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These books are clearly much later than the Samhitā books. In
course of time, the outward rituals became very strong; thus the
crust of ritualism almost completely enveloped the deep spiritual
knowledge of the mantrās. The rişhis of a much later
age (one thousand years or more) attempted to recover the
spiritual knowledge independently by means of tapas. The
philosophical truths and occult knowledge recovered by the
rişhis are contained in the Upanishad books. The special
feature is that these books are more easily understood by
intellectuals than the Veda Samhitās. The Upanishads
occasionally mention the Rig vedic mantrās but to use them
is not their main occupation. They are concerned with establishing
the supreme truth. And in the line of their endeavour, they may
and do refer to these mantrās by way of illustration to
find support for their own conclusions, comment on them whenever
necessary and make a rightful use of them for purposes of
propagation of spiritual knowledge to their disciples and truth
seekers. There is the list of 108 Upanishads compiled in the Muktika
Upanishad. We are dealing here only with the famous thirteen
Upanishads which are associated with a Brāhmaņa book or
Āraņyaka book, typically constituting their ending chapter or
chapters. They are famous because the great commentator on
Upanishads, Bādarāyaņa quoted only from these 13 Upanishads
in his classic sūtra book, "brahma sūtrās''. They
are:
īsha, kena, kaţha, prashna, muņdaka, māndūkya, aitareya,
taittirīya, chhāndogya, bŗhadāraņyaka, kaushītaki,shvetāshvatara,
mahānārāyaņa.
Note that the three Upanishads mundaka, māndūkya and
prashna which play a crucial role in the vedāntic
interpretations are all associated with the Atharva Veda,
showing the sacredness of the fourth Veda also.
The text of all the 13 Upanishads put together is one half or less
that of the Rigveda Samhita alone. The two massive Upanishads,
Chhāndogya and Bŗhadāraņyaka constitute eighty percent of the
text of all the 13 Upanishads.
There are several passages in these two Upanishads which are
couched in ritualistic terms and would sound peculiar to the
ordinary rationalistic person. We can understand their depth only
if we understand the symbolism behind them.
Only if we have a mastery over the symbolism of the mantrās
of Rigveda Samhitā, then the inner meaning of these
apparently controversial mantrās will become transparent.
Now we will consider the major traditional interpretations of all
the Veda books.
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