tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post320155116942476218..comments2024-01-26T21:38:25.924-08:00Comments on Duane's PoeTree: Narayanan Nair writesDuanesPoeTreehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3407624264627208128.post-30439251494723428422019-01-05T14:25:44.707-08:002019-01-05T14:25:44.707-08:00The "Katha Upanishad" is the most widely...The "Katha Upanishad" is the most widely known Upanishad and even formed the basis of works by Edwin Arnold, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Williams Butler Yeats. It begins with the story of Nachiketa's questioning of Yama, the god of death. His father Vajashravasa (literally, "famous for donations?) sacrificed cows that had "eaten their last grass," and Nachiketa chided him for his hypocrisy and asked him whom he was to be given. His father answered angrily that he would give him to Death. What followed was a discourse on some of the basics of Hindu metaphysics. Each section of the work is called a "valli," a vine-like medicinal climbing plant that grows independently yet is attached to a main tree; and the terminology is open to a variety of interpretations, denotations, and connotations. Katha was a sage who founded a branch of the Krishna Yajurveda shool, which embedded the "Katha Upanishad" in the last 8 sections of its texts. Female followers of the Katha branch are "kathas," and "katha" means distress,while a homonym means story, legend, conversation, speech, or tale. Nachiketa's name is a pun on the words for "non-decay, or what does not decay," "that which cannot be vanquished," and "I do not know, or he does not know." A verse ("The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over, thus the wise say the path to Salvation is hard") was the origin of W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel "The Razor's Edge." DuanesPoeTreehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17053093400086634552noreply@blogger.com