A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c13.s3: III. Translations
A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c13.s3
- Language
- English
III. Translations
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The most important work that has been hitherto done on the Upanishads is the work of Translation. Through a long period of years the Upanishads have afforded a temptation for the aspiring Translator to try his hand at in various languages. The first known translation of the Upanishads was done into Persian during the years 1656-1657 by the Pandits in the court of Dara, the son of Shah Jahan. The first notice of the Upanishads to the Western world was through Anquetil du Perron's translation entitled the "Oupnek'hat," two volumes, Strassburg, 1801-1802, which was a rendering into Latin of the Persian translation above referred to. The substance of the Latin translation appeared in French in the year 1832 in J. D. Lanjuinais's "Recherches sur les Langues, la Littérature, la Religion et la Philosophie des Indiens," 1832. Ram Mohan Roy published his translation of the Īśa, Kena, Katha, and Muṇḍaka Upanishads during the same year, namely, 1832. Exactly fifty years later, the Oupnek'hat was translated into German at Dresden, 1882. It may thus be seen how the Sanskrit Upanishads were rendered into Persian at the time of Dara, how the Persian translation in its turn was rendered into Latin by Anquetil du Perron in 1801-1802, and how the Latin translation was itself rendered both into the French and German languages during the course of the last century.
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One of the earliest translators of the Upanishads into English was Röer, who published his translations of nine Upanishads, Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍūkya, Aitareya, Taittirīya, and Śvetāśvatara at Calcutta in 1853. His translation of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka came also later on. Max Müller was the first systematic translator of all the chief Upanishads at the Clarendon Press in two volumes, 1879-1884. Whitney published a review of this translation in the American Journal of Philology in 1886, in an essay entitled "The Upanishads and their latest Translation". Paul Deussen's monumental "Sechzig Upanishad's des Veda," pp. 946, was published at Leipzig, 1897, and contains a translation of all the fifty Upanishads included in the Oupnek'hat, as well as ten other Ātharvaṇa Upanishads. It is unfortunate that Deussen's translation has not yet been rendered into English. It contains very useful introductions to all the Upanishads, as well as to each section of them. This work was reviewed by Böhtlingk in an essay entitled "Bemerkungen zu einigen Upanishaden" in 1897, where he pointed out a number of points in which he differed from Deussen.
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G. R. S. Mead's translation of the Upanishads in collaboration with J. C. Chhatopadhyaya in 1896, in two volumes, was published by the London Theosophical Society. Volume I. contains translations of the Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, and Māṇḍūkya Upanishads, and Volume II, of the Taittirīya, Aitareya and Śvetāśvatara Upanishads. Mead's translation excited such an interest in the European world that it was translated both into the French and Dutch languages in 1905 and 1908. S. Sitaram Shastri and Ganganath Jha's Translation of the Upanishads in five volumes with Śaṅkara's commentary (Natesan, Madras, 1898-1901) contains texts of the Īśa, Kena, Muṇḍaka, Kaṭha, Praśna, Chhāndogya, Aitareya and Taittirīya Upanishads, and is so neatly done and so finely printed that it perforce invites the study of the beginner in Upanishadic literature. One wishes very much that Natesan might add the translation of the five remaining Upanishads, Māṇḍūkya, Bṛihadāraṇyaka, Śvetāśvatara, Kaushitaki, and Maitri to the already translated eight, so as to make a fine set of volumes of the Translations of the chief Upanishads along with Texts. Sitanatha Tattvabhushan’s Translation of the Upanishads in three volumes, Calcutta, 1900, contains all the thirteen principal Upanishads except Maitrāyaṇī. S. C. Vasu has edited the Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, and Māṇḍūkya Upanishads with extracts from Madhva’s commentary, Panini Office, Allahabad, 1911. He has translated the Chhāndogya and the Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishads likewise with extracts from the commentary of Madhva. Tukaram Tatya has brought out an eclectic edition of the Translations of the Twelve principal Upanishads which includes the translation of the Īśa, Kena, Kaṭha, Praśna, Muṇḍaka, Māṇḍūkya, Aitareya, Taittirīya, Śvetāśvatara and Bṛihadāraṇyaka Upanishads by Röer, of the Chhāndogya by Rajendralal Maitra, and of the Kaushītaki by Cowell. The Maitri is unrepresented in this volume. R. E. Hume’s translation of the Thirteen Principal Upanishads, Oxford, 1921, is the latest, most handy, and most serviceable of all. Mr. Hume has profited by the translations of all his predecessors, while his Bibliography is remarkably clear and useful. Our own Bibliographical Note owes not a little to him.
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Of the translations of the Upanishads in the Vernaculars, there are many. We might mention C. G. Bhanu’s translation of the various Upanishads in Marathi along with the commentary of Śaṅkara in a series of volumes, and H. R. Bhagavat’s text and translation in Marathi of various Upanishads in two volumes, the first containing the more important and classical Upanishads, and the other a few of the minor Upanishads. Vishnu Shastri Bapat’s translation of the Upanishads in Marathi as well as his translation of the Bhāshya of Śaṅkara on the Upanishads are the most pains-taking of Marathi translations. There are translations of the Upanishads in every language of India, and particularly the Bengali. The Bibliography would be inordinately swollen if we were to mention all the translations in the various languages.
