The Mughal Prince Who Translated Fifty Upanishads, and the Chain of Translations That Carried Them to Europe

Varanasi, 1657: a prince, fifty texts, and a title

Let's go to Varanasi. The year is 1657.

Dara Shikoh. The eldest son of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan. Yes, the same emperor who built the Taj Mahal. And Dara Shikoh is a Muslim prince, by birth and by faith.

What is he doing? He is organising a project to translate roughly fifty Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian. Not alone. He works closely with Sanskrit scholars from Varanasi.

The finished work gets a title: Sirr-i-Akbar. "The Great Secret."

And then, listen carefully, because this is the part most people have never heard. In his own introduction, he makes a direct, serious argument. That the "hidden book" referenced in the Quran might actually be the Upanishads themselves.

Read that again. A Muslim royal heir, making a genuine, respectful intellectual argument for bridging his own faith and this tradition. Not some fringe figure on the edge of the court. The eldest son of the emperor.

He will never become emperor. He will be killed in a war of succession with his brother Aurangzeb.

But his translation will outlive him. And it will travel further than he could have imagined.

First, the words you need

A few words before we start. Learn them once, and the rest of this file is easy.

Darshana. The Sanskrit word usually translated as "philosophy". And honestly, that translation is misleading. The word comes from a root meaning "to see". So a darshana is not a rulebook of beliefs you are required to accept. It is a vantage point. A specific way of looking at reality, tested through debate and direct experience.

Think of it like this. Several people stand on different sides of the same hill, each one describing what they see from where they stand, and then arguing it out. India produced multiple darshanas, distinct schools that argued with each other openly, for centuries. That plurality is the system. It is not a flaw in it.

Guru, and guru-shishya parampara. A guru is a mentor responsible for a student's actual intellectual and ethical formation. Not just a source of information. And nothing to do with "marketing guru", please. The teacher–student lineage, passed down across generations, is guru-shishya parampara. And it is explicitly plural: many independent lineages, not one controlling authority.

Vyasa Purnima is the day set aside to honour that relationship. It is named for Vyasa, who is traditionally credited with organising major bodies of Vedic and epic literature, and who is honoured as a teacher.

Upanishads. The Sanskrit texts at the centre of this story. Roughly fifty of them are the ones Dara Shikoh had translated.

Two claims, two grades

Here is what this file tests. I grade both now, so you know where we are going.

1. India had functioning, multi-subject universities with international students centuries before any European university; a Muslim Mughal prince had roughly fifty Upanishads translated into Persian in 1657; and that translation passed through Latin to reach Schopenhauer, who called it the solace of his life. True. With a named person, a year and a book at every step.
2. Indian calendrical or philosophical systems are linked to Persian, Mayan or other traditions. Unchecked. Interesting questions. Not established fact. And I am not repeating them here as fact.

One true, one unchecked. Remember that score. Now the clues.

Clue one: universities you could physically walk into

This is where it stops being an abstract idea about "a teaching tradition" and becomes something you could have walked into. Buildings. Rooms. A library.

Nalanda. Established in the 5th century CE, in what is now the state of Bihar. A real, physical university. Not a metaphor. An actual institution with buildings, dormitories and a library complex, functioning for centuries.

And who came to study there? Students from China, Korea, Tibet and Central Asia.

Now do a thought experiment with me. At that time, a journey like that could take years each way. Years. So imagine you are a young student in Korea or China. Before you have read a single page at Nalanda, you have already given years of your life just to reach the gate. Then you spend more years studying there. Then the long road home.

Let me ask you something. What kind of school makes people choose that? Students were choosing to spend years of their life just reaching it.

And what did they study? Not only religious material. Mathematics. Astronomy. Medicine. Logic. Grammar. Formal debate. Alongside Buddhist philosophy and Vedic scholarship.

Takshashila. The Greeks knew it as Taxila. It is in what is now northern Pakistan, and it was older still. It drew students from Central Asia, from China. Ancient sources describe a wide curriculum: the Vedas and their auxiliary sciences, medicine, surgery, even military science, alongside grammar based directly on Panini's work. The Buddhist Jataka stories speak of eighteen arts taught there. The same Panini who comes up elsewhere in these files.

Eighteen arts, as those stories count them.

So let me say it plainly. Centuries before Oxford or any European university existed, India had functioning, multi-subject universities that international students were travelling years across Asia to attend.

And this is not a claim resting on pride. It rests on a physical site, a curriculum ancient sources describe, and named countries of origin for the students who studied there. That is the difference between a boast and a record.

Clue two: the prince who translated fifty Upanishads

Now back to where we started.

1657. Roughly fifty Upanishads. Sanskrit into Persian. Scholars from Varanasi. A title, Sirr-i-Akbar. And an introduction arguing that the Quran's "hidden book" might be the Upanishads.

Then the war of succession with Aurangzeb. Dara Shikoh was killed in it and never became emperor.

Think about it. The man is gone. The throne went another way. Normally that is where a story like this ends.

His translation survived him anyway.

Clue three: how it reached a German philosopher's desk

Here is the twist. The translation did not stay in Varanasi.

More than a century later, a French scholar named Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron obtained a copy of the Sirr-i-Akbar.

He translated it into French around 1787, a version never published in full (only four short Upanishads from it were printed, in 1787), and, working from the Persian, into Latin. He published the Latin version as Oupnek'hat, between 1801 and 1802.

