Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/315



need scarcely be remarked that the few passages from the Upanishads are quoted from Professor Deussen's Sechzig Upanishads des Veda. To the second great translation of this excellent and indefatigable inquirer, Die Sutras des Vedanta, my tenth chapter owes its origin. If this curious piece is in substance a presentation of Indian Uebermenschentum—as the extreme antithesis to Buddhism—it is in its form a painfully accurate copy of the Vedantic Sutra style, with the enigmatic brevity of the text, the true principle of which—as Deussen has rightly recognised—consists in giving only catchwords for the memory, but never the words that are important to the sense. In this way the text could without danger be fixed in writing, since it was incomprehensible without the oral commentary of the teacher, which thus usually became all the more pedantically intricate. Indeed, these Kali-Sutras—like the whole Vajaçravas—are a jocular fiction of mine—but one, I believe, which will be granted by every student of ancient India, to be within the bounds of the possible—nay, of the probable. India is indeed the land where even the robber must philosophise.

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