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As regards the translations of single Upanishads in serial order, we might mention first Aurobindo Ghose's translations of the Īśa, Kaṭha, and other Upanishads, which are interspersed with the philosophical reflections of the author. Prof. M. Hiriyanna's translations of the Kena, Kaṭha, and other Upanishads with the commentary of Śaṅkara have appeared recently, while the Kenopanishad has been transliterated and translated by Oertel, Professor at Yale, 1894. The Kaṭhopanishad seems to find particular favour with translators, and there are numerous translations of it in various languages. Thus Paul Regnaud published a translation of the Kaṭhopanishad in French, Paris, 1898, while the same Upanishad was also translated into Swedish by Butenschön, Stockholm, 1902, and into Italian by Belloni-Filippi, Pisa, 1905. Whitney's translation of the Kaṭhopanishad, Boston, 1890, is a remarkable piece of work, in which he proposes a number of textual emendations, and adds a critical introduction.
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Johannes Hertel has recently published a critical edition of the Muṇḍakopanishad, Leipzig, 1924. Hertel's is an ambitious method of editing. He goes into questions of Metre and Language, differentiates the Traditional from the Original text, then gives a Restored text, and then discusses the contents, the origin, and the age of the Muṇḍakopanishad, along with its references to Jainism. After this prelude, Hertel prints the text of the Muṇḍakopanishad by the anastatic method, borrowing it from the Bibliotheca Indica. Hertel may have been inspired to adopt his method of the discussion of the Muṇḍakopanishad from attempts like that of Father Zimmermann on the Mahānārāyaṇa Upanishad, which was his Ph. D. Thesis, in which he discusses the Sources and the Relation between the different recensions of that Upanishad. Prof. Zimmermann goes into the text-parallels of the Upanishad, and the relation of them, and then proceeds to point out the contents and the sources of the Upanishad, and then ends with an arrangement of matter. In fact, such a method of procedure should be made applicable to every Upanishad.
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M. N. Dvivedi's translation of the Māṇḍūkya Upanishad with the Kārikās of Gauḍapāda and the Bhāshya of Śaṅkara, 1894, is remarkable in many respects. It was the first notice of that great Heracleitian philosopher Gauḍapāda in English. Recently an amount of literature is coming out on Gauḍapāda and on his relation to the Mādhyamika Sūtras. Prof. Vidushekhara Bhattacharya, Shantiniketan, is making a special study of Gauḍapāda, and one feels no doubt that when Gauḍapāda is rendered well into English, his relation to the Mādhyamika Sūtras is pointed out, and a survey is taken of his contribution to Philosophy, he is bound to startle the world of thought. As regards the Taittirīya Upanishad, A. Mahadeva Shastri has brought out a classical edition of that Upanishad with an English translation and the Commentaries of Śaṅkarāchārya, Sureśvarāchārya, and Vidyāraṇya, pp. 791, Mysore, 1903, which would be most serviceable to all the students of that Upanishad.
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Otto Böhtlingk has done very classic work in turning out the editions of two of the biggest Upanishads, namely the Bṛihadāraṇyaka and the Chhāndogya, the one printed at St. Petersburg, and the other at Leipzig. It is remarkable that the two editions were printed simultaneously, and appeared in the same year, namely 1889. While both the editions have been carefully edited, the Chhāndogya has particularly a very beautiful appearance. The principle of paragraphing is retained in both the Upanishads, and Böhtlingk has emended the text in various places, though not always successfully. For example, for the reading Vijitāya (Chhāndogya IV. I. 4) Böhtlingk substitutes Vijitvarāya, and for Tajjalāniti, he reads Tajjānānīti (Chhāndogya III.14.1), of which the first is unnecessary, and the second awkward. Nevertheless, the editions of the Bṛihadāraṇyaka and the Chhāndogya edited with text and translation by Böhtlingk have remained quite classical, though they are somewhat inaccessible in India. Böhtlingk soon followed this achievement by his editions of the Kaṭha, Aitareya and Praśna Upanishads, with their texts in Devanāgari, and translation and notes in German, Leipzig, 1891. Whitney published a review of Böhtlingk's translations of the various Upanishads in the American Journal of Philology, subjecting them to a very detailed examination, and Böhtlingk replied to these criticisms in 1891. All this is a matter of literary give and take, which would certainly be enjoyed by those who take a philological interest in the Upanishads.
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E. B. Cowell's translations of the Kaushītaki and the Maitri Upanishads with the commentary of Rāmatīrtha (1861, 1870), have also remained classical works on those two Upanishads. A. Mahadeva Shastri's edition of the Amṛtabindu and Kaivalya Upanishads, text and translation, is a handy little volume. Narayanaswami Iyer has translated Thirty Minor Upanishads at Madras, 1914. Finally, S. K. Belvalkar's "Four Unpublished Upanishads," containing texts and translations of the Bāshkala, the Chhāgaleya, the Ārsheya, and the Śaunaka Upanishads (1925), of which the first was printed by Dr. Schrader but the rest were only in MS. form in the Adyar Library, has been published by the Academy of Philosophy and Religion, and can be had at its Poona Branch, Poona, India.