Editing Indian religions (section)

==== Late Vedic period – Brahmanas and Upanishads – Vedanta (850–500 BCE) ====
{{Main|Brahmanas|Upanishads|Vedanta}}

The late Vedic period (9th to 6th centuries BCE) marks the beginning of the Upanisadic or [[Vedantic]] period.<ref group=web name="Indiana10">[http://www.indiana.edu/~isp/cd_rom/mod_10/mod_10_x.htm Indiana University "India Studies Program"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090801152905/http://www.indiana.edu/~isp/cd_rom/mod_10/mod_10_x.htm |date=1 August 2009 }} ''Passage to India, Module 10''.</ref>{{refn|group=note|"Upanishads came to be composed already in the ninth and eighth century B.C.E. and continued to be composed well into the first centuries of the Common Era. The [[Brahmana]]s and [[Aranyaka]]s are somewhat older, reaching back to the eleventh and even twelfth century BCE."<ref group=web name="Indiana10" />}}{{sfn|Deussen|1966|p={{page needed|date=March 2021}}}}{{refn|group=note|Deussen: "these treatises are not the work of a single genius, but the total philosophical product of an entire epoch which extends [from] approximately 1000 or 800 BC, to c. 500 BCE, but which is prolonged in its offshoots far beyond this last limit of time."{{sfn|Deussen |1966|p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=B0QzAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA51 51]}}}} This period heralded the beginning of much of what became classical Hinduism, with the composition of the [[Upanishads]],<ref>{{cite book |last=Neusner|first=Jacob|year=2009|title=World Religions in America: An Introduction |isbn=978-0-664-23320-4 |publisher=Westminster John Knox Press |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=34vGv_HDGG8C&pg=PA183 |page=183}}</ref> later the [[Sanskrit epics]], still later followed by the [[Puranas]].

Upanishads form the speculative-philosophical basis of classical Hinduism and are known as [[Vedanta]] (conclusion of the [[Vedas]]).<ref>{{citation|last1=Melton|first1=J. Gordon|last2=Baumann|first2=Martin |title=Religions of the World, Second Edition: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Beliefs and Practices |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v2yiyLLOj88C&pg=PA1324|year=2010|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-59884-204-3|page=1324}}</ref> The older Upanishads launched attacks of increasing intensity on the ritual. Anyone who worships a divinity other than the Self is called a domestic animal of the gods in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. The Mundaka launches the most scathing attack on the ritual by comparing those who value sacrifice with an unsafe boat that is endlessly overtaken by old age and death.<ref>{{citation |title=History of Philosophy Eastern and Western|first=T.M.P|last=Mahadevan|editor=Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan |year=1956|publisher=George Allen & Unwin Ltd|page=57}}</ref>

Scholars believe that [[Parsva]], the 23rd Jain ''tirthankara'' lived during this period in the 9th century BCE.{{sfn|von Glasenapp|1999|p=16}}