Throughout its history, the renowned Kaṭha Upaniṣad has often been described as being both incoherent and contradictory. The aim of this paper is to show to what purpose the text was created. To this end, it discusses the connection of the three paths to salvation depicted in the text, viz. the Agnicayana (a powerful Vedic fire-ritual), the Upaniṣadic method of self-knowledge, and yoga. The first part retraces how in the Upaniṣads, the Agnicayana was transformed into a non-material or mental ritual and linked with self-knowledge. The second part analyses how the various salvation goals (heaven, the World of Brahman, liberation from rebirth) could be related to each other. First, the authors redefined the Agnicayana’s salvation goal, heaven, to make it identical with liberation. Secondly, they introduced self-knowledge and yoga as alternative and equally powerful means to the same end. In practice, however, the new and world-negating methods were implied to be superior to the costly ritual from which they had drawn their authority. Thus, the authors of the Upaniṣad were more concerned with showing continuity between different religious approaches than upholding consistency of content.

中文翻译：

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仪式、自我和瑜伽：关于 Kaṭha Upaniṣad 中拯救的方式和目标

纵观其历史，著名的 Kaṭha Upaniṣad 经常被描述为既不连贯又自相矛盾。本文的目的是说明创建文本的目的。为此，它讨论了文本中描述的三种救赎之路的联系，即。火祭（一种强大的吠陀火仪式）、Upaniṣadic 自我认识方法和瑜伽。第一部分回顾了《奥义书》中火火祭如何转化为一种非物质或精神的仪式，并与自我认识相关联。第二部分分析了不同的救赎目标（天堂、婆罗门世界、重生解脱）如何相互关联。首先，作者重新定义火祭的救赎目标，天堂，使其与解脱相同。第二，他们引入了自我知识和瑜伽作为达到同一目的的替代和同样强大的手段。然而，在实践中，新的否定世界的方法被暗示要优于他们从中汲取权威的昂贵仪式。因此，Upaniṣad 的作者更关心显示不同宗教方法之间的连续性，而不是维护内容的一致性。