In other Upanishads and throughout Indian literature allegory is a favorite device, but rarely is it more dynamic and successful than in the Katha. The opening narrative is an extended allegory which keeps spiritual depth and dramatic vividness in high suspense: the story never becomes unreal and its archetypal significance never becomes invisible; neither is mere vehicle or signifier for the other. Every detail has both immediate and transcendent reality (in some cases making translation unusually inadequate). Nachiketa, who has more personality than most Upanishadic figures, asks, as an
...more
