A History of Indian Literature v1.c7.s2.28

v1.c7.s2.28

absolutely imperfect Perso-Latin translation of Anquetil du Perron, which Schopenhauer declared to be "the production of the highest human wisdom." At the same time as Schopenhauer in Germany was putting more of his own philosophical ideas into the Upaniṣads of the Indians than he gleaned from them, there lived in India one of the wisest and noblest men that this land has produced, Rāmmohun Roy, the founder of the "Brahmo Samāj" (a new religious community which sought to unite the best of the European religions with the faith of the Hindus), an Indian who, out of the same Upaniṣads, gleaned the purest faith in God, and out of them tried to prove to his countrymen that, although the idolatry of the present Indian religions is objectionable, yet the Indians therefore need not embrace Christianity, but could find a pure religion in their own sacred writings, in the old Vedas, if they only understood them. With the object of revealing this new teaching, new though already contained in the ancient scriptures, and causing it to be propagated by means of the religious community founded by him, the Brahmo Samāj, or the "Church of God," and also with the purpose of proving to the Christian theologians and missionaries whom he esteemed highly, that the best of that which they taught was already contained in the Upaniṣads,—he translated in the years 1816-1819, a considerable number of Upaniṣads into English, and published a few of these in the original.¹