Upanishad

(proper noun)

An authorless Hindu religious and philosophical text considered to be an early source of the religion, found mostly as the concluding part of the Brahmanas and in the Aranyakas.

Related Terms

Examples of Upanishad in the following topics:

  • Vedic and Upanishadic Periods

    • The Brahmana prose texts: The Brahmanas proper of the four Vedas belong to this period, as well as the Aranyakas, the oldest of the Upanishads and the oldest Shrautasutras.
    • The Sutra language texts: This is the last stratum of Vedic Sanskrit leading up to c. 500 BCE, comprising the bulk of the Śrauta and Grhya Sutras as well as some Upanishads.
    • The Upanishads are a collection of philosophical texts which form the theoretical basis for the Hindu religion.
    • All Upanishads are associated with one of the four Vedas—Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda, and Atharvaveda—and have been passed down in oral tradition.
    • More than 200 Upanishads are known, and with the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahmasutra, the mukhya Upanishads provide a foundation for several later schools of Indian philosophy.

  • The Rise of Hinduism

    • The Upanishads are a collection of Vedic texts that contain the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
    • The Upanishads are found in the conclusion of the commentaries on the Vedas and have been passed down by oral tradition.
    • Hinduism evolved as a combination of various cultures and traditions, including Vedic religion and the Upanishads.

  • Sanskrit

    • Works of Sanskrit literature such as the Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali, which are still consulted by practitioners of yoga today, and the Upanishads, a series of sacred Hindu treatises, were translated into Arabic and Persian.