The Upanishads

By: Roshen Dalal

Narrated by: Suchitra Gupta

This book is a thoroughly researched primer on the 108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts. These Upanishads contain the most crystallized bits of wisdom gleaned from Hinduism. Roshen Dalal explains the concepts at the core of each Upanishad clearly and lucidly. Moreover, her vast, diverse philosophical and theological readings add priceless scholarly context to this comprehensive and fascinating volume.

amazing content

the book is almost a perfect one for one's first encounter to the vedic ideology

A truly comprehensive review

This is a truly comprehensive review both of the Upanishads, but also of the whole gamut of Indian philosophy. A worthwhile text for anybody wanting a detailed view of this philosophic tradition.

Accuracy

Very knowledgeable explanation of the depth and meaning of the Upanishsads She covered the roots and meaning from all different perspectives

Unintelligible.

This audio book delves in deep waters with terminology, names and phrases in Hindu. In fact 2 out of every 6 words are not English. The narrator has a terrible command and pronounciation of English, eg "beginnings" is pronounced "bé...ginins" or "with" it becomes "vit" at a such a degree, you can't understand If she's actually speaking English or something else. Probably all this terminology must be important, because she keeps repeating the same sounds, but you cannot distinguish individual syllables. She tends to accelerate when she hits Hindu words and all you hear is this "shupashupasham" and "dernighas". I guess one "shupashupasham" is different than the other "shupashupasham" and it's really important to remember, but you don't know why. The final straw is when I heard "dernighas" for the 100th time and I had no idea what I was hearing about 2 hours into the "shupashupasham".

It's pretty frustrating, because I really want to know about the subject. When you are about to use terminology of a foreign language, you make sure you find a person that can pronounce the words to you in such a way that you can understand it. It does not have to be exactly as the natives say it. That's why we call Paris "Pàris" instead of "Pawuí", or we say "Homer" instead of "Omiros".


Congratulations you just won my first 1 star rating!

Obsessive categorization

Book ends up losing all its meaning as the author shows its obsession with names and categories . I had to literally stop it as it killed the underlying message by inserting her own comments after each lines. Historical knowledge in terms of names and date is complete and book should be used for reference but not to get into deeper aspect of Upanishads.