This Upanishad is embedded in the Atharva Veda. As the name implies, the Prasna Upanishad consists of six questions (Prasnas) and their answers. Several Indian scholars reviewed and published their commentaries (bhasya) on Prashna Upanishad, including Adi Shankaracarya and Madhvacarya. Both of them link the teachings in Prashna Upanishad to those in the Mundaka Upanishad, which is another Upanishad that is embedded inside the Atharva Veda. The scholar Halder includes Prasna Upanishad among the numerous ancient texts of India that are loaded with symbolism. The scholar Mlecko highlights Prashna Upanishad in his review of the revered role of teachers (Guru) in the Vedic era of Hinduism.
The three ethical precepts emphasized in Sloka 2 are Tapas (austerity, perseverance, fervor), Brahmacharya (chastity, self-discipline), and Sraddha (faith, purity, calmness of mind).
The second interesting part of the answer is the implicit admission by the teacher “if we know”, indicating he may not always know the answer, and thus bringing a sense of skepticism and humility into the process of learning.
The six earnest students who approached the sage Pippalada to learn about the supreme truth of the Brahman were: Sukesa (son of Bharadwaja); Satyakama (son of Shibi), Gargya (grandson of Surya), Kaushalya (son of Ashvala), Bhargava (from Vidarbha), and Kabandhi (descendant of Katya). Each student questions Pippalada from his own intellectual interest and level of understanding. The questions and answers evolve as the Upanishad progresses.
They begin with macrocosmic questions and then proceed to the microcosmic level, thus covering both the universal and particular.
Before Pippalada imparts his knowledge, he exhorts them to:
Sloka 1.2
Dwell with me a year more, with austerity (tapas), chastity (brahmacharya) and faith (shraddha). Then ask what questions you will. If we know, we will tell you all.
~ Robert Ernest Hume translation
At the end of the year, Kabandhi asked the first question regarding the source of creatures on earth.
First Prasna – asked by Kabandhi Whence are living beings created?
Sloka 1.4 of Prashna Upanishad states the sage’s answer, which is that the Lord of Creation (Prajapati) created matter and life for dual parentage of creatures (praja).
Having performed austerity (tapas) he created two principles: Rayi (matter, feminine) and Prana (spirit, masculine), thinking that “these together will couple to produce for me creatures in many ways”. The sun is the spirit, matter is the moon, asserts Prashna Upanishad. Sun ascends the highest, alone in splendor, warms us, and is the spirit of all creatures.
He is Aditya, he illuminates everything, states the first Prashna, and has two paths- the northern and the southern. Those who desire offspring follow the guidance of the sun’s southern path while those who seek the Self take the northern path, one of knowledge, bramacharya, tapas, and shraddha.
The first chapter of Prashna Upanishad includes a number of symbolic mythological assertions which today would be questions and answers in terms of modern science. For example, it states that the sun is ultimately the giver of rain and races in the sky in the “chariot with seven wheels and six spokes”. This symbolism is also found in more ancient Vedic literature, and the seven wheels are: half-years, seasons, months, half-months, days, nights and muhurtas (a Vedic-era division of time equaling 48 minutes), and one of these muhurtas was asserted to be 1/30th of a day. The six spoke symbolism refers to the Vedic practice of describing sun as having six seasons, in contrast to five seasons for earth.
The first section ends with assurances in verses 1.15 and 1.16 asserting that ethical living is necessary to realize the Atman–Brahman: Satya (truthfulness), Brahmacharya (chastity, celibacy if unmarried, fidelity if married), Tapas (austerity, meditation, perseverance), no Anrta (falsehood, lying, deception, cheating), no Jihma (moral crookedness, ethical obliqueness with an intent to not do the right thing), and no Maya (dissimulation, delusion, guile).
Second Prashna -asked by Bhargava What is a living being?
The second Prashna starts with three questions, “how many powers (devas, deities) uphold a living being? How many manifest their power thus? and who is the best?”
These questions are significant because they explicitly emphasize elemental powers (devas) to be residing in each living being and in nature, to support life. This is widely interpreted by scholars, given the context of the answer that follows, to reflect the extant belief that deities (devas, powers) express themselves in human beings and creatures through sensory organs and capabilities.
