Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad (“the Upaniṣad of the Great Forest” — or “the great Āraṇyaka-Upaniṣad”) is the oldest and longest of the The Upaniṣads, composed probably in the seventh or sixth century BCE in the kingdom of Videha, in what is now northern Bihar. It forms the final part of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa, the great ritual treatise of the White Yajur Veda. Its six chapters move from speculations about the cosmic meaning of the horse sacrifice to some of the most profound philosophical dialogues in any literature: the teaching of Yājñavalkya to his wife Maitreyī on the Self as the true object of all love; his victory in a philosophical tournament at the court of King Janaka, where the woman philosopher Gārgī Vācaknavī presses him to the limit of what can be asked; and his private teaching to Janaka on dreams, deep sleep, death and liberation. It contains the first statements of the doctrine of Karma, the formula neti neti (“not this, not this”), the mahāvākya ahaṃ brahmāsmi (“I am Brahman”), the prayer “lead me from the unreal to the real”, and the thunder’s three-fold “Da!” that T. S. Eliot borrowed for The Waste Land.

Structure and composition

The text has six chapters (adhyāyas), traditionally grouped in three sections of two: the Madhu Kāṇḍa (chapters 1–2), the Yājñavalkya Kāṇḍa or Muni Kāṇḍa (3–4) and the Khila Kāṇḍa, “supplementary section” (5–6). It survives in two recensions, the Kāṇva and the Mādhyandina, with small differences. Like most of the Upaniṣads it is a compilation; its sections were composed and edited over generations, and some passages appear in more than one place. The Yājñavalkya chapters are the philosophical heart.

The text

The cosmic horse and the primordial Self

The Upaniṣad begins by reinterpreting the horse sacrifice (aśvamedha), the grandest of royal rituals, as a meditation on the universe: “The head of the sacrificial horse is the dawn, its eye the sun, its breath the wind… its back the sky, its belly the intermediate space…” (1.1.1). The sacrifice is not to be performed but understood.

It then tells creation stories. “In the beginning this world was only the Self (ātman), in the form of a person (puruṣa). He looked around and saw nothing but himself. He first said, ‘I am’ (so ‘ham asmi)” (1.4.1). He was afraid — “that is why one who is alone is afraid” — then reasoned that there was nothing to fear, since there was nothing besides himself. He felt no delight — “that is why one who is alone feels no delight” — and desired a second; he split himself into a man and a woman, from whom all creatures were born, she taking the form of a cow, he of a bull, she of a mare, he of a stallion, and so on down to the ants. The passage is the ancestor of many later Indian accounts of creation as the self-differentiation of a single being.

The same chapter contains the great identity: “In the beginning this world was Brahman, and it knew only itself, thinking: ‘I am Brahman’ (ahaṃ brahmāsmi). As a result, it became the whole world. Whoever among the gods became awakened to this became that… And even now, whoever knows ‘I am Brahman’ in this way becomes the whole world. Not even the gods can prevent him, for he becomes their very self. So when a man worships another deity, thinking ‘He is one, and I am another’, he does not understand. He is like a domestic animal for the gods” (1.4.10).

It also gives the early definition of dharma as the power above kings, identical with truth (1.4.14; see Dharma), and the prayer that has become one of the most recited in Hinduism:

asato mā sad gamaya tamaso mā jyotir gamaya mṛtyor mā amṛtaṃ gamaya

Lead me from the unreal to the real; lead me from darkness to light; lead me from death to immortality. (1.3.28)

Gārgya and Ajātaśatru

In chapter 2, the proud Brahmin Dṛpta-Bālāki Gārgya offers to teach Ajātaśatru, king of Kāśī, about Brahman. He proposes twelve definitions — Brahman is the person in the sun, the moon, lightning, space, wind, fire, water, the mirror, the sound that follows a man, the quarters, the shadow, the body — and the king rejects each. Gārgya falls silent. The king says it is unusual for a Brahmin to come to a Kṣatriya for instruction, but will teach him anyway. He takes him to a sleeping man and calls out to him; the man does not respond until shaken. Where was the person of consciousness while he slept? He had withdrawn into the space within the heart, the king explains, taking the senses with him. “As a spider sends out its thread, as tiny sparks spring from a fire, so from this Self spring all breaths, all worlds, all gods, all beings. Its hidden name is ‘the real behind the real’ (satyasya satyam)” (2.1.20).

