The Upanishads

The translator and compiler of this edition of the Upanishads, Juan Mascaró, was born in 1897 to parents who were farmers. He was a native of Majorca, a Mediterranean island near the coast of eastern Spain. His native language was Catalan, a Romance language spoken in the Pyrenees region and what is now eastern Spain and southwestern France. In fact, in Catalan Mascaró’s first name was spelled “Joan,” but he changed it to the common Spanish spelling “Juan” to avoid confusion with the English feminine name “Joan.” As a teenager, Mascaró became interested in religion, especially Hinduism and Buddhism, and read a translation of the important Hindu text, the Bhagavid Gita. Since the translation was poor, Mascaró began teaching himself Sanskrit so he could read the original text.

Mascaró took a job at the British Consulate in Palma, the capital of Majorca. Using the connections he formed there, he became a student at the University of Cambridge. At Cambridge he studied English literature, religion, and the languages of Sanskrit and Pali, a classical Indian language which had been used to write early Buddhist texts. He taught at universities in Sri Lanka and then Barcelona, but he left Spain for Britain when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.