Sage Pippalada opens the answers to the three questions by listing five gross elements, five senses and five organs of action as expression of these powers (deities).
In Sloka 2.3 the Prashna Upanishad states that Prana (breath, spirit) is the most essential and powerful of all, because without it all other deities (elemental powers) cannot survive in a creature, they exist only when Prana is present. The deities manifest their power because of and in honor of Prana.
Third Prashna – asked by Kausalya What is the nature of man, and how is it so?
The third Prashna of the Upanishad asks six questions: (1) Whence is life born? (2) when born, how does it come into the body? (3) when it has entered the body, how does it abide? (4) how does it depart the body? (5) how does it relate to the external? (6) how does it relate with reference to the Self?
Sage Pippalada states that these questions are difficult, and given the student’s past curiosities about Brahman, he explains it as follows,
Sloka 3.3.
The breath is born from the self. It reaches up to it like the shadow to a person. It arrives in the body through the action of the mind.
~ Valerie Roebuck translation
Life enters the body, states the Prashna Upanishad, by the actions of the mind (in a previous existence). It is this subtle body (one’s mind) which causes the appearance of one’s present birth.
Sloka 3.4
Just as a monarch appoints his officials, saying “Take charge of these villages. Take charge of these Villages”, the breath sets the other breaths in their various different places.
~ Valerie Roebuck translation
The Upanishad then enumerates a theory of the human body that is found in older Vedic literature.
Sloka 3.6
The self* is in the heart: here are the hundred and one channels. Each of them has a hundred: and every one of those has seventy-two thousand branch-channels. In them moves the diffused breath (vyana).
~ Valerie Roebuck translation
* note: here the self is another name for the subtle body, explains Swami Gambhirananda in his translation.
It is this life-breath which gives the experience of a living body-mind-breath entity.
Slokas 3.3 – 3.9 address the source of a person’s life and the establishment and distribution of prana and its functions throughout the body.
Prana means breath to every being. Valerie Roebuck points out that within the body it is said to divide itself into five separate breaths, each also called prana. The five pranas all have names derived from the verb “an” (to breathe), with different prefixes denoting direction of movement.
In later Hindu physiology, the functions of the breath are clearly defined. The first is prana itself, literally breathing forth, as the process of breathing in and out; it is based in the chest, and has its seat in the heart. Apana, breathing away, is the lower breath, based in the intestines, thought to be responsible for the process of digestion and the elimination of waste matter from the body. Vyana, breathing apart, breathing in different directions, is the diffused breath, thought to pervade the whole body. Udana, breathing up, is the up breath, based in the throat. Samana, breathing together, is the central breath, based in the navel.
(Note: All the different pranas are connected with the later theory of the chakras. The Udana breath is connected with the throat chakra, Visuddha, which governs the mind. At the time of death, when the final Udana breath leaves the crown chakra (Sahasrara), whatever is the deepest, innermost desire governs the next progression of the subtle and causal body.)
Prasna 3 concludes with Sloka 3.10 and 3.11
Sloka 3.10
Whatever his state of mind (at the time of death), with that he enters the life-breath. The life-breath united with the upward breath, together with the self leads him to the kind of world he desires.
(self – the subtle body)
Sloka 3.11
When a man of wisdom thus knows the life-breath, his line of offspring is not broken. He becomes immortal*…
~ Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes translation
(*immortal – in the sense his/her knowledge lineage is carried on)
Fourth Prashna – asked by Gargya What establishes man?
The first three Prashnas of the Upanishad focus on cause and effect of the transient, empirical, manifested world, remarks the scholar, Eduard Roer. The fourth through sixth Prasna of the Upanishad focus on the nature of Self, that which is unchanging and independent of cause, and is self-evident.
The fourth Prashna lists five questions: (1) What sleeps in man? (2) What is awake therein (when he sleeps)? (3) Which Deva (god, deity, organ) in man is it that sees the dreams? (4) What is it in man that experiences happiness? (5) On what is all this founded?
The Prashna Upanishad begins the answer with a simile to state the background of extant theory, before offering its own explanation. Like rays of the sun that withdraw into the disc as it sets and that disperse ever more as it rises, all deities, devas (sensory organs) inside man withdraw and become one in the highest Deva named Manas (mind) when he sleeps.
