mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== _________________________________________________________________ Languages with more than 30,000,000 Speakers as of 1993 _________________________________________________________________ Of the 40 languages listed, no less than 18 are spoken in [1]India (including Pakistan and Bangladesh) or [2]China. Of the remaining 22 languages, 9 are European in origin, 3 were in the ancient cultural sphere of influence of [3]China (Japanese, Korean, & Vietnamese), 7 are in the cultural sphere of influence of [4]Islām (Arabic, Persian, Malay, Javanese, Turkish, Swahili, & Hausa -- not to mention Urdu, already counted in India), 2 were in the ancient cultural sphere of India (Burmese and Thai-Lao -- and as was Javanese before the advent of Islām), and the remaining one, Tagalog, was culturally isolated, in the Philippines, until the arrival of the Spanish. The white spaces on the map below, mainly in Africa, simply mean that the local languages, like Tagalog, are not classified in the cultural spheres of India, China, Europe, or Islām. Language Speakers Group Location MANDARIN CHINESE 952,000,000 Sino-Tibetan CHINA English 470,000,000 Indo-European Europe/America/etc. HINDI 418,000,000 Indo-European INDIA Spanish 381,000,000 Indo-European Europe/America Russian 288,000,000 Indo-European Europe/Central Asia Arabic 219,000,000 Afro-Asiatic Middle East/N Africa BENGALI 196,000,000 Indo-European INDIA Portuguese 182,000,000 Indo-European Europe/America Malay 155,000,000 Malayo-Polynesian Malaya/Indonesia Japanese 126,000,000 Altaic Japan French 124,000,000 Indo-European Europe German 121,000,000 Indo-European Europe URDU 100,000,000 Indo-European INDIA PUNJABI 94,000,000 Indo-European INDIA Korean 75,000,000 Altaic Korea TELUGU 73,000,000 Dravidian INDIA MARATHI 70,000,000 Indo-European INDIA TAMIL 69,000,000 Dravidian INDIA CANTONESE CHINESE 66,000,000 Sino-Tibetan CHINA SHANGHAI CHINESE 65,000,000 Sino-Tibetan CHINA Javanese 64,000,000 Malayo-Polynesian Indonesia Vietnamese 64,000,000 Austroasiatic Indo-China Italian 63,000,000 Indo-European Europe Turkish 59,000,000 Altaic West & Central Asia Tagalog 53,000,000 Malayo-Polynesian Philippines MIN CHINESE 50,000,000 Sino-Tibetan CHINA Thai & Lao 50,000,000 Thai Indo-China Swahili 48,000,000 Niger-Kordofanian East Africa HUNAN CHINESE 48,000,000 Sino-Tibetan CHINA Ukrainian 47,000,000 Indo-European Europe KANARESE (Kannada) 44,000,000 Dravidian INDIA Polish 44,000,000 Indo-European Europe BIHARI (Bhojpuri) 42,000,000 Indo-European INDIA GUJARATI 41,000,000 Indo-European INDIA Hausa 38,000,000 Afro-Asiatic West Africa MALAYALAM 35,000,000 Dravidian INDIA Persian 34,000,000 Indo-European Iran/Central Asia HAKKA CHINESE 34,000,000 Sino-Tibetan CHINA ORIYA 32,000,000 Indo-European INDIA Burmese 31,000,000 Sino-Tibetan Burma These numbers are from The WORLD ALMANAC and BOOK OF FACTS 1995 (Funk & Wagnalls, 1994, pp. 598-599); but their table seems to have overlooked Bihari in India and Hunan Chinese, so I have had to use numbers that may now be out of date. General information about world languages may be found in The Languages of the World, by Kenneth Katzner (Routledge & Kegan Paul, revised in 1986). There is a lot of uncertainty about the populations for Chinese "dialects." These numbers should be compared with the table for Chinese dialects. Thorough treatments of Chinese may be found in The Chinese Language, Fact and Fantasy, by John DeFrancis (University of Hawaii Press, 1984 -- DeFrancis is one of the major living scholars of Chinese) and The Languages of China, by S. Robert Ramsey (Princeton University Press, 1987). The population figures for all these languages are for those who speak them as either first or second languages. Several languages are widely used as second languages (especially English, French, Russian, Arabic, Malay, and Swahili), and it is hard to provide numbers for some of them in that capacity. Since Arabic is the language of Islām, Moslems around the world, as far afield as Indonesia (which is over 90% Moslem), learn it it for religious reasons. By some estimates, up to a billion people could have some competence in English. The figure for Mandarin includes other Chinese (more than a hundred million) who have learned Mandarin as a second language. Some languages started out as trade languages which were essentially second languages. They continue to have a far smaller number of speakers as first languages than as second. Malay may only be the first language of 50 million people. But as a trade language which has become the national language of Malaysia and Indonesia (called Bahasa Malaysia and Bahasa Indonesia respectively), Malay is one of the major languages of the world. Swahili, which has a large Arabic component, may have fewer than ten million speakers as a first language, and thus would not otherwise have appeared on this list. Mandarin Chinese has been expanding against the other Chinese [5]languages because of its political, cultural, and demographic dominance and the peculiar relationship of these languages to each other (they are written with the same Classical Chinese characters). In India no language has a status comparable to Mandarin in China. Indian states have their own official languages, and giving official national status to Hindi actually set off riots. Various Indian languages are certain to continue and thrive, while English is preferred for purposes of neutral national communication. Hindi and Urdu are really the same language (Hindi-Urdu or Hindustani), with Hindi spoken by Hindus and Urdu spoken by Moslems. On the literary level these languages now diverge in vocabulary, with Hindi borrowing from Sanskirt and Urdu borrowing from Arabic and Persian. Hindi-Urdu, however, because it grew up under the Moslem Moghul Emperors, originally had a Persian and Arabic component, which survives even in Hindi. "Hindi" [Hyndi] itself is from Arabic Hindī, though that is ultimately from Sanskrit sindhu, meaning a river, the Indus River, or the Sindh region of India. "Urdu" [Wrdu] is from Persian ordu, meaning a camp, or Turkish ordu, meaning an army. Both are derived from Mongolian orda (which had both meanings), as does the English word "horde," which came through the Polish rendering, horda. The name "Urdu" commemorates the circumstance that the language developed in the army camps of the Moghul Emperors, where the originally Turkish and Afghani forces of the Moghuls interacted with the locals. Both Hindi and Urdu have borrowed from English and other modern languages. Only two Sub-Saharan African languages (Hausa and Swahili) appear on the list. This reflects the circumstance that a large number of languages are spoken in Africa, and many areas are not densely populated. The most populous country in Africa, Nigeria, with a population over 100,000,000 people, contains many languages. Of its principal languages, Hausa, Ibo (or Igbo), Yoruba, and Fulani (or Fula), only Hausa makes the list. As of 1993, Ibo had 17 million speakers, Yoruba 20, and Fulani 13 (many of them outside Nigeria). The languages with the largest number of speakers in South Africa, Zulu and Xhosa, have about 9 million and 8 million speakers, respectively. Both Hausa and Swahili are identified as part of the Islam, because Hausa is predominately spoken by Muslims and because Swahili, although an African language spoken by many non-Muslims, grew up as a trade language under Islamic influence. Thus, the name Swahili itself is Arabic, Sawāh.ilī, from sāh.il, "coast," and sawāh.il, "coasts." The Swahili word for "book," kitabu, is Arabic (kitāb); but since many nouns in Swahili begin with ki- and form their plurals by changing that to vi-, "books" is vitabu, which is not at all like Arabic (where the plural is kūtūb). _________________________________________________________________ [6]History of Philosophy [7]Philosophy of History [8]Philosophy of Science [9]Home Page Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 2001, 2003 [10]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All [11]Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Earliest Civilizations The basic meaning of civilization is the presence of cities, and the basic meaning of history is the presence of written records. There can be civilization without writing (the [12]Incas), and perhaps writing without much in the way of cities ([13]runes), but the creation of writing gives to the earliest historical civilizations a role that prior urban culture (as at Jericho) could not match. The four earliest centers of historical civilization stretch diagonally across south Asia into Africa. They are defined by their writing systems. The earliest is in Sumer (or Sumeria), where we now have evidence of a long pre-history of writing. After early pictograms, the writing system that emerged, cuneiform, is named after the wedge shapes that were made by reed pens on clay tablets. This was a cumbersome and messy medium for writing but possesses the virtue form our point of view that burned tablets can become as durable as bricks. The Sumerians themselves did not last long, and are no longer distinguishable as a people after the end of the [14]III Dynasty of Ur, around 2000 BC. Their language has no known affinities, though the [15]Caucasus is still home to similarly isolated and unique language groups, three of them. A chain of ancient non-Indo-European and non-Semitic languages -- of Elam, the Kassites, the Hurrians, and Urartu -- stretched from Sumer to the Caucasus, but too little is known of these languages, or of the early forms of the Caucasian ones, for certain connections to be drawn. Sumerian civilization, however, did not die, since most of its elements, and the cuneiform writing system itself, were adapted to writing a Semitic language, Akkadian, whose daughters, [16]Babylonian and Assyrian, bore the literature of subsequent Mesopotamian civilization, even while lovingly preserving knowledge of Sumerian. The last cuneiform text is from 75 AD, and so this is taken as marking the end of Sumerian civilization, even if the end of the Sumerians themselves long antedates it. Hard on the heels of Sumer came Egypt, with evidence of Sumerian influence, where a new writing system, hieroglyphics, developed -- now with some evidence emerging of its antecedents in Egypt. Of the durable systems of writing, hieroglyphics alone retained its pictographic character, though the Egyptians developed cursive and abbreviated forms for more practical purposes. The Egyptians also developed a more practical medium for writing, papyrus scrolls, though these have the drawback, from our point of view, of easily burning and decaying. An intact Egyptian papyrus is a prize, though these are more common in the dry climate of Egypt than similarly volatile media would be in the damp Ganges Valley of India. The Egyptians themselves, and their writing, were somewhat more durable than Sumer. The last hieroglyphic inscription was carved in 394 AD, and the last cursive (Demotic) papyrus is from 480 