The Svetashvatara Upanisad establishes one of oldest and most important Upanisads, so much that the canon Muktika of the 108 traditional Upanisads situate it in the fourteenth place. Belonging to the Krsna Yajur Veda, with its 113 mantras divided into six chapters, or adhyayas, it is a relatively a short Upanisad where we can identify values so much from the sankhya yoga, as from the bhakti—yoga and advaita Vedanta interrelated very poetically, in a harmonic and integral way, establishing that although truth is one, the ways leading to it can be many.

The word "shveta" means "pure" and the term "ashva" comes to say "senses", in such a way that the word Shvetashvatara denotes to he who has purified his senses. It is interesting to annotate that the Shevtashvatara Upanisad is the only Upanisad whose name is derived from the sage who composed it, which we inferred from verse 21 of the 6th chapter:

tapaḥ prabhāvād deva—prasādāc ca

brahma ha śvetāśvataro tha vidvān

atyāśramibhyaḥ paramaṁ pavitraṁ

provāca samyag ṛṣi—saṅgha juṣṭam

"Having realized Brahman, through the power of austerity and by the grace of God, the great sage Shvetashvatara exposed wisely to he most elevated disciples, the sacred truth of the Supreme Brahman"

In his commentary of the Vedanta Sutra Shankaracharya he refers to this text as the "Mantra Upanisad" of the Shvetashvatara Vedic School.