India and Brahmanism Author:Charles Rockwell Lanman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE UPANISHADS "From every sentence deep, original, and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit." — SCHOPEN... more »HAUER. "In the whole world there is no study, except that of the originals, as beneficial and so elevating as that of the Oupnekhat [the first European translation of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death." — SCHOPENHAUER. THE UPANISHADS (INTRODUCTION) THE ITpanishads are to-day the most studied and the most admired portion of the Vedas. Each one of the four ancient Hymn Vedas has its supplementary " Brah- mana," consisting of early priestly commentary; and each of these has its supplement of later priestly commentary. These final productions, the most advanced and developed thought of all the Vedas, the most daring searches of the unknown achieved by the Hindu mind, these are called the Upaiiishads. The name means "a sitting down under a master," or perhaps an entering into secret mysteries. The Upanishads, as the name implies, were long the most treasured teaching passed from mouth to mouth among the Brahmanic priesthood. Their total number seems to have approached two hundred, but not all of them have been discovered by European scholars. Perhaps some of them were never written down and are still kept secret by jealous masters. Judging from the language of the known Upanishads, they are of widely varying age; and our Western scholars have thought they could trace in them, as in the Hymn Vedas, the change and growth of Hindu thought. Certainly the Upanishads which are the most primitive in thought are also most ancient in style. So we give the reader here what is perhaps the oldest of the better-known ones, the Aitareya, with its solemn, half-mystic specula...« less