad, pp. 272-280 ; 19. Ka;///^ajruti-upanishad, pp. 281-294; 20. Pi;/(/a-upanishad, pp. 295-298 ; A 21. Atma-upanishad, pp. 299-303 ; 22. Ramapurvatapaniya-upanishad, pp. 304-358; 23. Ramottaratapaniya-upanishad, PP- 359-3^4 ; 24. Hanumadukta-Rama-upanishad, PP- 385-393; 25. Sarvopanishat-sara/^, pp. 394-404 ; 26. Ha?/^sa-upanishad, pp. 404-416 ; 27. Paramahawsa-upanishad, pp. 417-436 ; ,, 28. (Jabala-upanishad, pp. 437-455 ; 29. Kaivalya-upanishad, pp. 456-464 ; Kaivalya-upanishad, pp. 465-479 ; Dipika by vSafikarananda, 30. Garu</a-upanishad, pp. 480 seq. ; Dipika by Naraya;/a, xii UPANISHADS. the We owe to the same editor in the earlier numbers of Bibliotheca the following editions : with Nr/siwhapurvatapani-upanishad, commentary. Nrzsiwhottaratapani-upanishad, with commentary. Sha/X-akra-upanishad, with commentary by Narayawa. and Viwanatha 5astri Lastly, Hara/^andraVidyabhushawa Indica an edition of the have published in the Bibliotheca Gopalatapani-upanishad, with commentary by Vii-vei-vara. These editions of the text and commentaries of the Upanishads are no doubt very useful, yet there are many the passages where the text is doubtful, still more where commentaries leave us without any help. Whatever other scholars may think of the difficulty of translating the Upanishads, I can only repeat what I have said before, that I know of few Sanskrit texts pre- senting more formidable problems to the translator than these philosophical treatises. It may be said that most of them had been translated before. No doubt they have been, and a careful comparison of my own translation with those of my predecessors will show, I believe, that a small advance, at all events, has now been made towards a truer understanding of these ancient texts. But I know full well how much still remains to be done, both in restoring a cor- rect text, and in discovering the original meaning of the and I have to Upanishads ; again and again had translate certain passages tentatively only, or following the com- mentators, though conscious all the time that the meaning which they extract from the text cannot be the right one. As to the text, I explained in my preface to the first volume that I attempted no more than to restore the text, such as it must have existed at the time when 5ankara wrote his commentaries. As .Sahkara lived during the ninth century A.D.\ and as we possess no MSS. of so early a date, all reasonable demands of textual criticism would seem to thereby be satisfied. Yet, this is not quite so. We draw may such a line, and for the present keep within It, but scholars who hereafter take up the study of the ^ can it India, What teach us ? p. 360. INTRODUCTION. XUl Upanishads will probably have to go beyond. Where I had an opportunity of comparing other commentaries, besides those of 6"ankara, it became quite clear that they often followed a different text, and when, as in the case of the Maitrayaa-brahma;^a-upanishad, I was enabled to collate copies which came from the South of India, the opinion which I have often expressed of the great value of Southern MSS. received fresh confirmation. The study of Grantha and other Southern MSS. will inaugurate, I believe, a new period in the critical treatment of Sanskrit texts, and the text of the Upanishads will, I hope, benefit quite as much as later texts by the treasures still concealed in the libraries of the Dekhan. The rule which I have followed myself, and which I have asked my fellow translators to follow, has been adhered to in this new volume also, viz. whenever a choice has to be made between what is not quite faithful and what is not quite English, to surrender without hesitation the idiom rather than the accuracy of the translation. I know that all true scholars have approved of this, and if some of our critics have been offended by certain unidiomatic expres- sions in occurring our translations, all I can say is, that we shall always be most grateful if they would suggest trans- lations which are not only faithful, but also idiomatic.