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Many such lists exist but they are inconsistent across India in terms of which Upanishads are included and how the newer Upanishads are assigned to the ancient Vedas. In south India, the collected list based on Muktika Upanishad, [note 5] and published in Telugu language, became the most common by the 19th-century and this is a list of 108 ...
Vedas finds its earliest literary mention in the Sangam literature dated to the 5th century BCE. The Vedas were read by almost every caste in ancient Tamil Nadu. An Indian historian, archaeologist and epigraphist named Ramachandran Nagaswamy mentions that Tamil Nadu was a land of Vedas and a place where everyone knew the Vedas. [227]
The Principal Upanishads, which were composed probably between 600 and 300 BCE, constitute the concluding portion of the Veda. [2] According to most Hinduism traditions, ten Upanishads are considered as Principal Upanishads, but some scholars now are including Śvetāśvatara, Kauṣītaki and Maitrāyaṇīya into the list.
The Vedic period, or the Vedic age (c. 1500 – c. 500 BCE), is the period in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age of the history of India when the Vedic literature, including the Vedas (c. 1500 –900 BCE), was composed in the northern Indian subcontinent, between the end of the urban Indus Valley Civilisation and a second urbanisation, which began in the central Indo-Gangetic Plain c. 600 BCE.
These works span much of the history of Hinduism, beginning with the earliest known texts and ending in the early historical period with the later Upanishads. [11] Of the śrutis, the Upanishads alone are widely known, and the central ideas of the Upanishadic śrutis are at the spiritual core of Hindus. [12] [13]
Upanishads: Philosophy in response to Vedas and Brahmanas. There are 108 Upnishads, among which 13 are considered the principal ones. 800-400 BCE [2] Vedanta: Later commentary on the Vedas, Brahmanas and Upanishads. Itihasa: Ramayana and Mahabharata are known as the itihasas (‘thus it happened’).
The four Vedas (Rig Veda, Sama Veda, Yajur Veda, and Atharva Veda) are a large body of Hindu texts originating from the Vedic period in northern India, the Rig Veda being composed c. 1200 BCE, and its Samhita and Brahmanas complete before about 800 BCE. [16]
So the Upanishads develop the ideas of the Vedas beyond their ritual formalism and should not be seen as isolated from them. The fact that the Vedas that are more particularly emphasized in the Vedanta: the efficacy of the Vedic ritual is not rejected, it is just that there is a search for the Reality that informs it. [160]