Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/242

 and belongs to the period of fully developed Vedānta doctrine, distinguishes from the qualified Brahma, which is an object of worship, the unqualified Brahma, which is unknowable:—


 * To it no eye can penetrate,
 * Nor speech nor thought can ever reach:
 * It rests unknown; we cannot see
 * How any one may teach it us.

The various Upanishads of the Black Yajurveda all bear the stamp of lateness. The Maitrāyaṇa is a prose work of considerable extent, in which occasional stanzas are interspersed. It consists of seven chapters, the seventh and the concluding eight sections of the sixth forming a supplement. The fact that it retains the orthographical and euphonic peculiarities of the Maitrāyaṇa school, gives this Upanishad an archaic appearance. But its many quotations from other Upanishads, the occurrence of several late words, the developed Sānkhya doctrine presupposed by it, distinct references to anti-Vedic heretical schools, all combine to render the late character of this work undoubted. It is, in fact, a summing up of the old Upanishad doctrines with an admixture of ideas derived from the Sānkhya system and from Buddhism. The main body of the treatise expounds the nature of the Ātman, communicated to King Bṛihadratha of the race of Ikshvāku (probably identical with the king of that name mentioned in the Rāmāyaṇa), who declaims at some length on the misery and transitoriness of earthly existence. Though pessimism is not unknown to the old Upanishads, it is much more pronounced here, doubtless in consequence of Sānkhya and Buddhistic influence.

The subject is treated in the form of three questions.