The thirteen

प्रश्नोपनिषद्

Praśna Upanishad

The Six Questions and the Person of Sixteen Parts

After a year of holiness and faith and askesis, six seekers ask the Rishi what they will, and he, who conceals nothing, carries them across from the Breath to the Person.

The Prashna is the Upanishad of questions. It belongs to the Atharvaveda; its name means simply "the questions", and it is built as a school is built: six seekers, one teacher, a year of preparation, and then six questions put one after another and answered to the end. Nothing in it is mere argument. Every answer carries the reader from a lower plane of being to a higher: from the Life that streams through the world as Breath, to the mind that dreams and sleeps, to the Syllable that gathers all states, and at last to the Person in whom the sixteen parts of creation rest as the spokes of a wheel in its nave.

Sri Aurobindo translated it about 1900, from the typescript that bears the title "The Upanishads rendered into simple and rhythmic English"; it was never revised or published by him, and appeared only after his passing. He left no commentary upon it. But he did not leave it unused: he cites its passage on the syllable OM in his study of Indian literature, sets its verses on dream and on the seeing Self at the head of chapters of The Life Divine, and quotes its praise of the Life-Energy in The Synthesis of Yoga. Those are the lights by which we read.

Sri Aurobindo’s writings on it · 1

The text · 67 passages

Translation by Sri Aurobindo.

1. Praśna Upanishad 1.1
2. Praśna Upanishad 1.2
3. Praśna Upanishad 1.3
4. Praśna Upanishad 1.4
5. Praśna Upanishad 1.5
6. Praśna Upanishad 1.6
7. Praśna Upanishad 1.7
8. Praśna Upanishad 1.8
9. Praśna Upanishad 1.9
10. Praśna Upanishad 1.10
11. Praśna Upanishad 1.11
12. Praśna Upanishad 1.12
13. Praśna Upanishad 1.13
14. Praśna Upanishad 1.14
15. Praśna Upanishad 1.15
16. Praśna Upanishad 1.16
17. Praśna Upanishad 2.1
18. Praśna Upanishad 2.2
19. Praśna Upanishad 2.3
20. Praśna Upanishad 2.4
21. Praśna Upanishad 2.5
22. Praśna Upanishad 2.6
23. Praśna Upanishad 2.7
24. Praśna Upanishad 2.8
25. Praśna Upanishad 2.9
26. Praśna Upanishad 2.10
27. Praśna Upanishad 2.11
28. Praśna Upanishad 2.12
29. Praśna Upanishad 2.13
30. Praśna Upanishad 3.1
31. Praśna Upanishad 3.2
32. Praśna Upanishad 3.3
33. Praśna Upanishad 3.4
34. Praśna Upanishad 3.5
35. Praśna Upanishad 3.6
36. Praśna Upanishad 3.7
37. Praśna Upanishad 3.8
38. Praśna Upanishad 3.9
39. Praśna Upanishad 3.10
40. Praśna Upanishad 3.11
41. Praśna Upanishad 3.12
42. Praśna Upanishad 4.1
43. Praśna Upanishad 4.2
44. Praśna Upanishad 4.3
45. Praśna Upanishad 4.4
46. Praśna Upanishad 4.5
47. Praśna Upanishad 4.6
48. Praśna Upanishad 4.7
49. Praśna Upanishad 4.8
50. Praśna Upanishad 4.9
51. Praśna Upanishad 4.10
52. Praśna Upanishad 4.11
53. Praśna Upanishad 5.1
54. Praśna Upanishad 5.2
55. Praśna Upanishad 5.3
56. Praśna Upanishad 5.4
57. Praśna Upanishad 5.5
58. Praśna Upanishad 5.6
59. Praśna Upanishad 5.7
60. Praśna Upanishad 6.1
61. Praśna Upanishad 6.2
62. Praśna Upanishad 6.3
63. Praśna Upanishad 6.4
64. Praśna Upanishad 6.5
65. Praśna Upanishad 6.6
66. Praśna Upanishad 6.7
67. Praśna Upanishad 6.8