Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad

The Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad is a verse Upaniṣad of the Atharva Veda, probably composed in the last centuries BCE. Its name means “shaven” — perhaps because it belonged to a community of shaven-headed renunciants, perhaps because it “shaves away” ignorance. In three chapters of two sections each, it presents the teaching of the sage Aṅgiras to the householder Śaunaka, who asks the great question: “What is that, sir, by knowing which all this becomes known?” (1.1.3).

The two knowledges

Aṅgiras answers that there are two kinds of knowledge. The lower (aparā) is the four Vedas — Ṛg, Yajur, Sāma, Atharva — and the six auxiliary sciences: phonetics, ritual, grammar, etymology, metre and astronomy. The higher (parā) is “that by which the imperishable is grasped” (1.1.5). It is remarkable that a Vedic text classes the Vedas themselves as lower knowledge.

The imperishable is described: “That which cannot be seen, cannot be grasped, has no family, no class, no eyes, no ears, no hands, no feet; eternal, all-pervading, omnipresent, extremely subtle — that imperishable which the wise see as the source of beings.” And: “As a spider spins out and draws in its thread, as plants spring from the earth, as hair grows on a living person, so from the imperishable arises everything here” (1.1.6–7).

The leaky boats

The Upaniṣad describes the Vedic rituals and their rewards, and then dismisses them: “Unsafe boats, indeed, are these sacrifices… Fools who delight in them as the highest good fall again into old age and death. Living in ignorance, thinking themselves wise and learned, the fools go round and round, like the blind led by the blind” (1.2.7–8). The seeker must go to a teacher “with fuel in hand”, and the teacher must teach “the true knowledge of Brahman”.

Images of the Self

The second chapter gives one of the Upaniṣads’ most vivid images of creation: “As from a blazing fire sparks fly by the thousand, all alike, so from the imperishable various beings come forth, and into it they return” (2.1.1). It describes the Self as the target of meditation: “Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upaniṣad, one should fix on it an arrow sharpened by meditation; drawing it with a mind absorbed in That, hit that target, the imperishable. Oṃ is the bow, the self is the arrow, Brahman is the target” (2.2.3–4).

The third chapter opens with the image of the two birds, taken from the Ṛg Veda (1.164.20):

Two birds, companions and friends, cling to the same tree. One of them eats the sweet fruit; the other, not eating, looks on. On the same tree, the person sits sunk in grief, deluded by his own helplessness; but when he sees the other, the Lord, contented, and his greatness, his grief passes away. (3.1.1–2)

Later schools read the two birds as the individual self, tasting the fruits of action, and the supreme Self, the silent witness — identical for Advaita, distinct for the theists.

“Truth alone triumphs”

The same chapter contains the line India chose as its national motto:

satyam eva jayate nānṛtam — Truth alone triumphs, not falsehood. By truth the path to the gods is laid out. (3.1.6)

It ends with an image of liberation: “As rivers flowing into the ocean disappear, giving up name and form, so the knower, freed from name and form, goes to the divine Person beyond the beyond. He who knows that highest Brahman becomes Brahman” (3.2.8–9).

Significance

Ādi Śaṅkara commented on it; its “lower and higher knowledge” became a standard Vedāntic distinction; and its motto now stands under the Lion Capital of Aśoka on India’s national emblem.