Sarasvati-rahasya Upanishad
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| Sarasvati-rahasya Upanishad | |
|---|---|
| Devanagari | सरस्वती रहस्य |
| IAST | Sarasvatī Rahasya |
| Title means | Mystery of goddess Sarasvati |
| Date | 12th- to 16th-century CE[1][2] |
| Type | Shakta[3] |
| Linked Veda | Krishna Yajurveda[4] |
| Chapters | 2 |
| Verses | 47[5] |
| Philosophy | Shaktism, Vedanta[6][7] |
The Sarasvati-rahasya Upanishad (Sanskrit: सरस्वती रहस्य उपनिषत्, IAST: Sarasvatī-rahasya Upaniṣad), meaning “the Secret Knowledge of the Wisdom Goddess”,[8] is a late medieval era Sanskrit text and one of the minor Upanishads of Hinduism.[9] The text is classified as one of the eight Shakta Upanishads and embedded in the Krishna Yajurveda.[4][10]
The Upanishad is notable for glorifying the feminine as the Shakti (energy, power) and as the metaphysical Brahman principle, and extensively uses a combination of Bhakti and Vedanta terminology.[7][11] Annette Wilke and Oliver Moebus state that the underlying philosophical premise of this text corresponds to Advaita Vedanta.[12] The text is important to the Goddess traditions of Hinduism.[13][14]
The author and the century in which Sarasvati-rahsya Upanishad was composed is unknown. It is a late Upanishad, likely from the late medieval period.[15] The text was likely composed, in the same period as other Shakta Upanishads, between the 12th- and 15th-century CE.[1] The text, along with other Shakta Upanishads, has been dated to 16th-century, according to C Mackenzie Brown – a professor of Religion and writer of books on Hindu goddesses.[2] Even though this text is of relatively late origin, Sarasvati as goddess is traceable to Vedic literature from the 2nd millennium BCE.[16][17][18]
The text has been influential in the Shaktism (Goddess) tradition of Hinduism. Many of its verses are found incorporated in later Shakti texts such as the Vakyasudha, a treatise on non-dualist Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy.[19] This link had been a basis for dating this text to be from the 1st-millennium, by Maurice Winternitz and Louis Renou, because they credited the 8th-century Adi Shankara to have composed Balabodhani, which some scholars such as Windischmann considered to have been also titled as Vakyasudha and Drigdrishya Viveka.[19] However, 20th-century scholarship doubts that Shankara was the actual author of several secondary works attributed to him, and thus it is unclear if Vakyasudha or this Upanishadic text existed before 8th-century CE.[20][21]
Manuscripts of this text are also found titled as Sarasvati Upanisad, Saraswati Rahasyopnisad, Sarasvatyupanishad and Sarasvatirahasyopanisad.[22][23] In the Telugu language anthology of 108 Upanishads of the Muktika canon, narrated by Rama to Hanuman, it is listed at number 106.[24]
