Müller opens the entire fifty-volume series by naming the objection he knows is coming — that these books contain material a Victorian reader will find repellent — and he states it as a fact requiring explanation rather than an embarrassment requiring management: "This is a fact, and must be accounted for in some way or other."
The Upanishads, Part I — SBE Vol. 1 (trans. F. Max Müller, 1879)
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The translator’s English as printed (Georg Bühler & James Legge). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
That, therefore, I may not seem biassed by the prejudice of education, I am resolved to prove and examine them all;
‘Indeed there was never any religion so barbarous and diabolical, but it was preferred before all other religions whatsoever, by them that did profess it; otherwise they would not have professed tho...
‘And why, say they, may not you be mistaken as well as we? Espectally when there ts, at least, six to one against your Christian religion; all of which think they serve God aright; and expect happiness thereby as well @s you..... And hence it is that in my looking out for the truest religion, being conscious to my self how great an ascendant Christianity holds over me beyond the rest, as being that religion whereinto I was born and baptized, that which the supreme authority has enjoined and my parents educated me in; that which every one I meet withal highly approves of, and which I my self have, by a long continued profession, made almost natural to me: I am resolved to be more jealous and suspicious of this religion, than of the rest, and be sure not to entertain it any longer without being convinced by solid and substantial arguments, of the truth and certainty of tt. That, therefore, I may make diligent and impartial enquiry into all religions and so be sure to find out the best, 1 shall for a time, look upon my self as one not at all interested in any particular religion whatsoever, much less in the Christian religion, but only as one who desires, in general, to serveand obey Him that made me,in a right manner, and thereby to be made partaker of that happiness my nature ts capable of?
BIsHOP BEVERIDGE (1636-1707).
Private Thoughts on Religion, Part I, Article 2.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
PREFACE TO THE SacrED Books oF THE East . . . ix Program of a Translation of the Sacred Books of the East . . . . . . . . . XXxxix Transliteration of Oriental Alphabets . . . . xiviii Approximate Pronunciation of the Roman Letters as representing the Sanskrit Alphabet . . . lv INTRODUCTION TO THE UPANISHADS . . oe . . Wii Khandogya-upanishad . . . . . . Ixxxvi Talavak4ra-upanishad . . . . . . Ixxxix Aitareya-Aranzyaka . . . . . . - xc Kaushitaki-brahmama-upanishad . . . . . XxCVviii Vagasaneyi-samhita-upanishad .. . . . . c TRANSLATION OF THE AHANDOGYA-UPANISHAD . . . I TRANSLATION OF THE TALAVAKARA-UPANISHAD . . . 149 TRANSLATION OF THE AITAREYA-ARAVYAKA . . . 157
TRANSLATION OF THE KausHtTAKI-BRAHMANA-UPANISHAD . 271
TRANSLATION OF THE VAGASANEYI-SAMHITA-UPANISHAD . . il pom
PREFACE
TO
THE SACRED BOOKS OF THE EAST.
I must begin this series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East with three cautions :— the first, referring to the character of the original texts here translated; the second, with regard to the difficulties in making a proper use of translations ; the third, showing what is possible and what is impossible in rendering ancient thought into modern speech.
He then refuses the easy exit, and refuses it in both directions: "To those (and I do not speak of Christians only) who look upon the sacred books of all religions except their own as necessarily the outcome of human or superhuman ignorance and depravity, the mixed nature of their contents may seem to be exactly what it ought to be." The parenthesis is the whole of his method — the complacency he is describing is not a Christian failing but a universal one, and he says so in 1879 to a readership that would have preferred the other version.
That is the same decision Saint-Martin took with Boehme on this shelf — carry the passages that will offend rather than present a cleaned author — and the same rule this archive keeps. Three editors, in 1802, 1879 and now, arriving separately at: publish what is there and say what it is. Müller's version is the most exposed of the three, because he was building the series that would introduce these books to English readers at all.