* Several other MSS. of this translation have since come to light; one at Oxford, Codices Wilsoniani, 399 and 400. Anquetil Duperron gives the following title of the Persian translation: ‘ Hanc interpretationem rév Oupnekhathai quo- rumvis quatuor librorum Beid, quod, designatum cum secreto magno (per secretum magnum) est, et integram cognitionem luminis luminum, hic Fakir sine tristitia (Sultan) Mohammed Dara Schakoh ipse, cum significatione recta, cum sinceritate, in tempore sex mensium (postremo die, secundo tov Schonbeh, vigesimo) sexto mensis ro’ Ramazzan, anno 1067/rov Hedjri (Christi, 1657) in urbe Delhi, in mansione nakhe noudeh, cum absolutione ad finem fecit pervenire.’ The MS. was copied by Atma Ram in the year 1767 A.D. Anquetil Duperron adds: ‘Absolutum est hoc Apographum versionis Latinze 7@y quinquaginta Oupnekhatha, ad verbum, e Persico idiomate, Samskreticis vocabulis inter- mixto, fact, die g Octobris, 1796, 18 Brumaire, anni 4, Reipublic. Gall. Parisiis.’
° M.M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, second edition, p. 325.
INTRODUCTION. lix
pid philosopher, such as Schopenhauer, to discover a thread through such a labyrinth. Schopenhauer, however, not only found and followed such a thread, but he had the courage to proclaim to an incredulous age the vast treasures of thought which were lying buried beneath that fearful jargon.
As Anquetil Duperron’s volumes have become scarce, I shall here give a short specimen of his translation, which corresponds to the first sentences of my translation of the Khandogya-upanishad (p. 1):—‘Oum hoc verbum (esse) adkit ut sciveris, sic ro maschghouli fac (de eo medi- tare), quod ipsum hoc verbum aodkit est; propter illud quod hoc (verbum) oum, in Sam Beid, cum voce alta, cum harmonia pronunciatum fiat.
‘Adkiteh porro cremor (optimum, selectissimum)
est: quemadmodum ex (prez) omni quieto (non moto),
et moto, pulvis (terra) cremor (optimum) est; et e (pre)
terra aqua cremor est; et ex aqua, comedendum (victus)
cremor est ; (et) e comedendo, comedens cremor est; et e
comedente, loquela (id quod d‘citur) cremor est; et e
loquela, aiet rod Beid, et ex aiet, rd siam, id est, cum har-
monia (pronunciatum); et e Sam, 76 adkit, cremor est ;
id est, oum, voce alta, cum harmonia pronunciare, aokit,
cremor cremorum (optimum optimorum) est. Major, ex
(pra) adkit, cremor alter non est.’
Schopenhauer not only read this translation carefully, but he makes no secret of it, that his own philosophy is powerfully impregnated by the fundamental doctrines of the Upanishads. He dwells on it again and again, and it seems both fair to Schopenhauer’s memory and _ highly important for a true appreciation of the philosophical value of the Upanishads, to put together what that vigorous thinker has written on those ancient rhapsodies of truth.
In his ‘Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,’ he writes, in the preface to the first edition, p. xiii:
‘ If the reader has also received the benefit of the Vedas, the access to which by means of the Upanishads is in my eyes the greatest privilege which this still young century (1818) may claim before all previous centuries, (for I anticipate that the influence of Sanskrit literature will not be less pro-
Ix UPANISHADS.
found than the revival of Greek in the fourteenth century, )—if then the reader, I say, has received his initiation in primeval Indian wisdom, and received it with an open heart, he will be prepared in the very best way for hearing what I have to tell him. It will not sound to him strange, as to many others, much less disagreeable ; for I might, if it did not sound conceited, contend that every one of the detached statements which constitute the Upanishads, may be de- duced as a necessary result from the fundamental thoughts which I have to enunciate, though those deductions them- selves are by no means to be found there.’
And again!:
‘If I consider how difficult it is, even with the assistance of the best and carefully educated teachers, and with all the excellent philological appliances collected in the course of this century, to arrive at a really correct, accurate, and living understanding of Greek and Roman authors, whose language was after all the language of our own predecessors in Europe, and the mother of our own, while Sanskrit, on the contrary, was spoken thousands of years ago in distant India, and can be learnt only with appliances which are.as yet very imperfect ;—if I add to this the impression which the translations of Sanskrit works by European scholars, with very few exceptions, produce on my mind, I cannot resist a certain suspicion that our Sanskrit scholars do not understand their texts much better than the higher class of schoolboys their Greek. Of course, as they are not boys, but men of knowledge and understanding, they put together, out of what they do understand, something like what the general meaning may have been, but much probably creeps in ex ingenio. It is still worse with the Chinese of our European Sinologues.
‘If then I consider, on the other hand, that Sultan
Mohammed Dara Shukoh, the brother of Aurangzib, was
born and bred in India, was a learned, thoughtful, and
enquiring man, and therefore probably understood his
Sanskrit about as well as we our Latin, that moreover
* Schopenhauer, Parerga, third edition, II, p. 426.
