Maha-Vakyam or "great sayings":--Tat twam asi (That thou art) and
Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman). This oneness of Soul and God lies
at the very root of all Vedic thought, and it is this dominant
ideal of the unity of all life and the oneness of Truth which
makes the study of the Upanishads especially beneficial at the
present moment.

One of the most eminent of European Orientalists writes: "If we
fix our attention upon it (this fundamental dogma of the Vedanta
system) in its philosophical simplicity as the identity of God
and the Soul, the Brahman and the Atman, it will be found to
possess a significance reaching far beyond the Upanishads, their
time and country; nay, we claim for it an inestimable value for
the whole race of mankind. .

Whatever new and unwonted paths the philosophy of the future may
strike out, this principle will remain permanently unshaken and
from it no deviation can possibly take place. If ever a general
solution is reached of the great riddle . . . the key can only be
found where alone the secret of nature lies open to us from
within, that is to say, in our innermost self. It was here that
for the first time the original thinkers of the Upanishads, to
their immortal honor, found it...."

The first introduction of the Upanishads to the Western world was
through a translation into Persian made in the seventeenth
century. More than a century later the distinguished French
scholar, Anquetil Duperron, brought a copy of the manuscript from
Persia to France and translated it into French and Latin.
Publishing only the Latin text. Despite the distortions which