eed undertake to indicate the outlines of a
philosophy of the Upanishads, only keeping in view that precision in
details is not to be aimed at. And here we finally see ourselves driven
back altogether on the texts themselves, and have to acknowledge that
the help we receive from commentators, to whatever school they may
belong, is very inconsiderable. Fortunately it cannot be asserted that
the texts on the whole oppose very serious difficulties to a right
understanding, however obscure the details often are. Concerning the
latter we occasionally depend entirely on the explanations vouchsafed by
the scholiasts, but as far as the general drift and spirit of the texts
are concerned, we are quite able to judge by ourselves, and are even
specially qualified to do so by having no particular system to advocate.

The point we will first touch upon is the same from which we started
when examining the doctrine of the Sutras, viz. the question whether the
Upanishads acknowledge a higher and lower knowledge in /S/a@nkara's
sense, i.e. a knowledge of a higher and a lower Brahman. Now this we
find not to be the case. Knowledge is in the Upanishads frequently
opposed to avidya, by which latter term we have to understand ignorance
as to Brahman, absence of philosophic knowledge; and, again, in several
places we find the knowledge of the sacrificial part of the Veda with
its supplementary disciplines contrasted as inferior with the knowledge
of the Self; to which latter distinction the Mu/nd/aka Up. (I, 4)
applies the terms apara and para vidya. But a formal recognition of the
essential difference of Brahman being viewed, on the one hand, as
possessing distinctive attributes, and, on the other hand, as devoid of
all such attributes is not to be met with anywhere. Brahman is indeed
sometimes described as sagu/n/a and sometimes as nirgu/n/a (to use later
terms); but it is nowhere said that thereon rests a distinction of two
different kinds of knowledge leading to altogether different results.
The knowledge of Brahman is one, under whatever aspects it is viewed;
hence the circumstance (already exemplified above) that in the same
vidyas it is spoken of as sagu/n/a as well as nirgu/n/a. When the mind
of the writer dwells on the fact that Brahman is that from which all
this world originates, and in which it rests, he naturally applies to it
distinctive attributes pointing at its relation to the world; Brahman,
then, is called the Self and life