Kathopanishad ...

... in its entirety !!!

Kathopanishad is a timeless story. Some of us would have come across it as "Nachiketopakhyanam" . Being musical it has been seen on the stage ! The version in these pages draws heavily from the abundant literature and follows Swami Chinmayananda's 'Dialogue with Death and Swami Jgyananada's telugu "Marana anamtaram" . If you are reading only English part nothing is lost. If you know Sanskrit in devanagari or Telugu script you will enjoy reading those lines immensely -

 

When we started the page for " Athato Brahma Jignyasa" we were meandering along like we do on the shore of an ocean talking about Vedas or Mahavakyas etc !

We were tempted to take one upanishad in its entirety. Then we came across an on stage musical performance of 'Kathopanishad'.

Kathopanishad has many memorable lines. To say so is probably a statement of a beginner. When you read more and more you see every line is as memorable ! That is so with other upanishads as well.

Our first run consisted of presenting the Upanishad "as is" in six parts with each valli presented as one part. Kathopanishad1.1 , 1.2 , 1.3 , 2.1 , 2.2 , 2.3

We avoided slokas assuming that the devanagari script in it may scare away people ! But halfway through as the concepts presented become more and more incisive the need for using sloka text was felt ! The rendering of the Upanishad only in english text seemed grossly inadequate.

Then we started the second series " Kathopanishad in Simple words ". This time we actually threaded through the Sanskrit text presenting important or meaningful parts of the Sanskrit text with ever so slight elaboration from our end !!

Need less to say we were delighted with our own Kathopanishad Part 1. So we continued the trend with the five parts namely ,Part 1 Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4 , Part 5!! covering the entire Upanishad. Towards the end though one may see no difference between the two renderings !!.

There were some intermediate stories where in a line from the upanishad was taken and was elaborated as " Notes fr0m Kathopnishad". These lines were those that made us sit up and made us bring them to you!!. To a Sanskrit student they may look like annotations elaborated !!

Happy reading !!

om tat sat !

info@kasarabada.org