A constructive survey of Upanishadic philosophy

The book - A constructive survey of Upanishadic Philosophy, though termed as an introduction to the thought of the Upanishads, is a monumental work of Maharashtra’s thinker-philosopher-religious teacher-saint, Ramachandra Dattatrya Ranade, more popularly known as Gurudev Ranade, who was an eminent scholar of the Upanishads who had specialised in Greek philosophy and had emphasized the centrality of the psychological approach as opposed to the theological approach for the proper understanding of the Ultimate Reality. This book was first published by Oriental Books Agency, Pune, in the year 1926 under the patronage of Sir Parashuramarao Bhausaheb, Raja of Jamkhandi and later by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Mumbai.

Ranade wrote this book on the basis of his various lectures on Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita that were delivered in 1915 in which year he having been inspired via a lecture of Sir Ramakrishna Gopal Bhandarkar had first conceived the idea of a presentation of Upanishadic Philosophy in terms of modern thought in which process he took into consideration of the place of the Upanishads in Indian Philosophy, examined the opinions of the Orientalists with a view to put into hand of the Orientalists and those interested a new method for treating the problems of Indian Philosophy, and into the hands of European Philosophers a new material for exercising their intellects on, to serve the main intended spiritual purpose. He has employed “the method of construction through a systematic exposition of all the problems that emerge from the discussion of Upanishadic thought in their manifold bearings”. Thus, he firstly deals with the background of Upanishadic Speculation, then with the development of Upanishadic Cosmogony, varieties of Psychological reflection and the roots of later philosophies before taking up the problem of the Ultimate Reality in the Upanishads, the ethics of the Upanishads and finally the intimation of Self-realisation; these are the seven chapters into which this work is broadly divided into. It is a wide-ranging study that through Jnanamarga leads to the inference that dualism or pluralism is only apparent. Ranade has provided an exhaustive bibliography having classified the secondary books on Upanishads under three basic heads as histories of literature, histories of religion and histories of philosophies. He has, as expected, mentioned about the creation of cosmos by two methods i.e. from life and from lifeless matter.