Sirr-i-Akbar · سرِ اکبر · the Greatest Secret

Dārā Shikōh's Persian rendering of fifty Upanishads, made at Delhi in 1656–57 with pandits brought from Benares. Its preface makes the audacious argument that these are the kitāb al-maknūn, the hidden book the Qur'an refers to — placing them inside revelation rather than outside it. The consequences ran two ways, and both are extraordinary. Eastward: it cost him his life. Westward: this Persian text, not any Sanskrit one, is what Anquetil-Duperron turned into the Latin Oupnek'hat of 1801–02, which is what Schopenhauer read and called the consolation of his life. Every European encounter with Vedānta for a century ran through a Mughal prince's translation of a translation — the same kind of chain that turned the Buddha into Saint Josaphat one bench over.