At a glance
- Found in
- Mystical Systems
- Related
- Advaita Vedanta, Atman, Brahman, Bhagavad Gita
The Upanishads are the Sanskrit texts that form the last layer of the Vedas, dialogues and teachings on the self, atman, and the ground of all that is, brahman.
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What are the Upanishads?
The Upanishads stand at the end of the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, and the schools built on them are for that reason called Vedanta, the end of the Vedas. Where the older Vedic layers are hymns and directions for ritual, the Upanishads ask what the ritual is for: what a person really is, what the world rests on, and what becomes of a person at death.
They answer in dialogues, a father with his son, a king with a sage, a boy with Death. Their best known teaching is that the self, atman, and brahman, the ground of everything, are one, summed up in the phrase tat tvam asi, usually rendered as you are that. They are not a single system, and the schools of Vedanta read them in different ways.
On the tree of the hidden arts: The mystics.
What sets Upanishads apart
The Upanishads are scripture that argues. Pupils press teachers, teachers set tests, and one sage is asked the same question until he warns his questioner to stop. They count as revealed, which gives them an authority in Hindu thought that no later book has, and yet they hold no creed. The three great schools of Vedanta, which contradict one another, each rest on the same passages and differ on how to read them.
- Place in the Vedas: the final layer, after the hymns and the ritual texts
- Oldest: the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya, before about 500 BCE
- Principal ones: ten to thirteen, the ones the classical commentators explained
- Traditional count: 108, in the list given by the Muktika Upanishad
- Famous phrase: tat tvam asi, you are that, from the Chandogya
- Into Europe: Persian version 1657; Latin by Anquetil-Duperron, 1801 to 1802
Often mistaken for something else: The Vedic hymns praise the gods and serve the ritual; the Upanishads, the last part of the same Vedas, ask what the self and the world are.
The story behind Upanishads
The oldest, the Brihadaranyaka and the Chandogya, are in prose and are usually dated before about 500 BCE; others followed over several centuries. Ten to thirteen are counted as principal, and Shankara wrote commentaries on ten of them. A later list names 108. In 1657 the Mughal prince Dara Shikoh had fifty translated into Persian, and Anquetil-Duperron's Latin version of that work, printed in 1801 and 1802, brought them to European readers such as Schopenhauer.
Why Upanishads matters
They are the source that every school of Vedanta argues from, so a claim about atman, brahman or non-duality can be checked against their wording.
How to read Upanishads
Students read a short one slowly beside a commentary; teachers of Vedanta expound them line by line as the first step of the classical method.
Upanishads in practice: an example
A reader might begin with the Katha, in which the boy Nachiketa waits three nights at the house of Death and asks what lies beyond dying.
Where readings of Upanishads go wrong
They speak with several voices, and a single quoted line seldom settles what the whole collection teaches.
Sources and editorial method
This entry summarizes the tradition in the Almanac's own words; where no source is listed, it is an editorial summary rather than a primary text, and symbolic readings are named as the tradition's, not as fact.
- Source
- The Great Almanac Dictionary
- Category
- Mystical Systems
- Aliases
- what are the upanishads, upanishad meaning, principal upanishads, upanishads teachings, how many upanishads
- Last updated
- 2026-09-26
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Common questions
What are the Upanishads?
They are the concluding texts of the Vedas, composed in Sanskrit over several centuries. They turn from ritual to enquiry and teach about the self, the ground of the world and freedom from the round of birth and death.
How many Upanishads are there?
More than two hundred texts carry the name. A traditional list counts 108, and ten to thirteen are treated as the principal ones, the oldest and the ones on which the great commentators wrote.
What does the word Upanishad mean?
It is usually explained as sitting down near, that is, at the feet of a teacher. Indian tradition also glosses it as a hidden connection or a teaching that removes ignorance.
