The Upanishads
In Our Time
BBC
4.6 • 9.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 November 2012
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the ancient sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, the Upanishads were passed down through an oral tradition in priestly castes and were not written down until the 6th century AD. They constitute the final part of the Vedas, the collection of texts which form the foundation of the Indian Hindu world, and were originally spoken during sacrificial rituals.
Yet the Upanishads go beyond incantations performed during sacrifices, and ask profound questions about human existence and man's place in the cosmos. The concepts of Brahman (the universal cosmic power) and Atman (the deeper soul of the individual) are central to the understanding of the Upanishads. Each individual treatise has its own character. Some are poetic; some are scientific; others are dialogues between kings and sages or metaphysical reflections. More than one hundred Upanishads were produced, thirteen of which are regarded as the canonical scriptures of Hinduism.
With:
Jessica Frazier Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Kent and a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies at the University of Oxford
Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University
Simon Brodbeck Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Cardiff
Producer: Natalia Fernandez.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:43.2 | UK slash radio for. I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:47.0 | Hello what do we hear for? What's the essence of human existence and |
| 0:52.3 | what's the force that drives the universe? |
| 0:55.0 | Such questions lie at the heart of the ancient Indian philosophical texts, the Upanishads. |
| 1:00.1 | The earliest |
| 1:05.0 | to panichads derived from about 1500 BC, |
| 1:06.0 | but weren't written down until about the 5th or 6th century AD. |
| 1:10.0 | They were secret, intended only for the elite |
| 1:12.0 | and those initiated in spiritual wisdom, passed |
| 1:14.4 | down in priestly caste from father to son from generation to generation. |
| 1:19.2 | The Oder Panished means to sit down close together. |
| 1:21.9 | This concept is key to understanding the teaching methods of the |
| 1:24.7 | text which often take the form of a question and answer session between pupil and teacher. |
| 1:28.8 | These mystical scriptures question the nature of being and became hugely important in the Hindu religion. |
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