Talk:Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron

Curious?

The article claims that his "Oupnek'hat … is a curious mixture of Latin, Greek, Persian, Arabic, and Sanskrit." I thought that it was merely a Latin translation of the Persian translation of the Sanskrit original.Lestrade (talk) 21:27, 9 February 2010 (UTC)Lestrade

Quote from the EB, which cites the Edinburgh Review. No need to keep the condescending exact phrasing but you shouldn't have cut it down to just Latin without a source of your own. — LlywelynII 00:43, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Two pertinent citations:

(1) "The book with which Schopenhauer fell in love was a Latin translation of a Persian translation of the Upanishads, which he referred to always as the Oupnekhat." (The Philosophy of Schopenhauer, Bryan Magee, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, page 14.)

(2) "In 1656, the Mogul Prince Dara Shukoh had commissioned a Persian translation of the Upanishads by Indian Pandits. A century and a half later a Frenchman, Anquetil-Duperron, who did not know Sanskrit, translated the Persian text into Latin, and it is in this form that in 1801/1802 the Oupnekhat is published in Strassbourg--the title being a distortion of the word 'Upanishad.' Only a highly developed detective sense could have enabled a reader to retrieve from Anquetil’s Latin, which followed the Persian text word for word, the original meaning of various phrases and expressions." (The Philosophy of Schopenhauer in its Intellectual Context: Thinker Against the Tide, Arthur Hübscher, Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989, page 64.)Lestrade (talk) 01:58, 19 October 2023 (UTC)Lestrade

Asceticism

The article states that "The Revolution seems to have greatly affected him." This is subjective speculation. The following statement asserts that "During that period he abandoned society, and lived in voluntary poverty on a few pence a day." His turn to asceticism may have been the result of his reading of Hindu religion and philosophy. These extol the benefits of voluntary poverty and, what Schopenhauer called, denial of the will–to–live.Lestrade (talk) 04:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)Lestrade

The article was quoting the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which had sourcing and very good reasons to support its "speculation". Inter alia, the Revolution did profoundly affect him and he made several somewhat dangerous objections to its course. If you can find a source for including your subjective speculation on the influence of the texts of a religion he pointedly did not convert to, kindly do include that as well. — LlywelynII 00:41, 17 June 2015 (UTC)