this Upanishad originally formed part of a Brâhmana. This may have been called either by a general name, the Brâhmana of the Khandogas, the followers of the Sâma-veda, or, on account of the prominent place occupied in it by the Upanishad, the Upanishad-râhmana[1]. In that case it would be one of the eight Brâhmana of the Sâma-veda, enumerated by Kumârila Bhatta and others[2], and called simply Upanishad, scil. Brâhmana.
The text of the Upanishad with the commentary of Sankara and the gloss of Ânandagiri has been published in the Bibliotheca Indica. The edition can only claim the character of a manuscript, and of a manuscript not always very correctly read.
A translation of the Upanishad was published, likewise in the Bibliotheca Indica, by Rajendralal Mitra.
It is one of the Upanishads that was translated into Persian under the auspices of Dârâ Shukoh[3], and from
Persian into French by Anquetil Duperron, in his Oupnekhat, i.e. Secretum Tegendum. Portions of it were translated into English by Colebrooke in his Miscellaneous Essays, into Latin and German by F. W. Windischmann, in his Sankara, seu de theologumenis Vedanticorum (Bonn, 1833), and in a work published by his father, K. J. H. Windischmann, Die Philosophie im Fortgang der Weltgeschichte (Bonn, 1827-34). Professor A. Weber has treated of this Upanishad in his Indische Studien I, 254; likewise M. P. Regnaud in his Matériaux pour servir à l'histoire de la philosophie de l'lnde (Paris, 1876) and Mr. Gough in several articles on "the Philosophy of the Upanishads," in the Calcutta Review, No. CXXXI.
I have consulted my predecessors whenever there was a serious difficulty to solve in the translation of these ancient texts. These difficulties are very numerous, as those know
- ↑ The same name seems, however, to be given to the adhyâya of the Talavakâra-brâhmana, which contains the Kena-upanishad.
- ↑ M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 348. Most valuable information on the literature of the Sâma-veda may be found in Dr. Burnell's editions of the smaller Brâhmanas of that Veda.
- ↑ M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 335.
