The Upanishads and the Axial Turn in India

c. 800 BCE — South Asia, Vedic India

Today: Northern India (the Ganges plain)

Along the Ganges, thinkers began asking questions that the older ritual religion of sacrifice could not answer: what is the self, what survives death, what lies behind the visible world. The Upanishads that recorded their arguments introduced ideas that would organize Indian thought ever after — karma, rebirth, and the identity of the individual soul with an underlying reality. They came from forest hermits and dissenting teachers, not the priesthood, and they shifted religion's center from performing a rite correctly to understanding one's own nature.

Worth knowing: The word 'Upanishad' is usually taken to mean 'sitting down near' — the texts are records of students seated around a teacher, and much of Indian philosophy begins as a transcript of people arguing under trees.

Pattern: Ideological movement — A belief system rises, spreads, institutionalizes, and then schisms — changing the rules people accept as legitimate.

Entry 29 of 240 in Precedent, a walk through the whole human story in order.