https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i4.101
From Ritual to Realization: Yajna as Inner Sacrifice in Katha Upanisad
ANURADHA
Research Scholar
Department of English, BPS Mahila Vishwavidyalaya
Khanpur Kalan (Sonepat), Haryana
anuradhamondal708@gmail.com
Abstract: In the Katha Upanisad, yajna undergoes a significant transformation from an external Vedic ritual into an inward spiritual and philosophical discipline. The text opens with Vajasrava performing the Vishvajit-yajna, yet his offering of old and useless cows exposes the limitations of ritual performed without genuine detachment. This paper examines how the Katha Upanisad reconfigures yajna as a bridge between Vedic sacrificial orthodoxy and knowledge-centred spirituality. It first considers Yama’s instruction on Naciketaagni, whose detailed altar, bricks, and ritual prescriptions present sacrifice as a cosmological practice oriented toward heavenly attainment. The study then traces the Upanisadic reinterpretation of sacrificial practice, in which external ritual gradually becomes an inward discipline of discernment, detachment, and spiritual insight. Situated within the broader Upanisadic tension between ritual action and knowledge, the analysis demonstrates how the Katha Upanisad simultaneously preserves and challenges the Vedic sacrificial worldview. It further argues that the structure of the Upanisadic dialogue itself reflects sacrificial logic: questions, boons, desires, and attachments are progressively “offered” and relinquished, culminating in the renunciation of finite desires and the pursuit of higher knowledge. Through a comparative reading of Vedic and Upanisadic conceptions of yajna, the paper examines recurring motifs of fire, offering, debt, renunciation, and cosmological order, showing how they shift from external ritual obligation toward an interiorized spiritual discipline. Yajna thus emerges not merely as a ritual act but as a hermeneutic principle through which the Katha Upanisad articulates the transition from desire-driven ritualism to knowledge-oriented liberation.
Keywords: Katha Upanisad, Indian Ritual, Sacrifice, Vedic, Meditative Insights, Yajna, Cosmological Vision
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