Organised by Christian Meyer, project The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf: Canons, Concepts and Communities, Research Area 3: "Future Perfect". This event is part of the lecture series The Invention of the Modern Religious Bookshelf.

The Indian Upanishads are commonly regarded as the ultimate summary of an “Indian” viz. “Hindu” religious tradition and make up part of any collection of major religious texts of world history. Although this approach is highly problematic due to various reasons, the eminent esteem of this corpus is rather obvious and relevant to date. For the early European perception, the famous Oupnek'hat (id est, secretum tegendum) published 1801 and 1802 by the famous French orientalist A. H. Anquetil-Duperron (1731–1805) was the most important starting point. It is basically the earliest translation of Upanishads into a European language and introduces them on the basis of a very specific interpretative trajectory. A closer look on the origin of this influential publication has to take its relation and indebtedness to a preceding history of perception in the context of Mughal India into scrutiny, namely the Sirr-i akbar by the Mughal prince Dārāh Shukūh (1615–1659) which was the source for this interpretation. The major aim of the presentation is a transculturally orientated interpretation of this specific history of perception.

Online participation is possible via Cisco WebEx Meetings:

https://fu-berlin.webex.com/fu-berlin/j.php?MTID=me79e7e7ec03d43e1d4cce77b25ad1b35