ABSTRACT
Very few of the existing Upanisads can be attributed to a single individual author. Individual authorship is a comparatively late phenomenon in the long and rich history of Sanskrit literature. While some of the ancient hymns of the Rgveda are ascribed to individual named seers (rsi), many are anonymous. But the later Hindu tradition has largely disregarded the claims to authorship of individual Rgvedic hymns and declared the Vedas apauruseya (of non-human origin), eternal and authorless. The other Vedas, the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanisads, are likewise for the most part either anonymous or ascribed to figures from the legendary past. One of the few exceptions to this is the Svetasvatara Upanisad, ascribed in the text itself to a man by the name of Svetasvatara: By the power of his austerities and by the grace of God, the wise Svetasvatara first came to know brahman and then proclaimed it.