AD. That, even then, the Egyptian language survived, as Coptic, written in the Greek alphabet, is discussed [17]elsewhere. The Indus Valley of India is where the next civilization emerges, again with evidence of Sumerian influence. The Indus pictographic script is not well attested and remains undeciphered. Nor, unlike hieroglyphics and cuneiform, are there any bilingual texts to aid in decipherment. The problem is that the Indus Valley civilization did not survive, flourishing only from around 2800 to 1500 (or even just from 2600 to 1900). The examples of Indus writing are brief and fragmentary. Just what happened is still mysterious. The advent of Indo-European [18]steppe peoples with horses and chariots undoubtedly had the kind of effect that is also evident in the Middle East, where small numbers of such people established regimes in Babylonia (the [19]Kassite Dynasty) and [20]Mitanni, and the technology made a foreign regime possible in [21]Egypt. The Indus cities, however, now seem already declining, vulnerable, and perhaps even abandoned, perhaps because of climatic and hydrological changes. There is little real evidence of violent conquest, though a similar absence is also noteworthy with respect to the Kassite regime in Babylon, the Mitanni, or the Hyksos in Egypt. In any case, India passed into a Dark Age and emerged contemporaneous with the beginning of Classical civilization in Greek, circa 800 BC. While contact between Sumeria, Egypt, and the Indus occurred early, the fourth center of civilization, in China, remained relatively isolated and emerged considerably later, with the [22]Shang Dynasty, about the time that India has passsing temporarily out of history. Of all the early systems of writing, Chinese Characters, the direct descendants of Shang pictographs, are the only one still in use today. The Indian system, of course, ended with the Indus civilization. Cuneiform and hieroglyphics were replaced by alphabetic scripts that developed, perhaps under Egyptian influence, in Phoenicia and Canaan. A striking geographical feature of the early civilizations is that they were all in river valleys, and not only that, but desert river valleys. That circumstance might be overlooked in the Middle East, where the climate is uniformly dry, but is conspicuous in India and China, where the rivers in deserts (the Indus), or at least relatively dry areas (the Huang He), are matched by rivers that are in areas of heavy rainfall (the Ganges & Yangtze). In China, an old saying has it that in the north (Huang He valley) you go by horse, and in the south (Yangtze valley) you go by boat. That life and agriculture likely was easier in rainy areas may have been just the problem. The irrigation systems that were necessary for reliable agriculture in the desert climates imply a level of organization and technological development, let alone records, which are just what we find in the earliest days of Sumer, Egypt, and the Indus valley. In these terms, it should not be surprising that civilization in India began on the Indus rather than the Ganges, and in China on the Huang He rather than the Yangtze. This even made a difference in the Chinese diet, since rice, which we think of as the Chinese staple, would only grow in the wet south. In the north, it was wheat that was grown, and the staple diet was based on something else which is still conspicuous in Chinese [23]cooking, noodles. Another curious, but unexplained, feature of these civilizations is that the delay in the develoment of China, and the hiatus in the development of India, end up producing a philosophical culture simultaneously with the development of Greek philosophy, while the independent Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilizations were far gone in decline. The multiple points of similarity between the thought of the Greece, India, and China, evident in the simplest terms in their respective treatment of the physical [24]elements, cannot be accounted for by mutual influence, which does not seem to have existed at the earliest period. The undoubted transfer of ideas between Greece and India in the [25]Hellenistic Period, and the export of Buddhism from India to China beginning in the [26]Han Dynasty, provides us points of comparison with what, the uninfluenced traditions, came before. The time when [27]Parmenides, [28]Confucius, and the [29]Buddha all lived, the end of the 5th century BC, has been called the "axial age"; but it remains mysterious that such simultaneous and sometimes parallel development should have occurred. The age was also one of religious innovation. In India, where religion and philosophy remain closely related, Buddhism, Jainism, and Upanishadic Hinduism straddle the distinction. In China, schools that are pretty purely philosophical, Confucianism and Taosim, eventually attract religious elements and grow, with Buddhism, into the three religious "Ways" of Chinese civilization. Greek religion, of course, was doomed to extinction, replaced by Prophetic Judaism and its daughter religions, Christianity and Islām. Meanwhile, of course, the Jewish tradition had been profoundly influenced by Greek philosophy, so that when Christianity was adopted by Rome, it could be said to repesent a synthesis of "Athens and Jerusalem." The place in this of the religious revolution in Irān, Zoroastrianism, is more obscure. The moral rigor of Zoroaster, in separating all evil from God, may actually be the source of similar reforms in both Judaism and in Greek philosophy, but there is little in the