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‘The term occurs first at the end of the Vedic period’ : ‘The ascetics who have firmly determined their goal through a full knowledge of the Vedānta, have their being purified by the discipline of renunciation’ (Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.2.6, tr. Olivelle).—‘One of the earliest of these is the philosophy of Bhāskara’: Ingalls, Daniel H.H. 1967. ‘Bhāskara the Vedāntin,’ Philosophy East and West. A Journal of Oriental and Comparative Thought: 61–7 says it is replete with ‘vitriolic references’ against Śaṇkara.—‘His Vedanta is called A-dvaita Vedānta because its position is “non-dual”’: the term advaita was coined by Yājñavalkya: Witzel 2003 in #3.

‘The Upaniṣads are an open-ended class … That includes’ : Samnyāsa Upaniads: Olivelle 1992 and 1914. Thirty Minor Upaniṣads translated by K. Narayanasvami Aiyar. Madras: Vasanta Press, Adyar.

‘That emphasis is a characteristic of Buddhism as we shall see’ : pp. 309, 316, 330.

‘This feature earned the Upaniṣads the Greek or English label “philosophy”’ : I am not referring to the Greek word ‘philosophy’ which means ‘love of wisdom’, but to the Greek tradition of public debates that took place in Plato’s academy and is generally initiated by Socrates: #168.—‘The majority of these works … represent the perspective of the Brāhmaṇas’: Renou 1953a.

‘Though presented as such in our Vedic sources, they are not confined’ : Bronkhorst, Johannes. 1999. ‘Is there an Inner Conflict of Tradition?’ in Bronkhorst and Deshpande, p. 42.

‘She was called Vācaknavī, which means eloquent as well as loquacious’ : BĀU 3.5 and 3.8.—‘Finally, Yājñavalkya says’: we know that Yājñavalkya easily lost his temper and was especially rude to Sakalya (whose version we do not have) to whom he exploded: ‘What an imbecile you are to think that it (viz., the heart) could be founded anywhere other than ourselves’ (BĀU 3.9.25). A little later in the same Upaniṣad and about another topic, he exclaims: ‘If you will not tell me about such-and-such a spirit, your head will shatter apart.’ BĀU 3.9 26 continues: ‘Śakalya did not know him and his head did, indeed, shatter apart.’ It is a traditional theme; other links are discussed in Insler 1998b.

‘Sāmaśravas’, Song Fame, ‘was obviously a strapping young Sāmavedin’ : BĀU 3.1.2. There may be elements of regional rivalry here: Olivelle: xxxix, 308.—‘So you should simply say that you are Satyakāma (‘truth loving’) Jābāla’: CU 4.4–9; BĀU 4.1.6, 6.3.11.

‘The debate, recorded or imagined by the composer … when he was asked by Ārthabhāga’ : BĀU 3.2.

‘Take my hand, Ārthabhāga; let’s discuss this in private’ : at the beginning of Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates’ pupil of that name asks Socrates where he wants to sit. Socrates says (229a): ‘Turn this way; let us follow the Ilissus (a small stream) and sit down at a quiet spot’. Socrates asks Phaedrus to lead the way and Phaedrus points to a shady area with gentle breezes and ‘grass on which we may either sit or lie down’ (found and translated with the help of J.M. Hemelrijk; p. 160; # 161, 166).

‘Different schools have imagined or construed (Sanskrit parikalpitāni)’ : Apte, Mahādeva Cimaṇājī, (ed.), 1953. BĀU with Śaṇkara’s commentary and Ānandagiri’s gloss. Ānandāśrama Sanskrit Series: 412.

‘The only modern author who has addressed the question’ : Obeyesekhere 2002. Gananath Obeyesekhere is a brilliant anthropologist who combines impeccable scholarship with a wide range of theoretical perspectives. Author of a series of thought-provoking contributions, his chief work remains: 1984. The Cult of the Goddess Pattini. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

‘In the Sāmaveda, return to earth from the next world’ : Ikari 1989. Such an arrangement of stutis is depicted by Figure 18. For viṣṭuti: Staal, CV and Itti Ravi 1983, I: 627, 641, 652, 682, Illustrations 48–51 and #249.

‘The largest number of references to iṣṭāpūrta from a great variety of Vedic sources’ : Kane (note 58) Vol. II, Part II. 1941, 853–4. Caland 1897, 1967.

‘If this passage assimilates phonation and suspended breath’ : Minard, Armand 1956, II: 181, note 450a, last sentence. Minard refers to technical terms used in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (2.22.3–5) but he prefers esotericisms: #153. Later in the same volume, II: 317, note 864c, he attacks Renou’s declaration that there is nothing ‘voluntarily esoteric’ in India, ‘even in the Tantras’, lists a large number of statements by Renou to the contrary and happily settles on the phrase about ‘esoteric language, the supreme goal (fin suprème) of the Vedas.’

‘It is a god who is “Higher than Brahman” and known as “the Lord”’ : Śvetāśvatara 3.7, throughout Chapter 4 and occasionally elsewhere.—‘It also refers to “One Rudra who has not tolerated a second” “Śvetāśvatara 3.2.”’—‘These theistic tendencies came to the fore’: Hopkins 1966: 12 quotes Bhāgavata Purāṇa IV.29.47: ‘When Bhagavān, self-created, favours a person, that person lies aside thought that is thoroughly dependent on the world and on the Vedas.’ In theism, authority of the Vedas is not denied provided it does not conflict with bhakti; but bhakti is not Vedic.—‘It is hardly the same when the Bharadvājas … say to Agni’: ‘You are our dear guest!’: RV: 6.2.7: asi priyo no atithiḥ.

