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Aspects of the History and World Views of Indian

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Aspects of the History and World Views of Indian 5 A SPECTS OF THE H ISTORY AND W ORLD V IEWS OF I NDIAN R ELIGIOUS T RADITIONS George Chemparathy Some Problems in Determining the Number and the Names of the Vedic Upaniṣ ads ALL religions, more particularly those with written scriptures, accept a certain number of texts as possessing a special sacredness and authority in the eyes of their faithful. This is because such texts are believed to have a superhuman origin, either in the sense of a divine origin or in the sense that the contents of those texts have been “perceived” by superior human beings endowed with special powers of spiritual vision. Even in the case of Buddhism, the founder of which claimed to be only a human being, the teachings contained in its holy scriptures are said to have been perceived by the Buddha after he had attained a special kind of religious experience, usually termed “Enlightenment.” Such scriptures, whether they were transmitted orally or in written form, were set apart as “holy scriptures,” clearly distinguished from all other scriptures, even religious. The list of such texts constituting the “holy scriptures” may be named, borrowing a term from Christian theology, “canonical texts” or texts belonging to a “canon.” The question here raised is whether ancient classical HinduisM – meant thereby is the Hinduism as portrayed by the six classical Hindu systems of thought ( darś ana) – possessed such a “canon” or list of texts that enjoyed a special authority as regards reLIgious, moral, and sociaL matters. The question is raised in particular about the last class of Vedic texts, namely the Upani ads: when the classical Hindu thinkers speak or write about the Upani ads as belonging to the corpus of the Veda, did they have in mind a definite or fixed number of Upani ads, and if so, what are their names? The question is very important for the following reason: on the one hand, a very large number of texts bearing the name “Upani ad” have come down to us; on the other hand, the vast majority of them do not seem to deserve the name of Vedic Upani ads, that is to say, Upani ads which belong in the strict sense to the Vedic corpus. The question is also raised whether there are criteria which could validly and convincingly enable us to fix the exact number and names of such Vedic UpanI ads. I. The Importance of this Question The importance of this problem lies in the fact that classical Hindu thinkers made a well-defined and rigorously maintained distinction between the two classes of their ancient religious litera- ture: the Ś ruti (another name for Veda) on the one hand, and the SM ŗ ti, on the other. The fundamental difference between these two classes consisted in the fact that the former was believed to have a superhuman nature or origin, whereas the latter was unanimously recognized as consisting of compositions by human authors. According to the M ī M āņsakas and the Vedā ntins, the Veda is eternal ( nitya) and authorless ( apauru eya), and consequently one cannot speak of an origin of the Veda, but rather of its super-human nature. The followers of the Ny ā ya– Vaiś e ika and Yoga, on the other hand, admit an origin of the Veda and hence also an author. This author, who is none other than God ( īśvara), is said to have literally uttered the Veda – hence he is spoken of as the “speaker of the Veda” ( vedavaktŗ )–in order to instruct the first humans that come into being at the beginning of every new creation ( sarga) of the universe. Through oral instruction God gives a new origin to the very same Veda, which had ceased to exist when the last person who recited the Veda died at the time of the previous cosmic dissolution ( pralaya). Karin Preisendanz (ed.), Expanding and Merging Horizons: Contributions to South Asian and Cross-Cultural Studies in Commemoration of Wilhelm Halbfass, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2007, pp. 587-601. 