12-BOOK REVIEW: AN ESSAY ON UPANISHADS    Part 1 
(A CRITICAL STUDY): V.R.NARLA (1989) [87P] PUBLISHED
BY NARLA INSTITUTE OF NEW THOUGHT
BOOK REVIEW BY KAVNEET SINGH
Narla Venkateswara Rao (1908-1989) a critical thinker and humanist, by far a giant among men of Andhra Pradesh who has over 30 books to his credit on various subjects of human interest, including religion and history. The editor of the Andhra Prabha and the
Andhra Jyothi dailies, he wielded the pen with deftness of an Olympic fencer. Narla has written a scathing critique of the Upanishads and its deadly influence over society.
 Chapter 1 – Grass Farmers
_W.B.Yeats, despite his limited acquaintance with the Upanishads, could discern that the_ _authors were “grass farmers”. It is an apt description of the Upanishdic sages,_ _rishis……they liked good food and drink and lived full lives. When their income as_ _officiating priests at bloody sacrifices fell steeply owing to growing hostility towards_ _those sacrifices, they started to move out of the villages…… [Page 238]_
The collaboration of the king and the priest brought about the Upanishads, but with the priest being the final maker, ending up as its master, its lord and its very god as Narla puts it aptly. Herding cattle and agriculture was everything 2,000 years ago and dairy
farming loomed large among the primitive Hindus too! Encroachment of the forests by fire or clear-cutting was the only way to expand village economies.
Chapter 2 – Students as Herdsmen
_Max Muller did see, along with the much that is bad, some good…..so much that is not_ _only unmeaning, artificial, and silly but even hideous and repellent…We want to know ,_ _not their wisdom only, but their folly also…..[Page 240]_
Revered my today’s Hindus, Max Mueller the guru of modern translations of most of the Hindu scriptures, did not mince words when he clearly enunciated that there is abundance of very contradictory and abhorrent information in the holy texts.
Chapter 3 – Priestly Philosophers
_Slyvan Levi, one of the greatest of French Indologists. He deposes thus: It is difficult to_ _imagine anything more brutal and more material than the theology of the Brahmanas._
_Notions which usage afterwards gradually reined, and clothed with the garb of morality,_ _take us aback by their savage realism... Morality finds no place in this system..[Page 243]_
A very slick (business) system contrived to really make money, create blind faith and finally shackle the commoners in perpetuity to be robbed of pretty much everything including their self respect.
_E.W.Hopkins, states; As to the fee, the rules are precise and their propounders are_ _unblushing. The priest performs the sacrifice for the fee alone, and it must consist of_ _valuable garments, kine, horses, or gold……[Page 243]_
Nothing has changed today, except being paid with valuables such as gold, diamonds but mostly unaccounted, untaxed hard cash to fill the priest’s ravenous pot bellies.