od an epitome of Upanishad doctrine in the Brahmasvtras, the foundation of the later Vedanta. It is not possible to ascertain from the sutras themselves which of the Upanishads were recognized by this writer, however (Chakravarti, pp. 6-27).
The history of the Upanishad tradition is shrouded in mystery for much of that history and can only be inferred conjecturally from the existing collections of Upanishads. There are two classes of such collections, either containing the Upanishads in their entirety, or limiting themselves to the Upanishads of the Artharvaveda. There are different numbers of Upanishads in the different collections, and the different collections seem to come from different time periods as well. Some of these collections are of more recent origin, while others hark back to an earlier and much more ancient tradition (Chakravarti, pp. 33-34).
The Vedas, of which the Upanishads forms the last portion, comes from a word meaning "knowledge." Any knowledge may be veda, but the teachings in the Vedic literature are understood to be the original knowledge from beyond sense perception. The Vedas are considered to be a system of higher understanding which can explain how to best utilize one's present situation. The main purpose of the Vedic literature is to establish knowledge of self-realization and freedom from suffering, which means becoming liberated from material entanglement by using the human form of life for reaching the spiritual platform of existence (Nanda-nandana, 1986, p. 18).
The meaning of the word "upanishad" has been shown to have a number of different implications attached to it. It can be derived from the root, sad, meaning "to sit," with upa to mean "near" and ni to mean "down." The term would then mean to sit down before th
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