There are a great number of Upanishads, composed at various dates and not all equally revered. They represent different orders of ideas and some of the later are distinctly sectarian. Collections of 45, 52 and 60 are mentioned, and the Muktikâ Upanishad gives a list of 108. This is the number currently accepted in India at the present day. But Schrader[172] describes many Upanishads existing in MS. in addition to this list and points out that though they may be modern there is no ground for calling them spurious. According to Indian ideas there is no _a priori_ objection to the appearance now or in the future of new Upanishads[173]. All revelation is eternal and self-existent but it can manifest itself at its own good time. Many of the more modern Upanishads appear to be the compositions of single authors and may be called tracts or poems in the ordinary European sense. But the older ones, unless they are very short, are clearly not the attempts of an individual to express his creed but collections of such philosophical sayings and narratives as a particular school thought fit to include in its version of the scriptures. There was so to speak a body of philosophic folk-lore portions of which each school selected and elaborated as it thought best. Thus an apologue proving that the breath is the essential vital constituent of a human being is found in five ancient Upanishads[174]. The Chândogya and Bṛihad-Âraṇyaka both contain an almost identical narrative of how the priest Âruṇi was puzzled and instructed by a king and a similar story is found at the beginning of the Kausîhtaki[175]. The two Upanishads last mentioned also contain two dialogues in which king Ajâtaśatru explains the fate of the soul after death and which differ in little except that one is rather fuller than the other[176]. So too several well-known stanzas and also quotations from the Veda used with special applications are found in more than one Upanishad[177].