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A Study into a Transreligious Quest for the Ultimate Truth: Indian, Muslim, and European Interpretations of the Upanishads

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The Occult Nineteenth Century

Abstract

The Indian collection of texts commonly referred to as Upanishads is one of the most seminal religious texts in history. This chapter follows their interpretation throughout various cultural and religious contexts thereby focusing on the roots of an important aspect of the reception of “the East” in Western esotericism from a transreligious perspective. This specific history began within India, particularly in the context of the so-called Vedānta philosophical tradition. Later, it found a new frame in a specific Muslim (Sufi) reception by a Mughal prince, which formed the basis for the earliest European translation of these texts, the famous Oupnek’hat by the French philologist and cultural theorist A.H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805). The Oupnek’hat concludes a particular history of interpretation in which one encounters similar modes of approaching the Upanishads.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In addition to this topic there is another area which is at stake in this contribution, namely the reference to orientalism. The lines of transmission as presented in this chapter are a clear sign that a closer look into the historical contexts shakes the often too simply conceptualised approach towards the alleged distorted Western look on “the Orient,” as Islamic authors play a major role as intermediaries. I do not expand on this specific aspect in the present chapter, but refer to my remarks in Winter 2018: 30, 53–55.

  2. 2.

    Through its approach, this chapter is closely connected to concepts and ideas that were developed in the publications of Karl Baier who devoted a lot of his work on the interrelation between India and Europe and the various ways these cultural areas are connected and became more closely conjoined through various developments. See in particular Baier 1998.

  3. 3.

    I am following the text of Dārā Shukūh 1961, an edition by Tārā Chand and Muḥammad Riḍā Jalālī-Nāʾīnī; the preamble can be found on three unpaginated pages after p. 345 and before the edition of the actual translation of the Upanishads, together with a critical apparatus. Translations of phrases and expressions are mine; translations of the entire preamble are provided in d’Onofrio 2006: 296–299 (into Italian) and Göbel-Gross 1962: 13–18 (into German).

  4. 4.

    The term to describe the “enigmatic” nature of the Quran used by the prince is marmuz, “cryptic,” (only) expressed by signs, viz. filled with subtleties and enigmas (see Faruqui 2014: 50–51).

  5. 5.

    Literally, “the old scholars of the inside and the outside.” The terms ẓāhir and bāṭin, respectively, refer to different levels of interpretation of the text of the Quran, denoting the “legalistic” and the “interior” (which means: the Sufi) mode.

  6. 6.

    Quoted from the epilogue to the Sirr-i akbar; see d’Onofrio 2006: 125.

  7. 7.

    See also Faruqui 2014: 56–59, with an attempt to interpret the prince’s approach to India within a certain political agenda, i.e. to prove and legitimise his own status as the successor of his father on the Mughal throne.

  8. 8.

    Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXIII–CXI. The English translations of the Latin texts presented here are mine. The Oupnek’hat was only partly translated into German (Mischel 1882) and major translated excerpts can be found in an early book on Indian philosophy, whose author, the theologian and philosopher Anselm Rixner (1766–1838), heavily relies on the Oupnek’hat (Rixner 1808). Both books do not contain a translation of the introductory dissertatio.

  9. 9.

    See Hanegraaff 1996: 390–391, on the differences to the parallel expression philosophia perennis , which became prominent in the sixteenth century through the book with the same title by the librarian Agostino Steucho (1497–1548) published 1540, and which is to be interpreted as a reconceptualisation of the prisca theologia . See Schmidt-Biggemann 1998; Walker 1972.

  10. 10.

    See Schmitt 2001: 41. There was much interest in Synesios in the Renaissance: his Peri enypniōn (On Dreams) was printed in 1516 and 1518 in Venice, in 1549 in Lyon, and in 1568 in Paris. On the importance of Synesius for Ficino see Walker 2000: 39, note 1.

  11. 11.

    In Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXVI–XXVII, Anquetil-Duperron quotes longer passages of the first hymn, where God is characterised as “holy unity of the unities” (henotētōn henas hagnē); see also ibid.: XXVII, XXXV, and XXXIX–XXXX (with quotes from the fourth hymn).

  12. 12.

    Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXIX, with a definition of the Indian reincarnation as “return of the same ātman to its highest originator” (eijusdem ātma ad summum parentem reversio).

  13. 13.

    Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XXXVIII, where Synesios’ picture of a heavenly “drop” (libas ourania) which comes down to earth is labelled as typically Indian.

  14. 14.

    Together with Christoph Matthäus Pfaff (1686–1760) and Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten (1706–1757), the theologian Johann Franz Budde was an important figure in the Protestant Enlightenment and proposed something like a reconciliation between Christian theology and the Jewish Kabbalah (Fritsch 2004: 213–215).

  15. 15.

    Anquetil-Duperron 1801: XCIV. In ibid.: 9 prāṇa is defined as “respiratio” (halitus, anima, to phren).

  16. 16.

    Another important aspect of Anquetil-Duperrons’ interpretation of the Upanishads as the major source of inspiration is the idea of a “book” containing the ultimate truth. In Winter 2018: 46–50, I tried to show that this idea has an interesting history of its own that is closely connected to the earliest discovery of Asian religions and their textual traditions through Christian missionaries.

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  1. Department of Religious Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Franz Winter

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  1. Department of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    Lukas Pokorny

  2. Department of Religious Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria

    Franz Winter

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Winter, F. (2021). A Study into a Transreligious Quest for the Ultimate Truth: Indian, Muslim, and European Interpretations of the Upanishads. In: Pokorny, L., Winter, F. (eds) The Occult Nineteenth Century. Palgrave Studies in New Religions and Alternative Spiritualities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55318-0_12

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