The Early Upanisads: Annotated Text and Translation

Patrick Olivelle is a Sanskritist specializing in ancient Indian religious literature, and this book, published by Oxford University Press, is a scholarly annotated translation of the earliest Upanisads with the original Sanskrit text alongside Olivelle's English translation and detailed textual notes. Its strength is that it is grounded in Olivelle's own critical edition of the Sanskrit text, correcting and updating earlier translations such as Max Muller's nineteenth century rendering with more recent philological scholarship. Its limit is that, as a technical scholarly edition, it is written for readers with some interest in textual and philological detail rather than as a simplified popular introduction to Upanishadic thought, though its translations are considered a standard modern reference.