Paul Deussen was born on 7 January 1845 in Oberdreis, Neuwied in the Rhine Province,[3] one of eight children of a clergyman of modest means.

He became a student, and lifelong devotee, of the German philosopher Schopenhauer, and of the philosophy of Kant; and he became a friend of Friedrich Nietzsche.

It was when he attended a lecture at the University of Bonn by Professor Christian Lassen (1800-1876), expounding the Shakuntala, that Deussen was fired by Sanskrit and Hinduism.

[citation needed] Deussen's System of the Vedanta has been reprinted several times: he uses the Brahmasutra and – rather less — Adi Shankara's commentary on it, as the structure for his exposition.

[4] Paul Deussen's name is thus linked with George Boucher, Sir William Jones and Sir John Woodroffe in British India, Anquetil-Duperron and Eugène Burnouf in France, Heinrich Roth, Franz Bopp, Friedrich von Schlegel and Max Müller in Germany, in the European revelation of the wealth of Hinduism as revealed by Sanskrit documents.