INTRODUCTION. xi
he was assisted by a number of the most learned Pandits, all this together gives me at once a very high opinion of his translation of the Vedic Upanishads into Persian. If, besides this, I see with what profound and quite appro- priate reverence Anquetil Duperron has treated that Persian translation, rendering it in Latin word by word, retaining, in spite of Latin grammar, the Persian syntax, and all the Sanskrit words which the Sultan himself had left untranslated, though explaining them in a glossary, I feel the most perfect confidence in reading that transla- tion, and that confidence soon receives its most perfect justification. For how entirely does the Oupnekhat breathe throughout the holy spirit of the Vedas! How is every one who by a diligent study of its Persian Latin has. become familiar with that incomparable book, stirred by that spirit to the very depth of his soul! How does every line display its firm, definite, and throughout harmonious meaning! I*rom every sentence deep, original, and sublime thoughts arise, and the whole is pervaded by a high and holy and earnest spirit. Indian air surrounds us, and original thoughts of kindred spirits. And oh, how thoroughly is the mind here washed clean of all early engrafted Jewish superstitions, and of all philosophy that cringes before those superstitions! In the whole world there is no study, except that of the originals, so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Oupnekhat. It has been the solace of my life, it will be the solace of my death!
‘Though ! I feel the highest regard for the religious and philosophical works of Sanskrit literature, I have not been able to derive much pleasure from their poetical composi- tions. Nay, they seem to me sometimes as tasteless and monstrous as the sculpture of India.
‘In* most of the pagan philosophical writers of the first Christian centuries we see the Jewish theism, which, as Christianity, was soon to become the faith of the people, shining through, much as at present we may perceive shining through in the writings of the learned, the native
' Loe. cit. II, pp. 425. * Loe. cit. I, p. 59.
xii UPANISHADS.
pantheism of India, which is destined sooner or later to become the faith of the people. Ex oriente lux.’
This may seem strong language, and, in some respects, too strong. But I thought it right to quote it here, be- cause, whatever may be urged against Schopenhauer, he was a thoroughly honest thinker and honest speaker, and no one would suspect him of any predilection for what has been so readily called Indian mysticism. That Schelling and his school should use rapturous language about the Upanishads, might carry little weight with that large class of philosophers by whom everything beyond the clouds of their own horizon is labelled mysticism. But that Schopenhauer should have spoken of the Upanishads as ‘products of the highest wisdom’ (Ausgeburt der héchsten Weisheit)!, that he should have placed the pantheism there taught high above the pantheism of Bruno, Male- branche, Spinoza, and Scotus Erigena, as brought to light again at Oxford in 1681 %, may perhaps secure a more con- siderate reception for these relics of ancient wisdom than anything that I could say in their favour.
RAMMOHUN Roy.
Greater, however, than the influence exercised on the philosophical thought of modern Europe, has been the impulse which these same Upanishads have imparted to the religious life of modern India. In about the same year (1774 or 1775) when the first MS. of the Persian translation of the Upanishads was received’ by Anquetil Duperron, Rammohun Roy? was born in India, the reformer and reviver of the ancient religion of the Brahmans. A man who in his youth could write a book ‘Against the Idolatry of all Religions, and who afterwards expressed in so many exact words his ‘belief in the divine authority of Christ 4,’ was not likely to retain anything of the sacred literature of his own religion, unless he had perceived in it the same
! Loc. cit..IT; p..428.
? Loc. cit. I, p.6. These passages were pointed out to me by Professor Noiré. $ Born 1774, died at 2.304.M., on Friday, 28th September, 1833.
* Last Days of Rammohun Roy, by Mary Carpenter, 1866, p. 135.
INTRODUCTION. Ixiii
divine authority which he recognised in the teaching of Christ. He rejected the Purazas, he would not have been swayed in his convictions by the authority of the Laws of Manu, or even by the sacredness of the Vedas. He was above all that. But he discovered in the Upanishads and in the so-called Vedanta something different from all the rest, something that ought not to be thrown away, some- thing that, if rightly understood, might supply the right native soil in which alone the seeds of true religion, aye, of true Christianity, might spring up again and prosper in India, as they had once sprung up and prospered from out the philosophies of Origen or Synesius. European scholars have often wondered that Rammohun Roy, in his defence of the Veda, should have put aside the Saszhités and the Brahmamas, and laid his finger on the Upanishads only, as the true kernel of the whole Veda. Historically, no doubt, he was wrong, for the Upanishads presuppose both the hymns and the liturgical books of the Veda. But as the ancient philosophers distinguished in the Veda between the Karma-kauda and the Gitdna-kazda, between works and knowledge; as they themselves pointed to the learning of the sacred hymns and the performance of sacrifices as a preparation only for that enlightenment which was re- served as the highest reward for the faithful performance of all previous duties!; Rammohun Roy, like Buddha and other enlightened men before him, perceived that the time for insisting on all that previous discipline with its minute prescriptions and superstitious observances was gone, while the knowledge conveyed in the Upanishads or the Vedanta, enveloped though it may be in strange coverings, should henceforth form the foundation of a new religious life *. He would tolerate nothing idolatrous, not even in his mother, poor woman, who after joining his most bitter opponents, confessed to her son, before she set out on her
' M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 319.
2 *The adoration of the invisible Supreme Being is exclusively prescribed by the Upanishads or the principal parts of the Vedas and also by the Vedant.’ Rammohun Roy, Translation of the Kena-upanishad, Calcutta, 1816, p. 6. M. M., History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 320,
lxiv UPANISHADS.