-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Upanishads: The Vedas themselves or commentaries of the Vedas?
- Thread starter Terese
- Start date
They are Vedānta, which means "end of knowledge" because they come after the Vedas. Vedānta also includes the Bhagavad Gītā and Brahma Sutras. The philosophical traditions we call Vedānta are based on these texts.
Subhankar Zac
Hare Krishna,Hare Krishna,
Any texts you can recommend where one can know what the Vedic mantras actually mean?
A commentary book or something?
But my real question was whether the Upanishads are a part of the Vedas or commentaries of them.
The word for word translations from Sanskrit, or explanations of them?
If you put om asato ma or om tryambakam into Google you'll get all kinds of hits.
Last edited:
Neither, they are texts, prose, poetry and verses unto themselves.
निताइ dasa
Nitai's servant's servant
The upanisads are part of the Vedas, and are ascribed to one of the four. The Vedas traditionally are composed of 4 parts, brahmanas, samhitas, aranyakas and upanisads. For example Mundaka Upanisad is of the atharva veda. It is only some schools, which reject the upanisads and accept only the first three. The Vedanta schools believes the upanisads to be part of the Vedas.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
IMHO, knowing a little of Aryan history is must and I recommend https://archive.org/details/TheArcticHomeInTheVedas.
Jai, I would say both. Writings unto themselves and part of Vedas as most Hindus will take them (but only the Mukhya Upanisahds, the old Upanishads. Later in time, there was a proliferation and now they number in thousands. Every Tom, Dick and Harry created an Upanisahd in his name).
Last edited:
shivsomashekhar
Well-Known Member
The Veda consists of the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads.
Vedanta = Upanishads.
Someone above said that the Gita is part of Vedanta and that is not correct. Rather, the combination of Upanishads, Gita and the Brahma-sutras form the Prasthana Trayi - which is the foundation scripture of any school of Vedanta.
Gita 15.15 mentions the Vedanta along with the Veda.
निताइ dasa
Nitai's servant's servant
They are generally assigned/attached to or attributed to one of the 4 Vedas. In terms of dating, Upanisads manuscripts come after the Vedas, but I that doesn't mean anything considering that these are oral traditions that we are dealing with. However, if you go out and buy lets say a copy of the Rg Veda, you won't find the Upanishads in that edition. They are generally studied separately. .AFAIK Samhitas are more ritualistic in nature (have chants and prayers that are used on Yagnas, very little philosophy, very vague language etc), Brahmanas generally elaborate on the Samhitas. Aranyakas are more philosophical in nature but not as philosophical as the Upanisads.
True, "part of" because they are all part and parcel of scriptures.
http://hinduism.stackexchange.com/q...shads-are-quoted-in-sage-vyasas-brahma-sutras
Trust no upanishads other than the ones mentioned below. Upanishads are part of Vedas
The Badarayana-Vyasa Brahma Sutras are a compilation of extremely terse Sutras. These Sutras are impossible to understand without the commentary attached to them. There is no direct quote from any Upanishad in any of these Sutras. These Sutras are often not even complete sentences. It is the commentaries that claim that the Sutras are talking about particular shlokas from specific Upanishads. The Upanishads quoted by Sri Sankaracharya to explain the various Sutras are Aitereya, Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Isavasya, Subala, Katha, Kausitaki, Kena, Mandukya, Mundaka, Prasna, Svetasvatara and Tattiriya, a total of 13. The Upanishads quoted by Sri Ramanuja to explain the Sutras are Aitereya, Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Isavasya, Katha, Kausitaki, Kena, Mahanarayana, Mundaka, Mudgala, Prasna, Subala, Svetasvara and Taittiriya, a total of 14.
Trust no upanishads other than the ones mentioned below. Upanishads are part of Vedas
The Badarayana-Vyasa Brahma Sutras are a compilation of extremely terse Sutras. These Sutras are impossible to understand without the commentary attached to them. There is no direct quote from any Upanishad in any of these Sutras. These Sutras are often not even complete sentences. It is the commentaries that claim that the Sutras are talking about particular shlokas from specific Upanishads. The Upanishads quoted by Sri Sankaracharya to explain the various Sutras are Aitereya, Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Isavasya, Subala, Katha, Kausitaki, Kena, Mandukya, Mundaka, Prasna, Svetasvatara and Tattiriya, a total of 13. The Upanishads quoted by Sri Ramanuja to explain the Sutras are Aitereya, Brhadaranyaka, Chandogya, Isavasya, Katha, Kausitaki, Kena, Mahanarayana, Mundaka, Mudgala, Prasna, Subala, Svetasvara and Taittiriya, a total of 14.
This is not buddhism DIR...
...Our vedantins defeated buddhist views and you again are bringing buddha ? Buddha even if he is avatar of Vishnu, we vedantins completely invalidated buddhism.. Sometimes Vishnu does unimaginable things, for he is the master of everything he gives philosophies to people who are better off with it than without anything.. That is his absolute prema for the jIvas, he always thinks about the ways how to alleviate a jiva.....always....we should all do mangalasasanams for himeven then, as I said in my post above, Vishnu does some stuff that cannot be explained. Kapila muni who brought out samkhya is also avatar of Vishnu. you have to go through how shankara countered buddhism as illogical by establishing a base called brahman....Samkhya also, For them prakriti is everything and purusha / jiva it exists just to exist, not much role, everything is prakriti only, this is one way to wash off karmas keeping the burden on insentient prakriti than on us(Jivas) . Sri Krishna says in BG , when you do any work, place the burden either on him or the insentient nature composed of 3 gunas (sattwa , raajasa, taaamasa) but never keep it on you .Hey, Jiva, Lord Buddha was the ninth avatara of Lord Vishnu.
shivsomashekhar
Well-Known Member
This is not buddhism DIR...
kalyan,
Since you changed your identity, I am seeing your posts.
Vedantins did not defeat Buddhism. The credit for success in polemics against Buddhists is attributed to Kumarila Bhatta - a Mimamsaka and not a Vedantin.
The bulk of Shankara's polemics were directed against Purva Mimamsa.
The bulk of later Vedantins directed their polemics against Advaita.
For those who do not know, it was not polemics that eliminated Buddhism in India. There were multiple factors - but the main reason was the large scale destruction of Buddhist monasteries by raiding Islam rulers. Buddhism in India never recovered from this onslaught. Foreign visitors to India during the 10th Century CE have recorded that in their entire trip, they did not meet a single Buddhist in the country.