Count the languages with me. Sanskrit, then Persian, then Latin. The Upanishads had now passed through three languages and roughly a century and a half before they reached a wider European audience.

And that specific Latin edition is what reached the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.

Listen carefully, because this is the best bit. Schopenhauer read it deeply. And he said, directly, in his own words, that it was the solace of his life, and would be the solace of his death.

The solace of his life. And of his death.

Now say the full chain out loud. A Muslim prince's personal act of interfaith translation in 1657. Through Persian and Latin, across roughly a century and a half. Into the thinking of one of Europe's most important philosophers.

It is like a relay race where every runner has a name. The prince and his Varanasi scholars hand it to the Persian page. The Persian page waits more than a century. A French scholar obtains a copy and carries it into Latin. A German philosopher takes the last leg. You can point to every hand on that baton.

It is remarkable on its own terms. No exaggeration needed.

Now the other side, honestly

The sceptic has fair points. Let me give them to you in full.

One. Schopenhauer read a Latin rendering of a Persian rendering of the Sanskrit. Three removes from the original. So "introduced to Europe" means introduced through that chain, not directly.

Two. Nalanda and Takshashila were not universities in the modern institutional sense.

Three. The curriculum, and the eighteen arts, are what ancient sources describe. No syllabus survives.

I am not disputing any of that. This file says the same thing; it is the record as stated.

So what is left, after the sceptic has had his say? Exactly what the chain shows. Named hands. Named years. Named books.

On the record: every claim in one place

Here is the whole file, sorted.

True - Nalanda (5th century CE, in what is now Bihar) and Takshashila (in what is now northern Pakistan) drew students from China, Korea, Tibet and Central Asia to multi-subject curricula, centuries before any European university. - In 1657 Dara Shikoh, eldest son of Shah Jahan, had roughly fifty Upanishads translated from Sanskrit into Persian, working with scholars from Varanasi, as Sirr-i-Akbar, with an introduction arguing that the Quran's "hidden book" might be the Upanishads. - Anquetil-Duperron obtained a copy, rendered it into French around 1787 and into Latin as Oupnek'hat in 1801–02. - Schopenhauer read that Latin edition and called it the solace of his life and of his death.

Unchecked - That Indian calendrical or philosophical systems are linked to Persian, Mayan or other traditions.

What I could not prove

One thing. I will say it as plainly as the true parts.

- Any link between Indian calendrical or philosophical systems and Persian, Mayan or other traditions. People draw these comparisons. Maybe you have heard some of them. Each one needs checking source by source, by a specialist, before it is anything more than an interesting question. Until then, none of them is repeated here as fact. I am not going to dress one up as a discovery.

Step back for a minute

What follows is my own view.

If you read the files on yoga and on OM, you already have two pieces. Yoga gave you the practice. OM gave you the sound. This file gives you the institutions and the transmission.

Actual universities, with actual foreign students. And proof that this tradition was never sealed inside one country or one religion.

Think about who carried it. A Muslim prince chose to translate it and defend it. It passed through Persian and Latin. And it ended up moving a major European thinker to say, in his own words, that it brought him peace.

That is not a claim about ancient greatness in the abstract. It is a specific, traceable journey, with real names attached to every single step of it. If you ask me, that is the kind of pride that holds up. You do not need to inflate it. You just need to follow the names.

The verdict

The prince, the translation and the philosopher are all on the record. And the chain between them has a name at every link.

That Nalanda (5th century CE) and Takshashila drew students from China, Korea, Tibet and Central Asia to multi-subject curricula; that Dara Shikoh had roughly fifty Upanishads translated into Persian as Sirr-i-Akbar in 1657; that Anquetil-Duperron rendered it into French around 1787 and Latin as Oupnek'hat in 1801–02; and that Schopenhauer called it the solace of his life and of his death, is true.

That Indian systems are linked to Persian, Mayan or other traditions is unchecked, and I do not claim it.

What would change my mind? Evidence that the Oupnek'hat came from a source other than the Sirr-i-Akbar. A record contradicting where the students at Nalanda or Takshashila came from. Neither is in the record I read.

A Muslim prince. A French scholar. A German philosopher. And fifty texts that were never sealed inside one country or one faith.

Follow the names yourself. You decide what that chain tells you.

Corrections

31 October 2026. An earlier version of this file said Anquetil-Duperron obtained the Persian translation "during his travels through India and Persia". In December 1775 he received a manuscript of it from his friend Le Gentil, the French envoy at Oudh. The phrase has been removed.

2 November 2026. An earlier version of this file said ancient sources describe a curriculum of "around 68 subjects" at Takshashila, and that Takshashila drew students from Greece. The Buddhist Jataka stories speak of eighteen arts taught there, and we found no source for students from Greece. It also said Anquetil-Duperron translated the Sirr-i-Akbar into French "then into Latin", as if the Latin came from the French. He made the Latin from the Persian, and his full French version was never published. The number has been corrected, Greece has been removed, and the chain now runs Sanskrit, Persian, Latin. It also placed the translation project in Delhi; Urs App, and the University of Manchester Library's catalogue record of a manuscript of the work, place it in Benares (Varanasi), and the file now does too. And it listed Japan among the places Nalanda drew students from; we found no scholarly source for that, and Japan has been removed.