Śruti / The twelve Upaniṣads / Praśna · 4 of 12

4. Six questions

Praśna (प्रश्न)

The Praśna (प्रश्न) belongs to the Atharvaveda, to the Pippalāda (पिप्पलाद) śākhā. Pippalāda is also the teacher inside the book. Six students come, and each is allowed one question. No Sanskrit sentence of this upaniṣad is sat on this page. The questions are given in English, which is enough to see the climb.

The first asks whence creatures are born. The second asks which deities support a creature, how many illuminate it, and who among them is best. The third asks how breath arises and how it enters. The fourth asks who sleeps in a person, who stays awake, who sees dreams, whose the happiness is, and on what all of these are established. The fifth asks which syllable of oṃ (ओं) leads to which world. The sixth asks who the person of sixteen parts is.

The answers move through the pair rayi and prāṇa, matter and life, through the breaths as the powers that hold a body up, and through sleep as the place where only one fire remains awake. The syllable is divided so that meditation on part of it and meditation on the whole of it are not the same destination. The sixteen parts are then gathered back into the person, as rivers gather into the ocean, and the person is not one more part.

The breakthrough is the order of the six. A question about birth becomes a question about breath, and a question about breath becomes a question about the person who is not exhausted by the parts. A reader who wants a single unchecked sentence such as a bare equation of breath with Brahman will not find it sat here. The book earns that height by the sixth answer, not by a motto.

नेपालीमा

प्रश्न अथर्ववेदको पिप्पलाद शाखा हो। पिप्पलाद शिक्षक पनि हुन्। छ विद्यार्थी, छ प्रश्न। यो पृष्ठमा यस उपनिषद्को संस्कृत बसालिएको छैन।

प्राणी कहाँबाट जन्मिन्छन्? उत्तर रयि र प्राणको जोडी हो, पदार्थ र जीवन। कुन देवताले धान्छन्, कसले उज्यालो दिन्छ, को श्रेष्ठ? प्राण कसरी आउँछ? को सुत्छ, को जाग्छ, सपना कसले देख्छ? ओंको कुन अक्षरले कुन लोकमा पुर्‍याउँछ? सोह्र अंशको पुरुष को हो? प्रश्न प्राणतिर चढ्छ, अनि अंशभन्दा परको पुरुषतिर।

Where it sits

The Atharvan pillar is the Skambha. The two birds are the next sitting.