way of direct evidence of this. 1. [30]Index of Egyptian History 2. [31]Index of Mesopotamian and Ancient Middle Eastern History 3. [32]Kings of Sumer and Akkad + [33]The Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Periods 1. [34]Kings of Babylonia 2. [35]Kings of Assyria 4. [36]Emperors of China 5. [37]Emperors of India [38]History of Philosophy [39]Home Page Copyright (c) 2000, 2003, 2004 [40]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All [41]Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Spread of Indo-European and Turkish Peoples off the Steppe The grassland across Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the Steppe, is one of the great highways of world history. Equipped with horses and cattle, people could live easily on the Steppe and move freely across it, all the way from Mongolia to Hungary. From the Second Millennium BC until well into the Middle Ages, movements back and forth across the Steppe, and especially off of it at the periphery, profoundly influenced the history of the surrounding lands in Europe and Asia, particularly Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, and China. The most dramatic example of this in Ancient times was the descent of the Iranians into the Middle East and India. Introducing horses and chariots for the first time into these areas of earlier civilization, the Iranian invaders not only revolutionized warfare, but were the ones to reap the first advantages from the innovation. The occupation of the Iranian plateau established their permanent presence there, with the great successor kingdoms of the Medes and the Persians. An Iranian elite, at least, imposed themselves on the Hurrians and the Kassites of the Middle East. With the Hurrians, the kingdom of the [42]Mitanni then became one of the great second millennium powers of Eastern Syria, while with the Kassites, an ascendancy was established over [43]Babylonia. In a 13th century treaty with the Hittites, the Mitanni listed their gods, which are evidently the same gods as in contemporary Iran and in Vedic India. Recent scholarship has begun to discount to role of the Iranian invaders in the introduction of the horse and in dominating the Hurrians and Kassites, since horses appear before their arrival and the evidence of the Iranian element among the Hurrians and Kassites is thin. However, the Iranian movement was certainly more that of a migration than the invasion of organized armies. As such, its influences were somewhat more in the way of diffusion than of conquest. Horses arrive before an Iranian population does because they were traded ahead of the migrants. Someone brought them -- horses (and chariots) did not simply suddenly wander across the Central Asian deserts into the Middle East and India. There is no doubt that horses did not exist in the 3rd millennium BC in Egypt or Sumeria. When horses do arrive, they are adopted as quickly as possible. Horses clearly arrived in Egypt with an invasion, that of the [44]Hyksos, but there is no evidence that the Hyksos were Iranians. Whether or not the Hurrians were ever dominated by Iranians, there is undoubted Iranian influence there, with the names of the gods. The gods can have diffused along with the horses. That the Iranians are near is incontestable -- they are soon revealed on the Iranian plateau, and in India, and their languages have been in those places ever since. Consquently, it doesn't make much sense to completely discount the traditional notions of the role and influence of the Iranians. India is where the eastern branch of Iranian invaders, the Arya, imposed themselves and, erasing whatever establishment or vestiges were in place of the older Indus Valley Civilization, laid the foundation of a new civilization with their own language and gods. A subsequent Iranian people, the Sakas, later also invaded India. The Sakas had been dislodged, as the most distant Indo-European occupants of the Steppe, known as the Yüeh Chih (Pinyin Yuezhi, the "Moon Tribe") to the Chinese, were thrown back into the Tarim Basin (the Lesser Yüeh Chih) and Transoxania (the Greater Yüeh Chih). The Greater Yüeh Chih, organized as the kingdom of the Kushans, later continued the tradition by invading India themselves. Argument continues over the role of the Arya invaders in the end of the Indus Valley Civilization (one of whose famous artifacts is shown at left), which is now usually said to have been in decline and to have come to an end through its own decadence (cf. The Oxford Companion to Archaeology [Oxford University Press, 1996], "Indus Civilization," pp. 348-351) or natural disasters (cf. "Indus Civilization, Clues to an Ancient Puzzle," National Geographic Magazine, Vol.197, No.6, June 2000, pp.108-129). Civilizations, indeed, have their ups and downs. Egypt during its Intermediate Periods, or China after the fall of the [45]Han, are good examples. However, they rarely disappear as the result of such low points. Even Mayan Civilization, which essentially did collapse, still left the Mayan people, speaking their own language, behind. It is thus hard to imagine no connection between the invasion and the disappearance, even as the probable language of the Indus Valley, a Dravidian language, was erased from most of the north of India. Egypt had a tough enough time shaking off the [46]Hyksos. Claims are also now made, perhaps not coincidentally starting with Indian scholars, that the Arya originated in India, that the Vedic language is closely related to the Dravidian languages and the