Some thoughts on iishaavaasyopanishhad
Subrahmanian, Sundararaman V [IT]
sundararaman.v.subrahmanian at CITIGROUP.COM
Fri Aug 2 14:10:56 CDT 2002
> What is near or close at all times and all places is Atman. Based on this
the term "upanishhad"
> can be interpreted in the following ways.
"upa" means something near. The word upaniShad more than refering to "being
close at all times", it refers to "that which is CLOSEST - one's own self".
"sad" as you said has the 3 meanings you mentioned:
shithiliikaraNam - to cause to decay (karaNam is an agent)
gamanam - to know (also, to go)
visaraNam - to destroy completely
[It is interesting to note that in Sanskrit, "gam" - to go is also used in
the sense of understanding - "na avagachchaami" means 'I do not understand'.
Even in English we say: "I did not get it" for something we don't
understand. Also here "sad" is the dhaatu - root verb. After a series of
operations that convert a dhaatu to a noun, it still remains as "sad".
upaniShad is a noun. "sad", due to rules of consonant conjunction becomes
"Shad" depending upon what letter precedes it.]
You have missed out "ni" in the word upaniShad. "ni" refers to
nischayaatmakam - well ascertained.
Putting all the above together we get,
upaniShad = "well ascertained (ni) knowledge (sad - gam) about one's Self
(upa) that causes to remove ignorance (sad - shitiliikaroti) and destroys
ignorance completely (sad - visarati) [without leaving any trace/possibility
So upaniShad really means brahmajnaana. Just a book about geography is also
titled "Geography", so also the text that deals with "upaniShad" is also
called upaniShad. Both the subject matter and the text's name are
PS: I hope it was not superfluous to what you have already said.
More information about the Advaita-l mailing list