THE UPANISHADS TRANSLATED BY THE RT. HON. F. MAX MÜLLER PART I THE KHÂNDOGYA-UPANISHAD, THE TALAVAKÂRA- KAUSHÎTAKI-BRÂHMANA-UPANISHAD, AND THE VÂGASANEYI-SA- MHITÂ-UPANISHAD PART II THE KATHA-UPANISHAD, THE MUNDAKA-UPANISHAD, MANA-UPANISHAD NEW YORK The Christian Literature Company PREFACE ΤΟ SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST. (AMERICAN EDITION.) JOHN BRIGHT, after carefully reading a translation of Plato by Benjamin Jowett, expressed his surprise that so able a scholar should have spent so many years on such a book. Though he was not a classical scholar himself, John Bright was a man of great experience, of independent thought, of cultivated taste, and of wide sympathies; a man, moreover, who had seen the cities of many men and had known their thoughts,' and yet Plato's Dialogues were to him a strange and unmeaning book, a book hardly deserving a translation in our time. Can we expect a more kindly or more intelligent reception for the translations of the Sacred Books. of the East? Many of them would probably have found even less favour in the eyes of John Bright than Plato, though it is well known that the subject of which they treat, religion, was very near to his heart. But the real East is far more removed from the West than is Greece, and the spirit of classical antiquity must always appeal far more powerfully even to those who are not scholars by profession than the religious and philosophical thoughts of Oriental nations. Add to this that the Sacred Books of the (a) East belong mostly to a very distant period in the growth of the human mind, and are therefore removed from us, not only in space, but in time also, and we could hardly be surprised if even men of such wide sympathies as John Bright should shut these books after reading a few pages of them only. There are few literary works which we can appreciate without being educated and, so to say, acclimatised to the atmosphere in which they grew up. And though religion might seem to form an exception, as being common to all mankind, yet religion also has, in different countries and in different periods of history, assumed such strange guises and disguises that the very name of religion would probably be denied to some of them, particularly by those who are most zealously devoted to whatever may be their own inherited form of faith. It is difficult for us to imagine that there could have been a religion without a belief in God, yet that religion which probably has the largest number of followers at present, and has been in existence for five hundred years longer than Christianity, recognises no God, in our sense of the word, no creator, no ruler of the world, no Father of mankind. And yet, in spite of all that, no one can deny that it has proved a most beneficial religion; it has rescued many of the nations of Asia from utter barbarism, nay, it has, even when caricatured as Modern Buddhism, gained the hearts of many people both in Europe and America. The object with which I undertook this translation of the Sacred Books of the East, has certainly not been that of proselytising. All I wished for was, with the assistance of some of my friends, to place before the English-speaking world a scholarly and THE UPANISHADS. с faithful translation of books on which millions of our fellow-men have staked the salvation of their souls. Such books cannot be indifferent to the true historian, nay, to any human being, if only on the old principle of Nihil humani a me alienum puto. So far my interests were only those of the historian, but I gladly confess that I had a secret hope also that by such a publication of the Sacred Books of all religions that were in possession of books of canonical authority, some very old prejudices might be removed, and the truth of St. Augustine's words might be confirmed, that there is no religion without some truth in it, nay, that the ancients, too, were in possession of some Christian truths. What is now called the Christian religion,' he wrote, 'has existed. among the ancients, and was not absent from the beginning of the human race until Christ came in the flesh, from which time the true religion, which existed already, began to be called Christian.' These are bold words, but even without going so far as St. Augustine, we may well hope that a study of the Sacred Books of the East may produce a kindlier feeling on the part of many people, and more particularly of missionaries, towards those who are called heathen, or even children of Satan, though they have long, though ignorantly, worshipped the God who is to be declared unto them. Another hope was that a study of other religions, if based on really trustworthy documents, would enable many people to understand and appreciate 'August. Retr., I., 13. .. Res ipsa, quae nunc religio Christiana nuncupatur, erat, apud antiquos, nee defuit ab initio generis humani, quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera religio, quae jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana.' |