The Sirr-i-Akbar (, “The Greatest Mystery” or “The Greatest Secret”) is a version of the Upanishads authored by the Mughal people-Shahzada Dara Shukoh, translated from Sanskrit into Persian language, c. 1657. After years of Sufi learning, Dara Shukoh sought to uncover a common mystical language between Islam and Hinduism, boldly stating that the Kitab al-Maknun, or "Hidden Book", mentioned in the Qur'an () is none other than the Upanishads.
Background
During his reign,
Mughal emperors Akbar commissioned his bureau of translation,
Maktab Khana, to begin translating the Upanishads from Sanskrit into Persian in an effort to "form a basis for a united search for truth" and "enable the people to understand the true spirit of their religion."
In his youth, Shahzada Dara Shukoh exhibited a deep enthrallment with mysticism, causing him to spend much of his life in research and study. After a spiritual tutelage of the
Qadiri-Sufi saint,
Mian Mir, Dara published a
hagiography compendium of the lives of various
Wali. After encountering a
Sanatana dharma-
Gnosticism saint, Baba Lal Dayal, Dara Shukoh's interests extended to the local mystical thought of the Vedantic tradition while also befriending
Hindus,
Christians, and
Sikhs, including the seventh
Sikh Gurus, Guru Har Rai,
and the
-born
mysticism-
atheist poet,
Sarmad Kashani.
[Katz, N. (2000) 'The Identity of a Mystic: The Case of Sa'id Sarmad, a Jewish-Yogi-Sufi Courtier of the Mughals in: Numen 47: 142–160.]
Legacy
Over a century after the execution of Dara Shukoh, the
Sirr-i-Akbar was translated into a mix of
Latin language,
Greek language, and
Persian language by the French traveling
Indologist Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron in 1796, titling his version the
Oupnek'hat or the
Upanischada. The translation was then published in
Strasbourg, c. 1801–1802, and represented the first European language translation of a
Hindu texts while also causing a revival in Upanishadic studies in India. In the spring of 1814, the Latin translation by Anquetil-Duperron caught the eye of German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who heralded the ancient text in two of his books,
The World as Will and Representation (1819) and
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), stating:
The impact of the Upanishads on German idealist philosophers such as Schopenhauer and his contemporary Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling echoed into the United States with the Transcendentalists. Members of the movement such as Emerson and Thoreau embraced various aspects of the Naturphilosophie invented by Schelling, along with the exotic mysticism found in the Upanishads. The praise of these Americans further spread the fame of the Upanishads across the Western world.[
]
In the book The Argumentative Indian, Indian economist Amartya Sen notes that Anglo-Welsh scholar-philologist William Jones (who is credited for coining the term "Indo-European") first read the Upanishads via the Sirr-i-Akbar.
See also
