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Māndūkya Upanishad is one of the shortest Upanishads that form the revealed, so called metaphysical, parts of the Vedas. It belongs to the Atharva Veda. It devotes itself entirely to the explanation of the spiritual - mystic - syllable Aum. It is in prose, consisting of twelve sentences.

About the Upanishad==

The name literally means the Scripture of Toad. However, the commentators including karikas and sankara did not touch upon to explain the name.

It is said Varuna, the Lord of Cosmic waters has taken the form of a toad to preach this Upanishad. This story makes it more interesting since there is a hymn called Toad Hymn (manduka sukta) in the Rgveda, which is ostensibly an ode to the arrival of monsoons. But the cosmological significance of the hymn is yet to be unravelled. The connection between the hymn and the upanishad, in terms of cosmological significance, may be an interesting point to search for.

Secondly, manduka is also a type of yoga-"particular kind of abstract meditation in which an ascetic sits motionless like a frog" (Monier-Williams), seemingly hard to practice. Mandukasana is one of the 32 asanas(postures) described in yoga. Possibly the Upanishad, which is connected with meaning of Aum, which is essentially an Object of Meditation, has been named after Manduka to indicate the yoga aspect of the Aum.

On the other hand, some attribute this Upanishad to Sage MAnduka. However,reference to this sage, just as sage Svetasvatara, to who another celebrated Upanishad is attributed, does not appear any where else in the scriptures or other literature. (verify)

Also, there is a vedic seer MAndakeya who contributed his name to a Rgvedic sakha. While his father's name is said to be Indra pramati(a disciple of Paila), MAndakeya literally means son or disciple of MAnduka. MAnduka , the name of the upanishdic seer seems to be a metronymic(son of Manduki). Vamsa brahmana given in the last chapter of Brhdaranyaka Upanishad says that MAndakeyas are the disciples of son of Manduki.

There seems to be more than one vedic seer with the name MAndakeya. For eg., we have Hrsva(short)mandakeya as a vedic seer who has proposed semi vowels.(ref. phonology:critical concepts by Charles W. Kreidler) Thus, it is possible to have MAnduka as a Gotra.Or, it is possible that all the disciples/sons of MAnduka are collectively known as MAndakeyas. The MAndakeyas are also identified with BhArgavas, who are vArunis.

Thus, the allegory seems to be that Varuna himself has taken birth as Sage MAnduka in his own lineage to preach this Upanishad.

For the very reason that it explains the esoteric meaning of the fundamental syllable Aum of vedic spiritual tradition, the Upanishad has been extolled greatly. The Muktikopanishad, which talks about all other Upanishads, says that if a person cannot afford to study all the hundred and eight Upanishads, it will be enough to read just the Māndūkya Upanishad. According to Dr.S. Radhakrishnan, in this Upanishad we find the fundamental approach to the attainment of reality by the road of introversion and ascent from the sensible and changing, cleansing the mind of thoughts, feelings and wishes related to the material, relative world, and reaching the soul which, being spiritual and having an absolute nature as the Lord, is the only one that can perceive Him, Who is also absolute and spiritual, and cannot be perceived with material relative senses.

Contents 1 Commentary by Gaudapada 2 Explanation of Aum as in Mandukya Upanishad 2.1 Three mātrās 2.2 Waking state and Dream state 2.3 Deep sleep state 2.4 Beyond the three states 3 Gaudapada’s thesis 4 Sources 5 External links

The first extant commentary on this Upanishad was written by Gaudapada, before the time of Adi Shankara. This commentary, called the Māndūkya-kārikā, is the earliest known systematic exposition of the advaita point of view of Vedanta. Its importance can be gauged from the fact that when Shankara wrote his commentary on Māndūkya Upanishad, as he did for ten other Upanishads, he merged the Kārikā of Gaudapada with the Upanishad and wrote a commentary on the Kārikā also.

There are three mātrās in the word aum : ‘a’ as the ‘u’ in ‘but’; ‘u’ as the ‘u’ in ‘put’; and the ‘m’ in ‘balm’. The term mātrā is used for the upper limb of Nagari characters and a syllabic instant in prosody. Esoterically, the ‘a’ stands for the first stage of wakefulness, where we experience in our gross body the totality of external experiences through our mind and sense organs. The ‘u’ stands for the dream state of sleep in which mental experiences are available, though erratically, by the mind which is the only thing which is then awake, without the help of the external sense organs or the presence of the rationalising intellect.

The two kinds of experience, namely those of the waking state and those of the dream state, contradict each other, in the sense that a man may experience hunger in a dream though he has eaten in the waking state a few minutes earlier.

In the state of deep sleep, represented by the sound ‘m’, there is no consciousness of any experience; even the mind has gone to sleep. But still there is an awareness after the deep sleep is over that one has been sleeping. Māndūkya Upanishad says that in the state of deep sleep, the Atman which is always present, has been the witness to the sleep of the body and it is this source from which issues the memory of sleep.

It is the Atman which is also present beyond the three states of experience. The fourth state (turīya avasthā) (see turiya) corresponds to the silence that ensues after one has steadily pronounced aum. It is the state of no matra (amātrā). In that silence Consciousness alone is present; there is nothing else. Therefore there is nothing to be cognized or be conscious of. This is the substratum of even the other three states of experience. During the silence that follows the recitation of aum, one is advised to merge in that Consciousness, in fact, be that Consciousness. That Consciousness is the Atman. That is Brahman. To underscore the point that the ‘fourth state’ is not another ‘state’ of consciousness, but consciousness itself, turīya avasthā is simply called turīya (the fourth).

In his kārikā on the Upanishad, Gaudapada deals with all the outstanding problems of philosophy, such as perception, idealism, causality, truth, and reality. In turiya, he says the mind is not simply withdrawn from the objects but becomes one with Brahman, who is free from fear and who is all-round illumination. In both deep sleep and transcendental consciousness there is no consciousness of objects. But this objective consciousness is present in an unmanifested 'seed' form in deep sleep while it is completely transcended in the turīya. Specifically, if one identifies the amātrā state of silence with the turīya and meditates on it without intermission, one realizes one's self and 'there is no return for him to the sphere of empirical life', says Gaudapada.

• Dr. S. Radhakrishnan. The Principal Upanishads. George Allen and Unwin. 1969
• Eight Upanishads. Vol.2. With the commentary of Sankaracharya, Tr. By Swami Gambhirananda. Advaita Ashrama, Calcutta, 1990.
• Swami Nikhilananda: Mandukyopanishad with Gaudapada’s Karika and Sankara’s Commentary. Shri Ramakrishna Ashrama, Mysore. Sixth edn. 1974
• V. Krishnamurthy. Essentials of Hinduism. Narosa Publishing House, New Delhi. 1989
• Swami Rama. Enlightenment Without God [commentary on Mandukya Upanishad]. Himalayan International Institute of Yoga Science and Philosophy, 1982.
• Sri Aurobindo, The Upanishads [1]. Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry. 1972.

• GRETIL etext
• Mandukya Upanishad, Full etext from wikisource (Sanskrit).
• Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada Karika

• [2], Musical version of Mandukya Upanishad Composed by Pandit Jasraj.