Yājñavalkya and Maitreyī

The most beloved passage of the Upaniṣad, told twice (2.4 and 4.5), is Yājñavalkya’s farewell to his wife Maitreyī. About to leave home for the life of a wandering ascetic, he proposes to divide his property between her and his other wife, Kātyāyanī. Maitreyī asks: “If the whole earth filled with wealth were mine, would I become immortal by it?” “No,” he says, “your life would be like the life of the rich. There is no hope of immortality through wealth.” “What use is that to me, by which I would not become immortal? Tell me, sir, what you know.”

Yājñavalkya answers with a famous teaching on love:

It is not for the love of the husband that a husband is dear, but for the love of the Self that a husband is dear. It is not for the love of the wife that a wife is dear, but for the love of the Self that a wife is dear. It is not for the love of sons… of wealth… of the gods… of beings… of the All that the All is dear, but for the love of the Self that the All is dear. It is the Self that should be seen, heard, reflected on and meditated upon, Maitreyī. When the Self is seen, heard, reflected on and known, all this is known. (2.4.5)

He explains that as the sounds of a drum cannot be grasped apart from the drum, so all things are grasped through the Self; as all waters meet in the ocean, so everything converges in the Self. And then the paradox that confounds her: after death there is no consciousness. For “where there is duality, as it were, there one sees another, one smells another… but when everything has become one’s own Self, then by what and whom should one see?… By what should one know the knower?” (2.4.14). Later Advaitins took this passage as the classic statement of non-duality; modern readers have seen in it, too, a first meditation on love as the recognition of the self in another.

The debate at Janaka’s court

Chapter 3 is the greatest philosophical tournament in ancient literature. King Janaka of Videha holds a great sacrifice and invites the Brahmins of Kuru and Pañcāla. He sets aside a thousand cows, with ten gold coins tied to each pair of horns, and announces: “Let the most learned among you drive away these cows.” No one dares. Yājñavalkya tells his pupil, “Drive them home, my dear.” The Brahmins are furious: “How dare he call himself the most learned of us?” Yājñavalkya answers: “We bow to the most learned. We just want the cows.”

Eight challengers then question him in turn. Aśvala, the king’s priest, asks about the ritual and how the sacrificer is freed from death; Yājñavalkya answers that speech, breath and mind are the true priests. Ārtabhāga asks what remains of a man when he dies, when his speech goes into fire, his breath into wind, his eye into the sun; Yājñavalkya takes him aside — “this is not for public discussion” — and they speak of karma: “A man becomes good by good action and bad by bad action” (3.2.13). Bhujyu asks where the descendants of King Parikṣit went. Uṣasta demands that Yājñavalkya point out the Self as plainly as one points out a cow; Yājñavalkya replies that “you cannot see the seer of seeing, hear the hearer of hearing, think the thinker of thinking, know the knower of knowing; he is your self that is within all; everything else is subject to sorrow” (3.4.2). Kahola asks the same and learns that the knowers of the Self give up the desire for sons, wealth and worlds and live as mendicants.

Then Gārgī Vācaknavī rises. “Since this whole world is woven back and forth on water, on what is water woven?” “On air.” “On what is air woven?” “On the intermediate regions.” She pursues him up the ladder of worlds — the gandharva worlds, the sun, the moon, the stars, the worlds of the gods, of Indra, of Prajāpati — and asks: “On what are the worlds of Brahman woven?” Yājñavalkya stops her: “Gārgī, do not ask too many questions, or your head will shatter apart. You are asking too many questions about a deity about whom one should not ask too many questions” (3.6). She sits down.

Uddālaka Āruṇi asks about the inner controller (antaryāmin), and Yājñavalkya gives a great litany: “He who dwells in the earth, yet is other than the earth, whom the earth does not know, whose body the earth is, who controls the earth from within — he is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal… He is the unseen seer, the unheard hearer, the unthought thinker, the unknown knower. There is no other seer but he, no other hearer, no other thinker, no other knower. He is your Self, the inner controller, the immortal. All else is sorrow” (3.7). This passage became the foundation of Rāmānuja‘s doctrine of the world as the body of God.

Gārgī rises again, now announcing that she will ask two questions “like two arrows”, and if he answers them, no one will beat him. “That which is above the sky and below the earth, which is between them, which is past, present and future — on what is it woven?” “On space.” “On what is space woven?” Yājñavalkya answers: on the imperishable (akṣara), which the Brahmins describe as “neither coarse nor fine, neither short nor long… without breath, without mouth, without measure, without inside or outside… At the command of this imperishable, Gārgī, the sun and the moon stand apart; the earth and the sky stand apart; moments, hours, days, nights, months, seasons and years stand apart” (3.8.8–9). Gārgī tells the assembly to bow to him and leave: none of them will beat him.

