The Religion of the Veda: The Ancient Religion of India (from Rig-Veda to Upanishads) c6.s1.85

c6.s1.85

The Persian pronunciation of the word Upanishad is Oupnekhat. It happened that the Frenchman Anquetil du Perron, the famous pioneer in the study of the Zoroastrian religion of the Parsis, was living in India in 1775. There he became interested in the Persian Oupnekhat, and later on made a Latin translation of Dārā Shukho's version. This was published in Strassburg in two volumes (vol. i. in 1801; vol. ii. in 1802). This translation proved eventful in the West. At that comparatively recent time the Upanishads were yet unknown in Europe. Notwithstanding its double disguise, first the Persian, and next the Latin, Anquetil's Latin rendering proved to be the medium through which Schopenhauer became acquainted with the thought of the Upanishads. As is well known, Schopenhauer, who is the father of Western pessimism, was powerfully impregnated with their pantheistic, or, more precisely, monistic philosophy. His own system is really based upon conceptions that coincide in one way or another with the more detached teachings of the Upanishads. Schopenhauer used to have the Oupnekhat lie open upon his table, and was in the habit, before going to bed, of performing his devotions from its pages. His own estimate of the character of the Oupnekhat is preserved to us in the following statement: "Next to the original it is the most rewardful reading possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death." Schopenhauer himself tells us the reason for his faith in the Upanishads. The fundamental thought of the Upanishads, he says, is what has at all times called forth the scoffing of fools and the unceasing meditation of the wise, namely, the doctrine of unity; the doctrine that all plurality is only apparent; that in all individuals of this world, in whatsoever endless number they present themselves, one after another, and one beside another, there is manifested one and the same true being. Therefore the Upanishads are in his eyes the fruit of the profoundest insight that the world has ever seen; almost superhuman thought, whose authors can scarcely be imagined to have been mere men.