The Philosophy of the Upanishads c6.s3.7

c6.s3.7

A position apart both from the 52 and the 108 Upanishads is occupied by that collection of 50 Upanishads which, under the name of Oupnek'hat, which was translated from the Sanskrit into Persian in the year 1656 at the instance of the Sultan Mohammed Dara Shakoh, and from the Persian into Latin in 1801–02 by Anquetil Duperron. The Oupnek'hat also, like the Muktikâ collection, professes to be a general collection of Upanishads. It contains under twelve divisions the Upanishads of the three older Vedas, and with them twenty-six Atharva Upanishads that are known from other sources. It further comprises eight treatises peculiar to itself, five of which have not up to the present time been proved to exist elsewhere, and of which therefore a rendering from the Persian-Latin of Anquetil is alone possible.¹ Finally, the Oupnek'hat contains four treatises from the Vâj. Saṃh. 16. 31. 32. 34, of which the first is met with in a shorter form in other collections also as the Nilarudra Upanishad, while the three last have nowhere else found admission.² The reception of these treatises from the Saṃhitâ into the body of the Upanishads, as though there were danger of their otherwise falling into oblivion, makes us infer a comparatively late date for the Oupnek'hat collection itself, although as early as 1656 the Persian translators made no claim to be the original compilers, but took the collection over already complete. They seem, indeed, to have regarded it as originating in a period long past.¹ Owing to the excessive literality with which Anquetil Duperron rendered these Upanishads word by word from the Persian into Latin, while preserving the syntax of the former language,—a literality that stands in striking contrast to the freedom with which the Persian translators treated the Sanskrit text,—the Oupnek'hat is a very difficult book to read; and an insight as keen as that of Schopenhauer was required in order to discover within this repellent husk a kernel of invaluable philosophical significance, and to turn it to account for his own system.²