‘The Gītā’s juxtaposition of ritual and knowledge pays no attention’ : long Sanskrit compounds express the problem clearly provided the parts are separated and they are read (in these examples) from right to left: karma-phala-tyāga as ‘abandon (tyāga) of the fruit (phala) of activity (karma)’ and karma-jṇāna-samuccaya as ‘synthesis (sam-uc-caya) of knowledge (jṇāna) and activity (karma).

‘You will not find him who has created …’ : RV 10.82.7. ‘Unsteady boats are these ritual forms …’: Muṇḍaka 1.2.7–8; also Katha 2.5, Maitri 7.9 and Psalms 12.9.

‘The Muṇḍaka is not only radical, it uses a more vernacular form’ : Salomon 1981.

‘A simple way of formulating the basic identity … “I am Brahman”’ : BĀU 1.4.10.—He answers, ‘The sun, your Majesty, is the source of light’: BĀU 4.3.1–6.

‘But in 1986, Joel Brereton pointed out that this interpretation’ : Brereton 1986.

‘Vedic meditation is the product of a long process of interiorization. It started when a fire ritual, the Agnihotra, was interiorized by performing it though breathing’ : Bodewitz, H.W. 1973. Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa I, 1–65. Translation and Commentary with a Study: Agnihotra and Prāṇāgnihotra. Leiden: E. J. Brill. Bakker 1989 concentrates on breathing (prāṇa) as a natural philosophy of the wind in several Upaniads and related sources.—‘In the Soma ritual, there is a “mental (manasā) cup”’: these are cups for the Soma juice used in the Soma ritual but they are made of mind (manas). For dhī (‘vision’) leading to dhyāna (‘meditation’): #293 and Bronkhorst 1999 #163.

‘The Sāmavedic CU begins with speculations about the udgītha chant’ : Olivelle 1996 translates ‘High Chant … the central element of a Sāman’ (actually, the second: above Chapter 7, p. 110). ‘OM unites Rig and Sāman as man and woman unite’: p. 242 with note: ‘You are the bed (upastaraṇam asi)…’—‘Its foundation is “the most natural order of sound production: an opening of the mouth”’: Jakobson, Roman. 1962. ‘Why “Mama” and “Papa”?’ Selected Writings I. The Hague: Mouton, 538–45: p. 541. Roman Jakobson, one of the great scholars of the twentieth century, author of over 650 books and articles on linguistics, phonology, literary criticism, Slavic studies, poetics and semiotics, was not thinking of OM when he wrote: ‘the most natural order …’. Jakobson held a joint appointment at Harvard and was Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). When Harvard was about to appoint Nabokov as a Professor of Russian Literature, he put a stop to it by saying: ‘You don’t appoint an elephant as a Professor of Zoology.’—Are these matters relevant to the Vedas? See #281, #294–5.

‘With Rig stanzas this world; With Yajus formulas …’ : Praśna Upaniad 5.5.7.

‘In later sections, the CA and the BĀU draw from “the common stock of Upaniṣadic lore”’ : Olivelle 1996, Introduction, xxxvi and elsewhere.—‘There is an echo in the Vedanta or Brahma Sūtra which states … not prativedam, “one for each Veda”’: Vedānta Sūtra 3.3.55.

‘The second great contribution of the Upaniads … is insight in the nature of knowledge’ : Dumont, Louis. 1959. ‘Le renoncement dans les religions d’Inde’ (Renunciation in the Religions of India), Archives de Sociologie des Religions 7: 45–69: ‘what is striking (about that contribution) is its intellectualism.’(p. 58). Dumont has been badly translated, often misunderstood and it is not often that a sociologist comments with insight on the significance of the Upaniads. Hence I translate: ‘These ideas appeared before the caste system properly speaking had come into existence, they are a precocious product of that extraordinary post-Vedic and pre-Hindu development which ranges from the earliest Upaniads to the Bhagavad Gita, of that golden age of speculation when, discovery after discovery, all the important currents of Indian thought made their appearance.’ Dumont’s reflections were preceded by fieldwork in two areas, resulting in a small ethnography on the Tarask, a magical animal of the Tarascon of Southern France; and a large volume on a subcaste of South India: 1957. Une sous-caste de l’Inde du sud. Organisation sociale et religion des Pramalai Kallar. Dumont’s most famous work, 1966. Homo Hierarchicus. Essai sur le système des castes. Paris: Gallimard, deals with Hinduism, but refers in similar terms to the Vedas and Upaniads, (e.g., p. 236).

‘The Muṇḍaka distinguished explicitly between a lower and a higher knowledge’ : Muḍaka Up. 1.1.4.—‘The Advaita Vedanta thrives on it’: the two levels go by various names, e.g., vyavahāra, ‘ordinary communication,’ and paramārtha, ‘ultimate knowledge.’—‘The Platonic tradition is its European counterpart’: Murti 1963 explains the similarities between the Indian philosophy of language and the Platonic theory of ideas.—On Murti himself: Coward and Sivaraman 1977.

‘It tells us that the world as it appears is not real … Śaṇkara declared …’ : Bhattacharyya 2001 on the ineffable anirvacanīya.—‘According to Roger Penrose, Newton’s theory of gravity …’: Penrose, Roger. 1997, etc. The Large, the Small and the Human Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: p. 26.—‘Later Indic thought stressed the opposite: regress all the way down …’: p. 345 and #347.