source of all other Indo-European languages, and that the hitherto undeciphered Indus Valley script is actually the basis of both the much later (700 or 800 years) Brahmi alphabet in India and even the Phoenican/Canaanite alphabet of the Middle East. These are inherently suspect and improbable claims, examined in some detail [47]elsewhere. Since the early Iranian peoples were illiterate, much of their movement and activities remain concealed from history. With the spread of literate civilization, however, much more can the discerned when the entire process of spreading across the Steppe was repeated all over again in the Middle Ages by the Turks. Moving from east to west, the Turks did not come quite as far west on the Steppe itself. The Ukraine remains Slavic. Nor did the Turks settle nearly as much of the Middle East. However, the whole area around the Aral Sea became permanently Turkish, now dignified as "Turkestan," while the defeat of the Romanian/Byzantine Emperor Romanus IV at the battle of Manzikert by the Seljuk Turk Great Sultān Alp Arslan in 1071 opened up Asia Minor, which Iranians had never penetrated, to permanent Turkish occupation and settlement. The presence of Turkey amidst and upon older Indo-European peoples, the Greeks and the Armenians, and overlapping an Iranian people, the Kurds, has not made for forgiveness or forgetfulness of their recent advent. Although a Turkish ethnic presence was never established in India, Turkish princes in Afghanistan profoundly influenced Indian history, first by the invasion of Mahmūd of Ghazna in 1008, when Islām was first solidly planted in Indian civilization, and by the later invasion of Babur, the first of the Moghuls, in 1526. [48][LINK] The most spectacular and rapid movement of conquest across the Steppe, through the Middle East, and into Europe and China, was that of the [49]Mongols in the 13th Century. Although several significant and a few durable kingdoms resulted from this conquest [click on the map for subsequent developments], little remains by way of permanent Mongol ethnic presence. Only small groups like the Crimean Tartars come to mind. The Mongols thus repeated the earlier, and less well documented, career of the Huns, who also left few durable marks of their presence (like the name "Hungary"). Subsequently, the conquest of the Steppe came from off of the Steppe, especially as the Russians, who had moved across Asia north of the Steppe, in the forest land of the taiga, occupied much of the central portion of it from the north in the 19th Century. The advent of gunpowder removed the advantage that the horse had given nomadic Steppe dwellers for so long. Grasslands at the corresponding latitudes elsewhere in the world did not have the same impact on world history. The Pampas of South American and the Veldt of South Africa were far too small to provide a highway between different cultural regions. The Prairie of North America, although extensive, was still not as extensive as the Steppe and lacked the key ingredient: A domesticated animal for riding. Although the horse had actually evolved in North America, it died out there and historically is only found in Asia and Africa (Zebras). The reintroduction of the horse into the New World by the Spanish set off the development of a romantic Plains culture among American Indian tribes who adopted the horse; but this did not involve the historic transmission of cultures around the periphery, nor did it last very long -- only a century and a half, at most. What these grasslands could mean in modern life was as appropriate ranges to grow a domesticated grass, wheat, and similar agricultural staples. _________________________________________________________________ [50]"Knowing" Words in Indo-European Languages [51]History of Philosophy [52]Philosophy of History [53]Home Page Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001 [54]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All [55]Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Fours Vedas and the Parts of the Vedas _________________________________________________________________ The Vedas and all their parts are shruti, "revelation." The sectarian teachings, Vais.n.avite (the sect of Vis.n.u), Shaivite (the sect of Shiva), & Shākta (Tantric, sect of Shakti), may regard their texts, the āgamas, as shruti also. The pious view is that the Vedas are eternal and uncreated and exist essentially as sound. More conventional, but still pious, scholarship may still exaggerate the antiquity of the Vedas, sometimes claiming they go back to 10,000 BC or earlier. Now, however, it looks like even the oldest parts of the R.g Veda do not antedate the arrival of the Arya in India, although the gods and elements of the stories are older, since they are attested with Iranian peoples and the Mitanni, with parallels in Greek and Latin mythology. The word "veda" is from the root vid, "to know," making for other derivates like vidya, "knowledge," and avidya, "ignorance." The vid root is [56]cognate to idea in [57]Greek, video in Latin, and wit in English. Claims can be found on the Internet that the Arya and their gods were autochthonous to India; but the linguistic, archeological, and epigraphic evidence is overwhelming in favor of their arrival from the [58]Steppe, like the Turks and Mongols centuries later, and of their origin elsewhere. THE FOUR VEDAS I. R.g Veda the oldest Veda, from c.1500 BC; from r.c, "sacred hymn or verse"; liturgial manual of the hotr., chief sacrificial priest. II. Sāma Veda from