MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global
MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global
MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global
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the concluding books of the Epic is familiar to a larger circle of Englishmen. A complete<br />
translation of the Epic into English prose has also been published in India, and is useful<br />
to Sanscrit scholars for the purpose of reference.<br />
But although the old Epic had thus been spoilt by unlimited expansion, yet nevertheless<br />
the leading incidents and characters of the real Epic are still discernible, uninjured by the<br />
mass of foreign substance in which they are embedded--even like those immortal marble<br />
figures which have been recovered from the ruins of an ancient world, and now beautify<br />
the museums of modern Europe. For years past I have thought that it was perhaps not<br />
impossible to exhume this buried Epic from the superincumbent mass of episodical<br />
matter, and to restore it to the modern world. For years past I have felt a longing to<br />
undertake this work, but the task was by no means an easy one. Leaving out all episodical<br />
matter, the leading narrative of the Epic forms about one-fourth of the work; and a<br />
complete translation even of this leading story would be unreadable, both from its length<br />
and its prolixness. On the other hand, to condense the story into shorter limits would be,<br />
not to make a translation, but virtually to write a new poem; and that was not what I<br />
desired to undertake, nor what I was competent to perform.<br />
There seemed to me only one way out of this difficulty. The main incidents of the Epic<br />
are narrated in the original work in passages which are neither diffuse nor unduly prolix,<br />
and which are interspersed in the leading narrative of the Epic, at that narrative itself is<br />
interspersed in the midst of more lengthy episodes. The more carefully I examined the<br />
arrangement, the more clearly it appeared to me that these main incidents of the Epic<br />
would bear a full and unabridged translation into English verse; and that these<br />
translations, linked together by short connecting notes, would virtually present the entire<br />
story of the Epic to the modem reader in a form and within limits which might be<br />
acceptable. It would be, no doubt, a condensed version of the original Epic, but the<br />
condensation would be effected, not by the translator telling a short story in his own<br />
language, but by linking together those passages of the original which describe the main<br />
and striking incidents, and thus telling the main story as told in the original work. The<br />
advantage of this arrangement is that, in the passages presented to the reader, it is the poet<br />
who speaks to him, not the translator. Though vast portions of the original are skipped<br />
over, those which are presented are the portions which narrate the main incidents of the<br />
Epic, and they describe those incidents as told by the poet himself.<br />
This is the plan I have generally adopted in the present work. Except in the three books<br />
which describe the actual war (Books viii., ix., and x.), the other nine books of this<br />
translation are complete translations of selected passages of the original work. I have not<br />
attempted to condense these passages nor to expand them; I have endeavoured to put<br />
them before the English reader as they have been told by the poet in Sanscrit.<br />
Occasionally, but rarely, a few redundant couplets have been left out, or a long list of<br />
proper names or obscure allusions has been shortened; and in one place only, at the<br />
beginning of the Fifth Book, I have added twelve couplets of my own to explain the<br />
circumstances under which the story of Savitri is told. Generally, therefore, the<br />
translation may be accepted as an unabridged, though necessarily a free translation of the<br />
passages describing the main incidents of the Epic.