Classical neglect

There has been a steady dribble of modern translations of important texts in Sanskrit and other classical languages (Prakrit, Pali, Tamil) from the West, but very, very few coming out of India, especially in the post-independence years. Sanskrit professor Prafull Gadpal, who has been working to translate the ancient text Divyavandana into Hindi without even knowing who will publish it, epitomises the anomaly.

Divyavandana, a vast collection of early stories about the Buddha that scholars say was written down sometime in the second century AD, is one of the main sources for what we know today of the history, culture and religious practices of Mauryan India. Discovered by British civil servant BH Hodgson in Nepal in the early nineteenth century, parts of it were first translated into English in 1844 by the pioneering French Sanskrit and Pali scholar Eugene Burnouf. In the century and half since, several Western scholars have translated it, the best known being John Strong of Princeton University (Ashokavandana, or The Legend of Emperor Ashoka, 1983), Canadian scholar Joel Tatelman (four cantos for the Clay Sanskrit Library in 2005), and Andy Rotman (Smith College, US), whose translation of the first 17 cantos came out in 2008.

However, there has been no translation of Divyavandana in the country of its origin —though one Indian, PL Vaidya, made a significant addition to scholarship with his critical edition in Devnagiri in 1959.

For Gadpal, an assistant professor at Delhi's Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan who's working to correct the imbalance, it's a labour of love. The Sansthan, a deemed university set up in 1970 by the central government to "propagate, develop and encourage Sanskrit learning and research", has not commissioned Gadpal to translate the text. But the professor has nonetheless been hard at work for more than a year, taking time out from his duties at the university's distance learning programme to pore over a dog-eared, spiral-bound photocopy of the 1959 edition compiled by Vaidya.

"I don't know how long it will take and who will publish it," Gadpal confesses. The Gadpal-Divyavandana tale reflects the neglect to translate important texts in Sanskrit and other classical languages for today's generation.
"There has been no major dedicated translation programme to translate books in Sanskrit or other classical languages into English or Indian languages. The government had set up the National Translation Mission around a decade ago, but the focus has been on translating classics of European languages into Indian languages. Translations of classical texts was never on the agenda, unlike in the West," agrees Radhavallabh Tripathi, former vice-chancellor of the Sansthan.

Some efforts
In recent decades, the Sansthan has been at the forefront of scholarly publishing in Sanskrit. But going by its catalogue, its emphasis has been on bringing out critical editions, anthologies and commentaries — with translations (in Hindi, not English) few and far between. Also, religious texts such as the Vedas, Puranas, the epics and commentaries thereof, dominate.

Among government institutions, the Sahitya Akademi has an active Sanskrit-language publishing programme, including translations, notable among which are Kalidasa's poems and plays (eight volumes), and Astadhyayi, Panini's treatise on Sanskrit grammar (13 volumes), brought out between 1992 and 2007.

The Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), an ancillary body of the union culture ministry, has over the years built a catalogue of translations of well-known and obscure texts not just in Sanskrit, but also on aesthetics and the arts. It has, for instance, brought out translations of two important seventh century books in Persian called the Tarjuma-i-Manakutuhala and Risala-i-Ragadarpana. These are modern, critical translations with all scholarly appurtenances — footnotes, annotations, glossaries and the like.

There have been several endeavours in this sphere in the non-governmental sector. Best known among these is the Gita Press in Gorakhpur which brought out a series of lucid, faithful and cheap translations into Hindi and other Indian languages of the principal religious texts: Bhagavad Gita, Ramcharitmanas, Upanishads and the Vedas. Among the translations done post-independence are English poet and publisher P. Lal's translation of the Mahabharata, and NP Unni's of Kalidasa's works, published by various small publishing houses. In recent years, Penguin has brought out a steady selection of translated classics — not just of the well-known names like Kalidasa, but also those of lesser known figures such as Nammalvar and Kshemendra.

Western domination
Sanskrit studies, as we know it today, grew largely in the West through the efforts, mostly in the early eighteenth century, by soldiers and civil servants like Brian Hodgson, James Prinsep, William Jones and Horace Wilson, who discovered these manuscripts, copied them out or carried them back to the West, and translated them. However, 'post-colonial' scholars today point out that these were not disinterested endeavours, but a part of the British project to colonise India. Be as it may, the fact remains that these were the forefathers of a thriving Sanskrit studies tradition in the West, carried on now by departments in well-known Western universities at Berkeley, Brown, Heidelberg, Oxford and Cambridge.

The India story was quite different. "The growth of British systems of education resulted in the languishing of traditional gurukuls where Sanskrit was taught. As a result, scholarship in Sanskrit or even proficiency in the language has suffered," said SN Jha, professor at the Sansthan.

In the early post-independence decade, a few institutes such as the Bhandarkar Institute of Oriental Research, Deccan College, and the Mithila Institute made notable translations of classic texts. But, in a very real sense, the Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI), announced this January, is the first concerted effort from within India to open up the rich and vast corpus of classical literature to the world. Rohan Murty, the son of Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, has set up MCLI with a $5.2 million donation with the intent of coming up with authoritative, lucid and contemporary translations of 500 classics of Indian literature. Five of these were unveiled at the launch function: a volume of Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari, Bulle Shah's Sufi poetry, Manu Charitra by 16th century Telugu poet Allasani Peddana, an anthology of poems in Pali by female Buddhist bhikshus called Therigatha, and Sursagar, a collection of poems by Surdas.

The irony, of course, is that Murty has tied up with Harvard University for the project, which is inspired by the famous Clay Sanskrit Library, a landmark initiative by American millionaire and Sanskritist John Clay. From the 1990s, when it began, to 2009, Clay's initiative brought out 56 volumes — 15 volumes on the Mahabharata, five of Ramayana, besides some of the Kathasaritsagar, the poetry and plays of legends such as Kalidasa, Bhartrihari, Bhatta, Jayadeva and Kshemendra.

Sheldon Pollock, who is general editor of MCLI, was earlier co-general editor of Clay Sanskrit Library. The translators, thus far, are all leading lights of Sanskrit studies or comparative religion departments in marquee American universities, all but one of Indian origin. This dominance of Western scholars, say Indian Sanskrit scholars, leads to bias in the translations. "There are many renowned scholars of Sanskrit in the West, but what they lack is cultural understanding. As a result, their references to Indian gods can be downright offensive to Indian sensibilities," says Tripathi.

That may be true. What is needed is academics like Gadpal who will get the cultural nuances right. But where is the incentive and backing so that more people like him can come forward to fill up this critical gap in our learning of our past?