Audio Glossary: U

Ummah
Community, specifically the world-wide Islamic community.
Upanishads
(Sitting next to a teacher, also secret teaching) Composed roughly in the period 800 to 600 BCE, the Upanishads are part of the vast corpus of Vedic literature known as sruti, 'what is heard'. As they come at the end of the Vedic literature they are also known as Vedanta, 'end of the Vedas'. They are a collection of speculative treatises that probe the sacred interior cosmos of the universe and humankind.