sāman, "song, chant"; hymnal of singing udgātr. priest, assistant of the hotr.. III. Yajur Veda from yajus, "sacrifical formula"; liturgical manual of adhvaryu priest, assistant of hotr. charged with ritual preparations, "practical work." IV. Atharva Veda the youngest Veda, c. 800 BC; from atharvan, the "fire priest," not originally associated with Vedic sacrifice, later added as brāhman.a, the fourth sacrificial priest. Each Veda consists of four parts. THE FOUR PARTS OF THE VEDAS I. Samhitās (or Mantras) Hymns R.g Veda Samhitās: 10522 verses The samhitās and brāhman.as are the karmakān.d.a, "action part," of the Vedas, studied by the pūrva mīmāmsā, "prior interpretation," or Mīmāmsā school. Sāma Veda Samhitās: 1984 verses Yajur Veda Samhitās: 1875 verses Atharva Veda Samhitās: 5977 verses II. Brāhman.as Ritual Texts The brāhman.as, using much mythic material, are commentaries on and explanations of the hymns and ritual practices. III. Āran.yakas Forest Treatises The āran.yakas verge into philosophical writing but often are indistinguishable from the brāhman.as; they may be regarded as philosophical texts written by or for forest dwelling hermits or as brāhman.a ritual texts written for forest dwellers who cannot practice the ordinary household rituals described in the brāhman.as proper. The āran.yakas and upanis.ads are the jńanakān.d.a, "knowledge part," of the Vedas, studied by the uttara mīmāmsā, "posterior interpretation," or Vedānta, "End of the Vedas," school. IV. Upanis.ads Philosophical Texts The Vedas are traditionally taught by a Brahmin teacher (guru) orally to a student (brahmacārin) in sequences (called "branches") of associated samhitās, brāhman.as, āran.yakas, and upanis.ads. For example: R.g Veda Shakala Branch Samhitās Aitareya Brāhman.a Aitareya Āran.yaka Aitareya Upanis.ad [59]History of Philosophy [60]Home Page Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 [61]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Thirteen Principal Upanis.ads with their associated Vedas, Brāhman.as and Āran.yakas _________________________________________________________________ Translations of Upanis.ads range from the classic Sacred Books of the East versions by F. Max Müller in two volumes, originally published in 1879 and 1884 (reissued by Dover in 1962), to a recent new translation by Patrick Olivelle (Upanis.ads, Oxford, 1996). Olivelle should be consulted for the most recent thinking and scholarship. [62]Mircea Eliade says that only the Upanis.ads listed here, out of more than 200, are considered to be shruti. At the same time, I've seen claims that the Upanis.ads are not even part of the Vedas. Olivelle says that these (his collection does not include the Maitri Upanis.ad) are in fact the whole of the original Upanis.adic literature -- indeed, that the Br.hadāran.yaka and Chāndogya together "constitute about two-thirds of the corpus of ancient Upanis.adic documents" (p. 4). Subsequently, however, numerous, often [63]Sectarian, documents were produced, as late as the 16th century, which were regarded as Upanis.ads by different people (p. xxxiii). Collections of Upanis.ads varied by region. Olivelle mentions a northern collection of 52 and a southern collection of 108 (p. xxxiii). The only serious modern publication of the additional Upanis.ads I've seen is K. Narayanasvami Aiyar's Thirty Minor Upans.ads (Parimal Publications, Delhi, 1997). The late Upanis.ads are not part of the Brāhman.a literature and tend to be ascribed to the Atharva Veda. This is already true of some of the Upanis.ads listed here. Action Part Knowledge Part Hymns Brāhman.as Forest Treatises Upanishads R.g Veda, Shakala Branch Aitareya Brāhman.a [[64]2] Aitareya Āran.yaka Aitareya Upanis.ad [[65]1] R.g Veda Kaus.ītaki (Shānkhānaya) Brāhman.a [[66]2] Shānkhānaya Aran.yaka Kaus.ītaki Upanis.ad [[67]1] Sāma Veda Jaiminīya (Talavakāra) Upanis.ad Brāhman.a [[68]3] Kena Upanis.ad Chāndogya Brāhman.a [[69]4] Chāndogya Upanis.ad [[70]1][[71]5] Kr.s.n.a (Black) Yajur Veda Taittirīya Brāhman.a [[72]6] Taittirīya Āran.yaka Taittirīya Upanis.ad [[73]1] Maitri (Maitrāyani-Brāhman.a) Upanis.ad [[74]7] Shvetāshvatara Upanis.ad [[75]7] Kāt.ha Upanis.ad [[76]7][[77]8] Shukla (White) Yajur Veda, Vājasaneyi Samhitā Īshā Samhitā Upanis.ad [[78]9] Shatapatha Brāhman.a [[79]10] Br.hadāran.yaka Upanis.ad [[80]1][[81]11] Atharva Veda, Pippalāda Branch [[82]12] Prashna Upanis.ad [[83]7] Atharva Veda, Shaunaka Branch Mun.d.aka Upanis.ad [[84]7] Atharva Veda [85]Mān.d.ūkya Upanis.ad [[86]7][[87]13][[88]14] [89]History of Philosophy [90]Home Page Copyright (c) 1997, 1998 [91]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Mān.d.ūkya Upanis.ad translation substantially that of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan & Charles A. Moore (1957) and Thomas E. Wood (1990) with modifications _________________________________________________________________ The Mān.d.ūkya Upanis.ad is one of the shortest Upanis.ads, only twelve verses long, and it is very late, conventionally associated with the Atharva Veda; but it is also one of the most important Upanis.ads, with commentaries by great Indian philosophers, like [92]Shan.kara. Different schools of philosophy interpret the text according to their own doctrine. Quoted definitions are dictionary citations from Arthur MacDonell, A Practical Sanskirt Dictionary [Oxford, 1929]. 1. Om: this syllable is all this. A further exposition of it is: what was, what is, and what will be -- all is only Om. And whatever else is beyond the three times, that also is only Om. The Mān.d.