Page:A history of Sanskrit literature (1900), Macdonell, Arthur Anthony.djvu/250

 its contents. The preceding and following section, which are connected with it, and are also found in the Chhāndogya, must have been added at the same time.

Not only is the longest Upanishad attached to the White Yajurveda, but also one of the very shortest, consisting of only eighteen stanzas. This is the Īçā, which is so called from its initial word. Though forming the last chapter of the Vājasaneyi Saṃhitā, it belongs to a rather late period. It is about contemporaneous with the latest parts of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka, is more developed in many points than the Kāṭhaka, but seems to be older than the Çvetāçvatara. Its leading motive is to contrast him who knows himself to be the same as the Ātman with him who does not possess true knowledge. It affords an excellent survey of the fundamental doctrines of the Vedānta philosophy.

A large and indefinite number of Upanishads is attributed to the Atharva-veda, but the most authoritative list recognises twenty-seven altogether. They are for the most part of very late origin, being post-Vedic, and, all but three, contemporaneous with the Purāṇas. One of them is actually a Muhammadan treatise entitled the Alla Upanishad! The older Upanishads which belong to the first three Vedas were, with a few exceptions like the Çvetāçvatara, the dogmatic text-books of actual Vedic schools, and received their names from those schools, being connected with and supplementary to the ritual Brāhmaṇas. The Upanishads of the Atharva-veda, on the other hand, are with few exceptions like the Māṇḍūkya and the Jābāla, no longer connected with Vedic schools, but derive their names from their subject-matter or some other circumstance. They appear for the most part to represent the views of theosophic, mystic, ascetic,