This sudden discovery of a vast literature , which had remained unknown for so many centuries to the western world, was the most important event of its kind since the rediscovery of the treasures of classical Greek literature at the renaissance., and luckily it coincided with the GermanRomantic revival. The Upanishads came to Schaupenhaur as a new gnosis of revelation.
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Through Schopenhaur and von Hartsmann, Sanskrit philosophy profoundly affected the German transcendentalism. Kants’s great central doctrine, that things of experience are only the phenomena of the thing-in-itself, essentially that of Upanishads. … Kant was indeed, deeply concerned with Indian culture, and lectured on Indian on the basis of the knowledge available at that period. … The poem in honour of Luke Howard, the English meteorologist, written by Goethe in 1821 is, on the other hand, full of conscious allusions to the Meghadut.

Shakuntala was translated into German by Forster in 1791, and was welcomed by Herder and Goethe with the same enthusiasm that Schopenhauer had shown for Upanishads. Goethe’s epigram on the drama is well known….
Wouldst thau the young year’s blossoms and fruits of decline.
And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed
Wouldst thou the earth and Heaven itself in one sole name combine.
I name the, O Shakuntala! and all at once is said.
The prologue of Faust…is modelled on the prologue of the Sanskrit drama….Goethe had at one time formed a plan for adapting Shakuntala for German stage.