This fine monograph opens with an introduction and two chapters laying out methodology and general themes, followed by sixteen chapters treating individual Upaniṣads. Signe Cohen's central thesis is that the Upaniṣads cannot adequately be interpreted without a reliable relative chronology, which she proceeds to develop using philological principles. Chapters devoted to individual Upaniṣads accordingly follow this order (with one inexplicable exception): Bṛhadāraṇyaka, Chāndogya, Aitareya, Kauṣītaki, Taittirīya, Īśā, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Kaṭha, Śvetāśvatara, Kena, Maitrī, Māṇḍūkya, Mahānārāyaṇa, Kaivalya, and Bāṣkalamantra.
Cohen's conclusion, which summarizes her chronology in detail, offers few surprises but some clarifications. The brāhmaṇa-style prose Upaniṣads retain their usual place as the oldest, with Bṛhadāraṇyaka (Mādhyaṃdina recension) and Chāndogya at the front; the standard middle group remains intact, but there are adjustments to the last, motley cluster, including the proto-theistic Śvetāśvatara and Mahānārāyaṇa. At the end of the list, on either side of the Mahānārāyaṇa, are placed two texts—Kaivalya and Bāṣkalamantra—more commonly listed among the “minor” (i.e., later) Upaniṣads. Refinements include distinguishing between older and newer portions of several texts, placing the Kāṇva recension of the Bṛhadāraṇyaka after the Kauṣītaki, and accepting J. A. B. van Buitenen's judgment that the portion of the Maitrī corresponding to the Maitrāyaṇī transmitted in South India is the old, original part (see The Maitrāyaṇīya Upaniṣad [The Hague: Mouton, 1962], 14–15).
This chronology is based on a combination of metrical analysis and grammatical and doctrinal criteria. Cohen presents her methodology in chapter 1, carefully noting its limitations. She argues that the standard model of textual criticism, devised for written texts, must be adapted in order to be applied successfully to written texts derived from an oral tradition. The Upaniṣads (and the earlier Veda) she describes as a third case: “mnemonic literature” (p. 20). They are not oral in the manner of a bardic epic, recreated with each performance; rather, though transmitted orally, they are fixed in form, frequently composite, having been augmented and reshaped by multiple transmitters.
For Cohen, mnemonic is to oral as śruti (Veda “heard” recited verbatim) is to smṛti (“recollections” of Veda in learned tradition, pp. 20–21). This analogy may work, but only if smṛti is limited to the epics (and perhaps some Purāṇas). Most scholastic literature (Śāstra) was composed in written form.
Cohen emphasizes that she has not fallen prey to the “eighteenth century European obsession with origins” that led textual criticism to focus on the recovery of pristine Urtexts. Rather, her “focus is on studying the changes the texts have undergone over time” (pp. 22–23). She seeks to identify later additions, “but not to peel off and discard” them. She understands her task to be one of recovering the history of these texts, which are often uncritically reified in terms of a timeless essence. It is laudable to reaffirm the value of such work given that it has fallen into disrepute in some scholarly circles.
Although Cohen's readers will include the philologically literate, she writes for a wider audience, concisely and clearly providing background information that a nonspecialist would need to follow her philological analysis. Chapter 2 presents an overview of the aims and modes of expression of the Upaniṣads as a genre. Then, for each Upaniṣad, Cohen signals the main themes, cross-referencing other Vedic texts. This will be accessible even to college students and other neophytes.
Cohen's philological approach is welcome, given that most books published on the Upaniṣads hew close to the line of harmonizing interpretation of one or another medieval commentator or modern guru, thereby suppressing much of the individuality of the texts. Instead, Cohen emphasizes the connection between each Upaniṣad and the “branch” (śākhā) of the Veda to which it belongs. For instance, she sees the origins of the karma doctrine in the Yajurveda's focus on ritual acts (karmāṇi), and she notes Indra's prominence in Ṛgvedic Upanṣads, as well as the focus on the mystical syllable om in Ṛgvedic and Atharvavedic Upaniṣads.
She invokes two of the favorite themes of the cultural studies movement—intertextuality and social power—but does so without acknowledging any of the literature of that field. This is not necessarily a great loss, but it is odd, given that she idiosyncratically adopts some of the lingo. For example, she uses the terms “hypertext” and “metatext” (p. 35) without taking account of their specialized usage in literary theory (see, e.g., Gérard Genette, Palimpsests [Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997]).
Is it still necessary to castigate Max Müller for his ridicule of the Brāhmaṇas as “theological twaddle”? (misquoted as “prattle,” p. 8, citing the wrong source). Surely this specter can now be dismissed, given the many sophisticated treatments of the subject since then, from Hermann Oldenberg's Die Weltanschauung der Brāhmana-Texte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1919) to Charles Malamoud's Cuire le monde (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1989).
Similarly, Cohen raises the question of the mystical “etymologies” of the Brāhmaṇas and Upaniṣads, defending them against nineteenth-century scoffers (pp. 52–54). Yet her cursory discussion ignores several recent discussions that note how the tradition distinguishes between exegetical word associations and linguistic etymologies (e.g., Max Deeg, Die altindische Etymologie nach dem Verständnis Yāska's under seiner Vorgänger [Dettelbach: Röll, 1995]).
As a fresh assessment of the whole genre, Cohen's book might have paid attention to works from the same milieu that have tended to be passed over simply because the medieval commentators and anthologists did so: the “Rahasya” section of the Śatapatha-Brāhmaṇa (immediately preceding the Bṛhadāranyaka), the Aitareya- and Śāṅkhāyana-Āraṇyakas (parts of which have also been transmitted under the name “Upaniṣad”), and the lengthy Jaiminīya-Upaniṣad-Brāhmaṇa (see Masato Fujii, “The Jaiminīya-Upaniṣad-Brāhmaṇa: A Study of the Earliest Upaniṣad,” PhD diss., University of Helsinki, 2004). In this earliest phase of the genre, the labels āraṇyaka, upaniṣad, and rahasya overlapped considerably. Cohen's heuristic acceptance the conventional delimitation of the genre is defensible on the basis of tradition, but more attention to these quasi or proto-Upaniṣads would have been welcome.
These desiderata aside, Cohen's volume is wonderfully straightforward and judicious in its philological conclusions, and it is highly recommended as a guide to the Upaniṣads themselves.
