The Upanishads Translated by Max Muller

The Upanishads

The religions of antiquity must always be approached in a loving spirit, and the dry and cold-blooded scholar is likely to do here as much mischief as the enthusiastic sciolist. But true love does not ignore all faults and failings : on the contrary, it scans them keenly, though only in order to be able to understand, to explain, and thus to excuse them. To watch in the Sacred Books of the East the dawn of the religious consciousness of man, must always remain one of the most inspiring and hallowing sights in the whole history of the world ; and he whose heart cannot quiver with the first quivering rays of human thought and human faith, as revealed in those ancient documents, is, in his own way, as unfit for these studies as, from another side, the man who shrinks from copying and collating ancient MSS., or toiling through volumes of tedious commentary. From The Sacred Books of the East by Max Muller.

Suggestions for Further Reading

Source: Max Müllers' translation of the Upanishads, Volume One. (1879) (Volume 1 of the Sacred Books of the East.) and Volume Two. (1884) (Volume 15 of the Sacred Books of the East.). While we have made every effort to reproduce the text correctly, we do not guarantee or accept any responsibility for any errors or omissions or inaccuracies in the reproduction of this text.

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