Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/244

 famous Sāvitrī stanza. As a means of attaining Brahma we find a recommendation of Yoga or the ascetic practices leading to a state of mental concentration and bordering on trance. The information we here receive of these practices is still undeveloped compared with the later system. In addition to the three conditions of Brahma, waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, mention is made of a fourth (turīya) and highest stage. The Upanishad concludes with the declaration that the Ātman entered the world of duality because it wished to taste both truth and illusion.

Older than the Maitrāyaṇa, which borrows from them, are two other Upanishads of the Black Yajurveda, the Kāṭhaka and the Çvetāçvatara. The former contains some 120 and the latter some 110 stanzas.

The Kāṭhaka deals with the legend of Nachiketas, which is told in the Kāṭhaka portion of the Taittirīya Brāhmaṇa, and a knowledge of which it presupposes. This is indicated by the fact that it begins with the same words as the Brāhmaṇa story. The treatise appears to have consisted originally of the first only of its two chapters. For the second, with its more developed notions about Yoga and its much more pronounced view as to the unreality of phenomena, looks like a later addition. The first contains an introductory narrative, an account of the Ātman, of its embodiment and final return by means of Yoga. The second chapter, though less well arranged, on the whole corresponds in matter with the first. Its fourth section, while discussing the nature of the Ātman, identifies both soul (purusha) and matter (prakṛiti) with it. The fifth section deals with the manifestation of the Ātman in the world, and especially in man. The way in which it at