588 G EORGE C HEMPARATHY An important consequence of such a superhuman nature or origin of the Veda is that it is free froM alL error. In the view of those who advocate an eternal and authorless Veda, the absolute inerrancy of the Veda ensues from the absence of an author who, they believe, could have been a source of error. By contrast, those who propose the theory that the Veda has an author in the person of God himself argue for the absolute truth of the Veda from the fact that he is omnis- cient, compassionate and undeceiving – in short, froM the fact that he is a supr emely trustworthy person ( paramā pta). The validity ( prā m āňya) or truthfulness of the SM ŗ ti texts, on the other hand, is derived solely from the conformity of their statements with the Vedic statements. The validity or authority of the Ś ruti (or Veda) is primary and absolute whereas that of the SM ŗ ti is derived and dependent on its conformity with the Veda. There is thus a clear-cut demarcation between the Ś ruti or the Veda, on the one hand, and the SM ŗ ti, on the other. If, and to the extent to which, a text bearing the name “Upani ad” belongs to the Vedic corpus, it participates in the super-human nature and absolute inerrancy that are characteristic to the Veda. Hence the importance of determining whether a so-called UpanI ad genuinely forms part of the Vedic canon or not. IMportant to note in this context is the fact that the classical Hindu thinkers, while referring to or quoting from ancient religious texts consistently made a sharp distinction between Ś ruti and SM ŗ ti. Even such a text as the Bhagavadg ī t ā , which has always played a very important role in the religious life of the Hindus even much more than the Upani ads, has been consistently referred to by these authors as a work belonging to the class of SM ŗ ti – an incontestable testimony to the rigorous distinction maintained by them between these two classes of religious texts, a distinction ultimately based on the nature of their origin. II. The Structural Position of the Upaniṣ ads among the Vedic Texts The Vedic texts, or the texts constituting the Ś ruti, are classified under four main heads: the Sa ņ hitā s, the Br ā hmaň as, the Ā raň yakas, and lastly the Upani ads. Of these, the Sa ņ hitā s (or “Collections”) consisting of the Ŗ gveda, the Yajurveda, the S ā maveda , and the Atharvaveda form the core of the Vedic texts, usually termed “Veda.” Among these four Vedas, the Yajurveda alone has two distinct Sa ņ hitā s. One of these consists solely of Mantras (i.e. verses and sacrificial formulas), and it is known as the White ( ś ukla) Yajurveda. The other, consisting of Mantras intermingled with Br ā hmaň as, came to be known as the Black ( k ŗňa ) Yajurveda. To each of these Sa ņ hitā s were appended explanatory prose texts known as Br ā hmaň as. Whereas the Br ā hmaň a-portion of the Black Yajurveda , as stated above, is included in the Sa ņ hitā itself as part of it, the Br ā hmaň as of the three other Vedas as well as of those of the White Yajurveda are quite distinct from their Sa ņ hitā s, and are separately classed as such. The third group of Vedic texts, the Ā raň yakas, form an intermediary class of texts, marking the transition from the ritualistic outlook of the earlier texts to the more mystical and spiritualized perspective of the later texts, the Upani ads. The Upani ads form the last class or portion of the Vedic texts, whence their name “Vedā nta,” “the end of the Veda.” Such a fourfold distinction of Vedic texts, however, is not always maintained. As mentioned earlier, the Br ā hmaň a-portion of the Black Yajurveda forms part of the Sa ņ hitā itself. Likewise, parts of some of the ancient Upani ads bear the traits of Br ā hmaň as, while some Upani ads are imbedded within the Br ā hmaň as or Ā raň yakas. More often than not the Upani ads are attached to the Ā raň yakas either as forming their last portion or appended to them as independent treatises. 1 1 For the Vedic literature in general, cf. A.A. Macdonell, A History of Sanskrit Literature , London 1900, repr. Delhi 1990, pp. 1-232; M. Winternitz, Geschichte der indischen Literatur, Vol. 1, Leipzig 1908, repr. Stuttgart 1968; T HE N UMBER AND THE N AMES OF THE V EDIC U PANI ADS 589 III. The Number of Upaniṣ ads in General It is to be noted that each of the Vedic Sa ņ hitā s was transmitted orally along many ancient Brahmin faMILIes, mostly with MInor differences in the text, thus giving rise to what is known as the Vedic “branches” ( śākhā ) or schools, a term which comes close to our term “recensions.” Each Vedic school had its own version of Vedic texts, all of which were believed to possess the characteristic of Veda ( vedatva). There are variations in the number of Vedic śākhā s, as reported by ancient and later authors. According to PatañjalI (second c. BC), for instance, the Ŗ gveda had twenty-one śākhā s, the S ā maveda one thousand, the Yajurveda hundred and one, and the Atharvaveda nine (see Mah ā bhāya at I,1,5) – thus making up a total of 1.131 śākhā s.This is also the view followed by Medhā tithi (probably ninth c.
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