Upaniṣads उपनिषद्

What it is

The Upaniṣads are the philosophical texts that come at the end of each Veda, which is why their teaching is called Vedānta, "the end of the Veda". In dialogues, stories and verses, teachers and students ask the deepest questions: What is the self (ātman)? What is the ultimate reality (brahman)? How can it be known, and how can we be free from fear and sorrow? More than two hundred texts carry the name, but some twelve principal Upaniṣads, explained by Śaṅkara and later teachers, are the most widely read.

How it is arranged

Each principal Upaniṣad belongs to one Veda: the Aitareya to the Ṛgveda; the Chāndogya and Kena to the Sāmaveda; the Īśa, Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Taittirīya, Kaṭha and Śvetāśvatara to the Yajurveda; and the Muṇḍaka, Praśna and Māṇḍūkya to the Atharvaveda. Some are long prose dialogues, others short poems. Their stories are unforgettable: the boy Naciketas questioning Death (Kaṭha), Uddālaka teaching his son Śvetaketu "you are that" (Chāndogya 6), and Yājñavalkya explaining the self to his wife Maitreyī (Bṛhadāraṇyaka).

What it teaches

The central teaching is that the self within us and the reality behind the universe are not finally separate: "you are that" (tat tvam asi). The Upaniṣads describe the layers of the person, from the body to bliss, the states of waking, dream and deep sleep, and the meaning of OM. They speak of karma and rebirth, of meditation and of the bond between teacher and student, and they ask us to choose the good (śreyas) over the merely pleasant (preyas).

What it can mean in your life

The Upaniṣads take the questions we all ask, about who we are, what will last and what is worth wanting, and invite us to explore them calmly and fearlessly. They teach that peace is found within and that what we truly are cannot be harmed. Their prayers, such as "asato mā sad gamaya" and the śānti mantras, are recited daily, and they form the foundation of the schools of Vedānta and have moved thinkers around the world.

Where to begin

Begin with the short Īśa Upaniṣad (18 verses), then the Kaṭha, the story of Naciketas and Death, then chapter 6 of the Chāndogya, Uddālaka’s lessons to his son. The Māṇḍūkya, twelve verses on OM, is a good place to pause and reflect.

Origins and dating

In the tradition the Upaniṣads are śruti, part of the Veda itself. Historians date the oldest, the Bṛhadāraṇyaka and Chāndogya, to around the 7th–6th centuries BCE, with verse Upaniṣads such as the Kaṭha and Śvetāśvatara somewhat later.

The text on Vedyatra

The Sanskrit here comes from Sanskrit Wikisource, one page per Upaniṣad or chapter, and every passage links to the exact page revision it was taken from. Where a page had a typing error in a verse number, or printed an invocation or a commentary inside the text, Vedyatra corrected it, and every correction is listed in the open-source import tool.

There is no single critical edition of the Upaniṣads like the Baroda Rāmāyaṇa or the Pune Mahābhārata. Scholarly editions, for example Patrick Olivelle’s The Early Upaniṣads (1998), compare manuscripts and the readings of the old commentaries, and in some places they differ from the received text by a word or a line. Such differences are explained in a note on the passage, kept apart from the text, as passages are reviewed.

Numbering follows the source. The Bṛhadāraṇyaka is the Kāṇva recension, the one Śaṅkara explained; some translations follow the Mādhyandina recension, whose numbering differs. Wikisource numbers the verses on the tree at the end of Bṛhadāraṇyaka 3.9 as 3.9.29–36, skipping 28, where many editions call them 3.9.28. The Maitrāyaṇī is divided into seven prapāṭhakas, as on Wikisource; other editions divide its last books differently. The invocations (śānti mantras) at the beginning and end are not counted as verses, except where they are part of the text itself, as in the Taittirīya.

Passages to start with

• Īśa Upaniṣad 1: All this is pervaded by the Lord; enjoy by letting go.
• Īśa Upaniṣad 15: The face of truth is hidden by a golden vessel; uncover it, so that I who love truth may see.
• Kaṭha Upaniṣad 1.2.2: The wise choose the good over the pleasant.
• Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8.7: "You are that" (tat tvam asi).
• Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 1.3.28: "Lead me from the unreal to the real."