Hinduism (Vedanta)

Distillation of Hinduism (Vedānta) — Decision Record

This README fixes which texts and which translations are distilled, and who reviewed the choices.

Tradition

• Slug: hinduism-vedanta
• Tradition / family: Hinduism is a vast family of traditions (Vedic ritualism, Vedānta, Sāṃkhya-Yoga, the Bhakti movements, Tantra, the many regional and sectarian lineages). No single canon or creed binds them. This entry deliberately does not attempt all of Hinduism. It focuses on Vedānta — the "end of the Veda" stream that takes the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gītā as its load-bearing texts and whose central inquiry is the relation of ātman (the self) to brahman (the absolute). Tantra, the Vedic ritual saṃhitās, the Purāṇas, the Dharmaśāstra law-codes, and the devotional vernacular canons would each be separate or supplementary entries.
• Primary frame in one sentence: the embodied self (ātman) is, in its deepest reality, one with the absolute (brahman); bondage is ignorance (avidyā) of this, and liberation (mokṣa) is realizing it — pursued through complementary paths (yogas) of knowledge, disciplined action, and devotion.

Canon selection (what is included, and why)

Text	Included?	Rationale
Bhagavad Gītā (18 chapters)	yes	The single most lived-central Hindu text — recited, memorized, commented on by every Vedānta school (Śaṅkara, Rāmānuja, Madhva), carried in the home. Bounded (18 chapters, ~700 verses). The synthesizing hinge of the tradition.
Principal Upanishads (Isa, Katha, Kena distilled here)	yes	The fountainhead of Vedānta. The Isa, Katha, and Kena are among the most cited and are clean in the public-domain edition used. The full set of "principal" Upanishads is larger (traditionally ~10–13); the three here are representative and load-bearing, and the entry is staged to extend to the rest.
Vedic saṃhitās (Ṛg/Sāma/Yajur/Atharva ritual hymns)	noted	The ritual core of śruti; referenced where the Gītā/Upanishads engage it (e.g., the critique of mere ritualism), distilled only if principle-bearing.
Itihāsa/Purāṇa, Dharmaśāstra, Tantra, vernacular bhakti	noted	Separate entries / out of this Vedānta scope.

• Two-text tradition: because Vedānta rests on two independent text-families (the dialogic Upanishads and the synthesizing Gītā), this entry runs an internal convergence layer (in the layers/ folder) across them — exactly the multi-text pass the single-text Buddhist distillation did not require.

Translation policy

• Bhagavad Gītā: Sir Edwin Arnold, The Song Celestial; or, Bhagavad-Gîtâ (from the Mahâbhârata) (London, 1885). Public domain. Access: Project Gutenberg #2388 (plain text, fetched via curl).
• Caveat: Arnold is a blank-verse poetic paraphrase, not a literal prose rendering. It is faithful in substance and unusually beautiful, but it does not number individual verses — Arnold's text is continuous within each of the 18 chapters. Citations therefore take the form Gītā <ch> (chapter), not Gītā <ch>:<v>. Where a quoted passage maps to a well-known verse, the standard verse is noted in prose. A literal verse-numbered cross-check against Telang's prose Gītā (SBE 8) is a future audit task (Telang SBE 8 is available on archive.org — see Access problems below).
• Upanishads: Swami Paramananda, The Upanishads (Boston: The Vedanta Centre, 1919). Public domain. Access: Project Gutenberg #3283. Contains Isa, Katha, and Kena with numbered verses (Roman-numeral mantram numbering within parts/sections).
• Caveat: Paramananda is a within-tradition (Advaita-leaning) translator-commentator, not a detached philologist. His verse translations are used as the quote source; his interlinear commentary is not treated as the Upanishad's own claim (it is the translator's gloss) and is cited only as such where relevant. This is a different posture from the suggested Müller (SBE 1 & 15) — see Access problems.
• Untranslatable terms to preserve (transliterated, never collapsed into a single English word): dharma, karma, ātman, brahman, mokṣa, yoga, bhakti, jñāna, guṇa (sattva/rajas/tamas), saṃsāra, avidyā, māyā, guru, OM/AUM.
• Quote accuracy: char-for-char verified against Gutenberg #2388 (Arnold) and #3283 (Paramananda). See quote-audit-hinduism-vedanta.md — PASS (111 anchors; 105 PASS, 3 DRIFT fixed, 3 SOURCE_ARTIFACT).

Reviewer / standpoint

• Within-tradition reviewer: none secured.
• Therefore: this output is "one structured reading, not authoritative" and the reviewer gap is flagged. Two further cautions specific to this tradition: (1) Hinduism's internal pluralism means any single "principle set" privileges one stream (here Vedānta) over others — a contestable choice owned explicitly; (2) the chosen translations (Arnold's poetry, Paramananda's Advaita commentary) each carry an interpretive slant that is documented rather than hidden.

Structure for this tradition

• Atomic unit ("books/"): one file per Gītā chapter (18) and one per Upanishad (Isa, Katha, Kena). Gītā cited as Gītā <ch>; Upanishads as Isa <ref>, Katha <part>.<ref>, Kena <part>.<ref>.
• Internal convergence layer: yes — the layers/ folder runs convergence across the Gītā and the Upanishads as two independent text-families (the multi-text pass).
• Core principles: the principles file synthesizes 16 core Vedānta principles.
• Sensitivity boundaries: varṇa/caste passages (Gītā 4, 18) are reported as the text states them, with an explicit note that this distillation does not endorse the social hierarchy and that modern Hindu thought contests it; the kṣatriya battlefield duty (Gītā 2–3) is handled with care as allegory-of-duty rather than literal endorsement of war.

Files

File	Status
Methodology	done
Index and traceability	done
Gītā per-chapter extractions (18 chapters)	done
Upanishad extractions (Isa, Katha, Kena)	done
Convergence layer (Gītā + Upanishads)	done
Core principles	done — 16 core principles
Structural analysis	done
Rooted compass	done

Access problems (recorded for future audit)

• Müller's SBE 1 & 15 Upanishads (the suggested ideal edition) were not cleanly accessible: sacred-texts.com is behind a Cloudflare JavaScript challenge (returns a challenge page to curl), and the Müller SBE Upanishad volumes were not located as clean Project Gutenberg plain-text files by ID probing. Paramananda (Gutenberg #3283) was used as the verifiable public-domain fallback for the Upanishads. Substituting Müller for the principal Upanishads is a future task.
• Telang's prose Gītā (SBE 8) is on archive.org (bhagavadgtwithsa00tela, plain text via …_djvu.txt) but the OCR is noisy (character substitutions, broken verse numbers) — unsuitable as a verbatim quote source, though usable as a verse-number cross-reference. Arnold (Gutenberg #2388) was therefore used for the Gītā quotes.