Mundaka Upanishad

Topic: The Vedic Age · NCERT: Beyond NCERT

Meaning

The Mundaka Upanishad is a short Upanishad in verse that belongs to the Atharva Veda. It divides knowledge into two kinds: apara vidya (lower knowledge, which includes even the Vedas) and para vidya (higher knowledge, which is knowing the imperishable brahman).

It matters for two reasons. India's national motto, Satyameva Jayate ("Truth alone triumphs"), comes from it. It also contains the well-known picture of two birds on one tree, which explains how the individual self relates to the higher Self.

Explanation

Background: from ritual to knowledge

• The Upanishads come at the end of the Vedic texts. They move the focus away from ritual (doing sacrifices correctly) and towards knowledge of the Self. Scholars place their composition roughly between 700 and 500 BCE [2].
• There are 108 Upanishads in the traditional list, grouped under the four Vedas [2]. The Mundaka is one of the few early principal Upanishads, and it is one of the main Upanishads attached to the Atharva Veda.
• The name. Mundaka is usually linked to munda, "shaven head".
• A shaven head was the mark of a renouncer (someone who gives up home and family to seek truth).

• So the text is probably meant for, or comes from, renouncers. That fits its teaching that knowledge matters more than sacrifice.

• The frame story. A rich householder, Shaunaka, goes to the sage Angiras and asks: "What is that which, once known, lets all this be known?" The rest of the text is Angiras's answer.

• The text also names a chain of teachers that runs back to the god Brahma. This is an early example of the guru–shishya parampara (the unbroken chain from teacher to pupil).

Main teaching 1: two kinds of knowledge

• Apara vidya (lower knowledge) includes:
• the four Vedas: Rig, Yajur, Sama, Atharva

• the six Vedangas (helping subjects for studying the Veda): phonetics, ritual rules, grammar, word-meaning, metre and astronomy.

• Para vidya (higher knowledge) is the knowledge by which one grasps the imperishable (akshara), that is, brahman.

• Why this is bold: the Upanishad places the Vedas themselves in the lower group. Learning texts by heart is not enough. One must know the reality behind them.

Main teaching 2: sacrifices are "leaky boats"

• The Mundaka says sacrificial rituals are like unsteady boats. They cannot carry a person across the ocean of rebirth.
• People who trust only rituals reach heaven for a while and then fall back into rebirth.
• Karma and rebirth were the central teachings of the forest-dwelling renouncers to whom the Upanishadic authors belonged [3].
• The way out is knowledge. The text says this knowledge should be sought from a guru (teacher) who knows brahman.

Main teaching 3: famous images and sayings

• Two birds on one tree.
• Two birds, close friends, sit on the same tree.
• One bird eats the sweet fruit. This is the individual self, which enjoys and suffers the results of its actions.
• The other bird eats nothing and only watches. This is the higher Self, the Lord.
• When the eating bird sees the watching bird and understands its glory, it is freed from sorrow.

• The same verse appears earlier in the Rig Veda, and again in the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.

• Satyameva Jayate ("Truth alone triumphs, not untruth"). The verse goes on to say that the path to the gods is laid out by truth.

• The bow and the arrow. Om is the bow, the self is the arrow, and brahman is the target. Aim with full attention and become one with it.
• Rivers and the ocean. Rivers lose their names and forms when they flow into the sea. In the same way, the wise person merges into the supreme being.
• The spider and its web. The world comes out of the imperishable the way a web comes out of a spider.
• All of these images teach the core Upanishadic equation, ātman = brahman: the Self inside you is the same as the one essence of everything [4].

Later life of the text

• Shankara wrote a commentary on the Mundaka. It is one of the main Upanishads used by the Vedanta schools, which disagree on how close ātman and brahman are: Advaita (non-dualism), qualified non-dualism and dualism [1][5].
• Satyameva Jayate was adopted as India's national motto. It is written in Devanagari script below the State Emblem, which is taken from Ashoka's Lion Capital at Sarnath.

Time, place and evidence

• Period: later Vedic age, inside the general Upanishadic period of c. 700–500 BCE [2]. Its exact date is uncertain.

• It is written in verse, while the oldest Upanishads (Brihadaranyaka, Chhandogya) are in prose. For this reason scholars generally place it somewhat later than those two.

• Vedic link: it is attached to the Atharva Veda.

• Key figures: Shaunaka (the householder who asks) and Angiras (the teacher who answers).
• Social setting:
• Upanishadic thought grew up as rural tribal society was giving way to towns and kingdoms. Groups of renouncers and forest-dwellers appeared at this time [3].

• The text's possible link to shaven-headed renouncers fits the samnyasa stage of life, in which a person gives up family and social standing [6][7].

• How we know: from the text itself, which was passed down by memory and later written down, and from later Vedanta commentaries such as Shankara's.

Don't confuse with

• Mandukya Upanishad. It also belongs to the Atharva Veda, and its name sounds similar. But the Mandukya is the shortest Upanishad and deals with Om and the states of consciousness. The Mundaka gives us Satyameva Jayate and the two kinds of knowledge.
• Chhandogya Upanishad. This is the source of tat tvam asi ("You are That"), taught by Uddalaka Aruni to Shvetaketu with a banyan seed. It does not give the national motto.
• Katha Upanishad. This contains Nachiketa's dialogue with Yama about the deathless ātman. The Mundaka's dialogue is between Shaunaka and Angiras.
• "Yato dharmas tato jayah" ("Where there is dharma, there is victory"). This is the Supreme Court's motto, taken from the Mahabharata. The national motto Satyameva Jayate comes from the Mundaka.

Prelims Hooks

• Satyameva Jayate comes from the Mundaka Upanishad, which belongs to the Atharva Veda. Common trap options: Rig Veda, Chhandogya, Mandukya.
• The national motto is written in Devanagari below the State Emblem, which is based on the Sarnath Lion Capital.
• Para vidya = knowledge of the imperishable brahman. Apara vidya = the four Vedas plus the six Vedangas.
• The dialogue pair is Shaunaka (pupil) and Angiras (teacher).
• The two birds on one tree image appears in the Rig Veda, the Mundaka and the Shvetashvatara Upanishad.
• The Mundaka compares sacrifices to "unsteady boats", which shows the Upanishadic move from ritual to knowledge [2].

Mains Points

• From ritual to knowledge. The Mundaka goes further than most texts. It ranks the Vedas themselves as "lower knowledge" and calls sacrifices leaky boats.
• This shows that Indian tradition could question and rank its own sacred texts.

• It is a strong example for answers on the later Vedic turn towards inner knowledge [2].

• Renunciation came from inside the Vedic tradition.

• The Mundaka's name (the shaven head) and its contempt for ritual connect it to renouncers [3][6][7].

• This supports the view that the shramana movements, including Buddhism and Jainism, grew out of a shared mid-first-millennium-BCE churn rather than being a sudden "revolt".

• A living heritage in the modern state.

• The Constitution-era Republic took its motto, Satyameva Jayate, from a Vedic-age Upanishad.
• Its emblem comes from Ashoka's Buddhist Lion Capital.
• Together, these show the Indian state drawing on more than one ancient tradition. This is a useful example for "continuity of Indian culture" questions.

Related concepts

• Upanishads
• Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
• Chandogya Upanishad
• Uddalaka Aruni
• Tat tvam asi
• Katha Upanishad
• Nachiketa
• Satyameva Jayate
• Atman
• Brahman

Read more

• Upanishadic thought: Vedanta, Yoga and the questioning spirit