ūkya Upanis.ad says it is about the syllable "Om." This is a sacred syllable that can be used as a mantra for meditation or written on things for good luck. I have an Indian cookbook whose author says that her mother wrote Om on her tongue in butter when she was born. The different ways to write the word are discussed at "[93]Greek, Sanskrit, and Closely Related Languages." An abbreviated writing is given at the top of this page. Nevertheless, nothing is really said about Om here. It is used as a device to symbolize what the Mān.d.ūkya is really talking about, which is consciousness. 2. All this, indeed, is Brahman. This Self is Brahman. This Self itself has four quarters. "This Self is Brahman," Ayam ātmā brahma, is the mahāvakya, "great sentence," of the Atharva Veda. The four "great sentences," one from each [94]Veda, express the fundamental teaching of the Upanis.ads. The other three are: tat tvam asi, "thou art that," aham brahmāsmi, "I am Brahman," and sarvam khalu idam brahma, "all this indeed is Brahman." The latter looks like it is also included in this verse but, sorry folks, only one great sentence per Veda. The "four quarters" of the Self are going to be the four levels of consciousness. 3. The waking state, outwardly cognitive, having seven limbs, having nineteen mouths, enjoying the gross, the worldly (vaishvānara), is the first quarter. This verse is about the first state of the jīva, or the individual phenomenal self. The physical body accompanies the waking state. The "nineteen mouths" are the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell), five organs of action (speech, hands, feet, genitals, anus), five vital principles (prān.a, apāna, samāna, udāna, vyāna), and the "sensorium" (manas) reason (buddhi) ego (ahamkāra) and apperception (citta). "Gross" is sthūla, "thick, bulky, big, large, stout, massive; coarse, gross; dull, stupid; material, tangible (phil.)..." The "worldly," where here characterizes the waking state, means "belonging to all men; universal, dwelling or worshipped everywhere, generally known....consisting of all men...intellect conditioned by the aggregate (Vedānta phil.)..." 4. The dreaming state, inwardly cognitive, having seven limbs, having nineteen mouths, enjoying the exquisite, the brilliant (taijasa), is the second quarter. This verse is about the second state of the jīva, dreaming. The dreaming or "astral" body accompanies the dreaming state (calling it the "astral" body is borrowed from [95]Neoplatonism). Much has been made recently of "astral projection," where real journeys can supposedly be made in the separated astral body -- though the ultimate would be "teleportation," where an astral project ends with the physical body appearing where the astral body traveled.. 5. Where one, asleep, does not desire any desire whatever, sees no dream whatever, this is deep sleep. The sleeping state, which has become one, just pure cognition, made of bliss (ānanda), verily an enjoyer of bliss, whose mouth is thought, the cognitional (prājńa), is the third quarter. This verse is about the third state of the jīva, deep sleep. The causal body (kāran.asharīra) or karmic body (kārman.asharīra) accompanies the third state. For the Jains this simply consists of one's karma and is responsible for the existence and circumstances of life in the phenomenal world. "Pure" cognition which is neither inner nor outer seems to be cognition without an object altogether. This is what we call "unconsciousness," but there is no unconsciousness in ātman or Brahman. Instead, the "pure" cognition seems to be a subject without an object, Knower with a Known (see comment on verse #6). Since Brahman is defined as sac-cid-ānanda, "existence, consciousness, & bliss," "made of bliss" strongly suggests that deep sleep is closer to Brahman than the previous two states, a hierarchy rejected by those opposed to the Monistic interpretation of Vedānta (see comment on verse #6). The "cognitional," prājńa (an intensifying prefix on jńa, one of the [96]knowing roots in Sanskrit), is "intelligence associated with individuality (phil.)"; "Intensely Conscious Being or Conscious Intensity." Interpretations of the third state as a state of ignorance, of unconsiousness, will have some difficulty why it would be called prājńa. 6. This is the lord (īshvara) of all; this is the knower of all; this is the inner controller; this is the source of all, indeed the origin as well as the end of all beings. Does this verse go with verse #5, and so with deep sleep, or with verse #7, and so with the ātman? "Īshvara" is traditionally interpreted to mean God in a personal sense, which in #5 would be merely part of Māyā, "Illusion," (as in monistic Advaita [97]Vedānta) or in #7 would be identical with Brahman (as in theistic schools of Vedānta). Verse #6 sytlistically does seem to go with verse #7, but "īshvara" may not be used here in the loaded sense of meaning a personal God -- the difference may not be conceived as clearly in this Upanis.ad as it would be in later Vedānta, and we might regard the causal principle in the third state as no more than the causal body. 7. Not inwardly cognitive, not outwardly cognitive, not cognitive both ways, not pure cognition, neither cognitive nor non-cognitive, unseen, beyond speech, ungraspable, without any distinctive marks, unthinkable, undesignatable, the essence of the knowledge of the one Self, the cessation of the phenomenal world, quiescent, auspicious, nondual (advaita) -- [such] they think, is the fourth. He is the Self. He is to be known. This verse is about the fourth state, which leaves the jīva behind and now is the pure Self, the ātman. Note that the term "nondual" (advaita) is actually used in the text. "Auspicious" in Sanskirt is Shiva, which is the name of a [98]devotionalistic God in Hinduism, but important theistic interpretations of the Mān.d.