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| Edited By: Jiby J Kattakayam |Source: DNA |Updated: Nov 10, 2016, 07:05 AM IST
Former diplomat A N D Haksar is one of the most prolific translators of Sanskrit literature to English. His major translations -- Kama Sutra, Shuka Saptati, Madhav and Kama, Subhashitavali -- have gone into multiple editions and been further translated into other foreign languages. Sanskrit was not solely the language of scriptures or the court, but also possesses a wide corpus of literature reflecting the everyday concerns of ordinary men and women, he tells Jiby J Kattakayam.
Penguin UK approached me in 2010 to translate the Kama Sutra. I told them that there are so many translations in the market. They said Penguin has a series called Penguin Classics and wanted a new translation. That attracted me and I agreed. Till then, I had not read the Kama Sutra. I got the original Sanskrit text published in Varanasi in 1964. While I was translating, I had a further correspondence with Penguin. I told them that Kama Sutra is identified in the popular mind with sex, and books on the Kama Sutra are identified with pornography, and there are number of illustrated and pictorial books on this in the market. After reading the original text, I found that these publications reflected only one portion of the text. It is a classical text deserving to be published as a classic. I asked Penguin to respect that and publish it as a classic and not as a pictorial. They agreed. The Kama Sutra comprises seven books. Out of seven, only one is about sex and positions. The rest is about different aspects of social life: courtship, mating, how men and women must behave with each other, discussions about polygamy, etc.
In the first chapter of Kama Sutra, Vatsayayana describes the overall ends of human life: Dharma, Artha and Kama. Dharma is the pursuit of righteousness, Artha is the pursuit of prosperity and material wellbeing and Kama is the pursuit of pleasure. Vatsyayana said different people have written on the first two subjects and now I prefer to write on the third subject. He says that even on Kama I am not the first one to write on it but I am merely trying to compress centuries of thought.
Don't forget that Kama Sutra got translated for the first time in the Victorian Age by Richard Burton. I don't think that is the reason. The impression was formed that Sanskrit literature is very ancient, very important, very good quality, and its main focus is religion and philosophy. In common parlance, people immediately associate Sanskrit with the Bhagwat Gita and the Vedas.
Besides religion, another impression is of Sanskrit as a court language. Sanskrit means well-made language, well-refined and sophisticated, the implication being it is for refined and sophisticated people and not for the common people. The impression about Sanskrit's refinement is correct. There is a lot of high class literature in Sanskrit. Earlier critics had divided Sanskrit into kavya (poetic) and katha (narrative) literature. Kavya works like Kalidasa's were what most scholars went after. There is also katha literature: literature written in simpler language. I discovered this literature in Shuka Saptati, which is about a young woman, Prabhavati, who is planning to visit her lover in her husband's absence and a parrot regaling the woman for 70 nights with tales of illicit affairs and romantic escapades. It is written in colloquial language, sometimes verging on the obscene, and most of them are in rural settings.The characters in this are not gods and goddesses or kings and queens; they are washerwomen, cobblers, barbers, etc. In the same context, I came across Madhav And Kama. The Sanskrit name of the text is Madhavanala Katha. I found this text had been very popular over many centuries. It had come to exist in numerous renditions in Gujarati, Rajasthan, and even Urdu.
I personally feel that what Vatsyayan writes in the Kama Sutra of the pursuit of goodness and morality, pursuit of prosperity and riches, and pursuit of pleasure, holds true today too. Similarly, many basic human inclinations and pursuits at the level of thinking, feeling and judging remain the same despite the passage of centuries. I am translating Bhartrihari's Shatakatrayam, which is on three centuries of verse: one century of verse is on worldly life, one century on pursuit of beauty and pleasure and one century of verse on renunciation. There is this one verse: "He who has money, is considered of a good family, considered to be wise, considered to be learned, considered to be even good-looking, because all merits reside in gold." This kind of thought is the same from one age to another.
That was a very satisfying period of my life. I was involved in historical situations, critical situations and I had the pleasure of meeting many great people. I retired in 1991. But translation was a complete break for me from the past. If I am able to bring through the mainstream of modern literature works that deserve to be there, I would be very pleased.
Kama Sutra
Shuka Saptati: Seventy Tales of the Parrot
Madhav and Kama: A Love Story from Ancient India
Subhashitavali: An Anthology of Comic, Erotic and other verse
Hitopadesha
Raghuvamsam
Suleiman Charitra
