A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c13.s3.1

c13.s3.1

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.