ūkya tend to be Vaishnavite rather than Shaivite. 8. This is the Self with regard to the syllable "Om", with regard to the elements: the quarters are the elements and the elements are the quarters: the letter a, the letter u, the letter m. Om was originally pronounced aum; and this is remembered here, where Om is analyzed into three parts, with an intangible fourth part. 9. Vaishvānara (the worldly) is the waking state, the letter a, the first element, either from "āpti" (obtaining) or from "ādimattva" (being first). Verily, he obtains (āpnoti) all desires and becomes first (ādi) -- he who knows this. 10. Taijasa (the brilliant) is the dreaming state, the letter u, the second element, either from "utkars.a" (exaltation) or from "ubhayatva" (intermediateness). Verily, he exalts the stream of knowledge and becomes equal-minded; no one ignorant of Brahman is born in the family of him who knows this. 11. Prājńa (the cognitional) is the sleeping state, the letter m, the third element, either from "miti" (erecting) or from "apīti" (merging). Verily, he erects (minoti) this all and he becomes its merging -- he who knows this. "Miti" can also be translated "measuring" -- the translation prefered by those who see "īshvara" as a creative God to be identified with the fourth state. A third state which "erects" the world does not require that kind of function in the fourth. However, the theistic interpretations of the text are up against another problem. The theistic Dvaita Vedānta view is that the third state is a state of unconsciousness and ignorance; but this is contradicted by the very name of the third state, "Prājńa," which means "intelligent, wise, clever" (from jńa, "[99]know"). This is not ignorance. But what "erects" the world doesn't have to be God even in the third state. It can be [100]karma. 12. The fourth is what is without an element, what cannot be dealt with or spoken of, the cessation of the phenomenal world, auspicious, nondual. Thus Om is the very Self. He enters the Self with the Self -- he who knows this. _________________________________________________________________ [101]History of Philosophy [102]Home Page Copyright (c) 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004 [103]Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D. All [104]Rights Reserved _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 1 _________________________________________________________________ Early Upanis.ad, between 800 and 500 BC. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 2 _________________________________________________________________ The R.g Veda contains only the two Brāhman.as listed. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 3 _________________________________________________________________ The Sāma Veda contains eight Brāhman.as, including the Pańcavim.sha Brāhman.a, the S.ad.vim.sha Brāhman.a, and the Praud.ha Brāhman.a. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 4 _________________________________________________________________ Eight out of ten chapters are the upanis.ad. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 5 _________________________________________________________________ Contains the mahāvakya, "great sentence," for the Sāma Veda: tat tvam asi, "thou art that." Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 6 _________________________________________________________________ The only Brāhman.a of the Black Yajur Veda. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 7 _________________________________________________________________ Upanis.ads of the middle period, between 500 and 200 BC. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 8 _________________________________________________________________ Some attribute the Kāt.ha Upanis.ad to the Atharva Veda or the Sāma Veda. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 9 _________________________________________________________________ Unusally positioned with samhitās instead of with āran.yakas. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 10 _________________________________________________________________ The only Brāhman.a of the White Yajur Veda. Backspace to Return to text _________________________________________________________________ The Upanis.ads, Note 11 _________________________________________________________________ Oldest upanis.ad, appended to the Shatapatha Brāhman.a, con References 1. http://www.friesian.com/sangoku.htm#india 2. http://www.friesian.com/sangoku.htm#china 3. http://www.friesian.com/perigoku.htm 4. http://www.friesian.com/islam.htm 5. http://www.friesian.com/yinyang.htm#dialects 6. http://www.friesian.com/history.htm 7. http://www.friesian.com/philhist.htm 8. http://www.friesian.com/science.htm 9. http://www.friesian.com/#contents 10. http://www.friesian.com/ross/ 11. http://www.friesian.com/#ross 12. http://www.friesian.com/newspain.htm#inca 13. http://www.friesian.com/germania.htm#runes 14. http://www.friesian.com/notes/oldking.htm#sumer 15. http://www.friesian.com/armenia.htm#culmen 16. http://www.friesian.com/notes/midking.htm#babylon 17. http://www.friesian.com/egypt.htm 18. 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