Finally Vidagdha Śākalya asks how many gods there are. “Three thousand three hundred and six.” “How many really?” “Thirty-three.” “How many really?” “Six… three… two… one and a half… one.” “Which is the one god?” “Breath — he is Brahman, they call him ‘That’.” Śākalya keeps pressing, and Yājñavalkya first describes the Self as neti neti — “not this, not this” — and then warns him that if he cannot answer about the person of the Upaniṣads, his head will fall off. Śākalya cannot, and it does; robbers steal his bones. The chapter ends with Yājñavalkya’s riddle about the root of man, likened to a tree, which no one can answer.

Yājñavalkya and Janaka

Chapter 4 contains Yājñavalkya’s private teachings to Janaka. “What is the light of a person?” the king asks. “The sun.” “When the sun has set?” “The moon.” “When both have set?” “Fire.” “When fire has gone out?” “Speech.” “When speech is silent?” “The self is his light” (4.3.6).

Yājñavalkya then describes the self through its states. In dreams, “there are no chariots, no horses, no roads; but he creates chariots, horses and roads. There are no joys, pleasures or delights; but he creates them… for he is a creator” (4.3.10). In deep sleep, the self is like “a falcon or an eagle that, tired of flying about in the sky, folds its wings and glides down to its nest” (4.3.19); “as a man embraced by his beloved wife knows nothing within or without, so this person embraced by the self of wisdom knows nothing within or without. That is his form in which his desires are fulfilled, in which the Self is his desire, in which he is free from desire and sorrow” (4.3.21). In that state, “a father is not a father, a mother is not a mother… a thief is not a thief… he is untouched by good and evil” (4.3.22).

At death, “as a caterpillar, coming to the end of a blade of grass, reaches out to another and draws itself over to it, so the self, having cast off this body, reaches out to another and draws itself over to it” (4.4.3). “As a goldsmith takes a piece of gold and fashions another, newer and more beautiful form, so the self, casting off this body, makes another, newer and more beautiful form” (4.4.4). Then the classic statement of karma: “As a man acts, as he behaves, so he becomes… A man is made of desire; as his desire, so his resolve; as his resolve, so his action; as his action, so he becomes” (4.4.5). And of liberation: “The man who does not desire, who is without desire, freed from desire, whose desire is fulfilled, whose desire is the Self — his breaths do not depart. Being Brahman, he goes to Brahman… When all the desires that dwell in the heart are cast away, the mortal becomes immortal and attains Brahman here” (4.4.6–7).

The section ends with the image of the snake’s skin: “As the slough of a snake lies on an ant-hill, dead and cast off, so lies this body; but this bodiless, immortal life is Brahman alone, is light” (4.4.7). And with the definition of the self as neti neti: “This Self is not this, not this. It is ungraspable, for it cannot be grasped; indestructible, for it cannot be destroyed; unattached, for it does not attach itself; unbound, it does not tremble and is not hurt” (4.4.22).

The supplementary chapters

Chapters 5 and 6 gather shorter teachings: the invocation of fullness (pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idam, 5.1); the thunder’s teaching, in which Prajāpati says “Da” to gods, humans and demons, who understand self-control (dāmyata), giving (datta) and compassion (dayadhvam) (5.2); meditations on the heart, the truth, the Gāyatrī; the contest of the senses, in which breath proves itself the most important by threatening to leave the body (6.1); the teaching of the “five fires” and the two paths after death, given by King Pravāhaṇa Jaivali to Uddālaka’s son Śvetaketu (6.2); and, at the end, rituals for conception and childbirth, and a long lineage of teachers stretching back to Brahman itself.

Significance

The Bṛhadāraṇyaka is the foundation stone of Indian philosophy. Its Yājñavalkya chapters gave Ādi Śaṅkara his doctrine of the attributeless Self (neti neti), Rāmānuja his “inner controller”, and every school its account of karma, rebirth and liberation. The Buddha’s teaching of no-self has often been read as a reply to Yājñavalkya’s Self; the Buddhist and Upaniṣadic traditions were born in the same eastern Gaṅgā plain, perhaps a century or two apart. Its dialogues also preserve a rare picture of intellectual life in early India: public debates sponsored by kings, women philosophers questioning the greatest teacher of the age, and arguments whose stakes were dramatised by heads that might shatter.

In conversation

Maitreyī’s question is the best opening for any argument about wealth and meaning: “If the whole earth filled with wealth were mine, would I become immortal by it?” And Yājñavalkya’s answer to her — that all love is, at bottom, love of the Self — is the most surprising thing ever said about love.