Jean-Denis Lanjuinais. 1823. “Observations sur quelques Ouvrages de Rammohun-Roy.” Journal asiatique. October 1823. pp. 243–249.
Lanjuinais, who had already reviewed the Anquetil-Duperron’s Latin translation of Dārā Šokōh’s Persian translation of the Upaniṣads, takes up the exciting work of Rāmmohun Rōy, the celebrated scholar of Calcutta who began publishing English translations of Upaniṣads and Vedānta philosophy.
Lanjuinais compares Rōy’s translation of the Īśa Upaniṣad to those of Sir William Jones and of Anquetil-Duperron. Jones and Rōy are praised for their accuracy and concision, while Anquetil-Duperron is criticized for his “long and useless paraphrasing” and the “insertion of words and dogmas wholly Islamic”, undoubtedly due to the intervening Persian translation.
Lanjuinais then notes that Rōy’s purpose in translating the Upaniṣads was to find native Indian resources for combating polytheism. He writes approvingly of Rōy’s condemnation of satī using ancient Indian literature, which, to Lanjuinais’ mind, will be the only way of dissuading modern Hindus from their old barbarisms:
| On ne portait point de lois nouvelles chez les Hindous; ou s’en tenait à d’antiques et prétendues lois révélées, et à des usages que les grands précédens avaient, disait-on, recueillis, et qu’ils avaient dans la suite éclaircis ou embrouillés par des commentaires qui ne sont pas toujours d’accord entre eux. | One should bring no new laws among the Hindus; one should stick with ancient or supposedly revealed laws, and to customs which the great forbears have, one might say, collected, and which have been in the meantime clarified or muddled by commentaries that no longer agree with each other. |