Dream, states the Prashna Upanishad, is a form of enjoyment for the mind, where it reconfigures and experiences again, in new ways, what it has seen before, either recently or in past, either this life or another birth, whether true or untrue, whether heard or unheard, whether pleasant or unpleasant. In dream the mind beholds all.
There is a deep sleep state, where impressions end and the mind too sleeps without impressions, and this is the state when the mind and body come to rest. It is then when everything in a person retires into the Atman as Purusha. The Prashna Upanishad defines the Atman as Purusha (Cosmic Self, Consciousness, the Ground of all beings, the Universal principle).
Sloka 4.9
This intelligent self, namely the Person- who is really the one who sees, feels, hears, smells, tastes, thinks, understands, and acts – rests on the highest, that is the imperishable self and attains the highest, the imperishable.
~ Patrick Olivelle translation
The Prashna Upanishad answers that happiness and bliss in man is this established calm state of knowing and dwelling in the Atman, the spiritual state of truth, beauty and goodness. Here we may take Atman, Purusha, and Brahman to be synonyms.
Fifth Prashna – asked by Satyakama What is meditation, and why meditate?
The Prashna Upanishad opens the fifth section with the question: if a human being sincerely meditated on the symbol “Om” (Aum) until his death, what would he obtain by it? The section then asserts that one meditates to know “Self” (Atman–Brahman), then metaphorically presents the different levels of meditation, the levels of knowledge gained, and the consequent effect on the person of such meditation
The Upanishad asserts that there are three levels of knowledge, the lowest level being partial from meditating on the first letter of Aum, that is A. This leads upon death to a quick rebirth, but with ethical strengths and consequently greatness. The intermediate level of self-knowledge is akin to meditating on two letters of Aum, that is A and U. The intermediate level of self-knowledge leads the man to gain ethical behavior, and the world of Manas (moon, mind), he first enjoys the heavenly life and thereafter is reborn to the world of man. The person who meditates on all aspects of self, that is all three syllables A, U and M, reaches full self-knowledge, is liberated from all suffering, sin and fears, and reaches the world of Brahman. Such a man “beholds the Self as universal, pervading in all creatures, and eternal”.
Sixth Prashna- asked by Bharadwaja What is immortal in man?
The sixth Prashna in the Upanishad opens with a story of a prince visiting one of the students and asking, “where is the person with sixteen parts?” The student confesses he does not know, with the ethical precept, “answering with untruth, when one does not know the answer, is wrong”. The student asks sage Pippalada the same question. The sage answers, states the Upanishad, that he and every human being has sixteen parts.
This answer is significant because more ancient texts of the Vedic era, such as the Samhitas, refer to Prajapati, the Lord of Creation, as Sodasin (the one with sixteen parts). Man, implies the sixth Prashna of the Upanishad, is created in Prajapati’s image and innately lord of creation.
The section states that Self-knowledge, the knowledge of Brahman, is the highest knowledge, and is one’s own true nature.
Sloka 6.5
Now, take these rivers. They flow towards the ocean and, upon reaching it, merge into the ocean, and lose their name and visible appearance; one simply calls it the ocean. In just the same way, these sixteen parts of the person, who is the perceiver, proceed toward the person and, upon reaching him, merge into that person, losing their names and visible appearances; one simply calls it the person. He then becomes partless and immortal. On this there is this verse:
Sloka 6.6
In whom the parts are fixed as spokes on a hub – you should know that person, who is to be known, so that death may not disturb you.
Sloka 6.7 (conclusion of the instruction)
Pippalada then said to all of them; “That is everything I know about this highest Brahman, higher than which there is nothing.”
Sloka 6.8
They praised him, saying: “You are indeed our father for you have taken us to the farthest shore beyond ignorance.” Homage to the supreme seers! Homage to the supreme seers!
~ 6.5 – 6.8, Patrick Olivelle translation
Please note: Excerpts and references from Wikipedia and the following Vedanta society teachers:
Advaita Society lectures and literature Swami Sarvapriyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Swami Ranganathananda Swami Gambhirananda
Excerpts from the following Translations of the Upanishads
Vernon Katz and Thomas Egenes Eknath Easwaran Patrick Olivelle Valerie Roebuck Robert Ernest Hume
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