MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global
MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global
MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global
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From this method I have been compelled to depart, much against my wish, in the three<br />
books describing the actual war. No translation of an Epic relating to a great war can be<br />
acceptable which does not narrate the main events of the war. The war of the, Mahabharata<br />
was a series of eighteen battles, fought on eighteen consecutive days, and I felt it<br />
necessary to present the reader with an account of each day's work. In order to do so, I<br />
have been compelled to condense, and not merely to translate selected passages. For the<br />
transactions of the war, unlike the other incidents of the Epic, have been narrated in the<br />
original with almost inconceivable prolixity and endless repetition; and the process of<br />
condensation in these three books has therefore been severe and thorough. But,<br />
nevertheless, even in these books I have endeavoured to preserve the character and the<br />
spirit of the original. Not only are the incidents narrated in the same order as in the<br />
original, but they are told in the style of the poet as far as possible. Even the similes and<br />
metaphors and figures of speech are all or mostly adopted from the original; the translator<br />
has not ventured either to adopt his own distinct style of narration, or to improve on the<br />
style of the original with his own decorations.<br />
Such is the scheme I have adopted in presenting an Epic of ninety<br />
thousand Sanscrit couplets in about two thousand English couplets.<br />
The excellent and deservedly popular prose translation of the Odyssey of Homer by<br />
Messrs. Butcher and Lang often led me to think that perhaps a prose translation of these<br />
selected passages from the Maha-bharata might be more acceptable to the modern<br />
reader. But a more serious consideration of the question dispelled that idea. Homer has an<br />
interest for the European reader which the Maha-bharata cannot lay claim to; as the<br />
father of European poetry he has a claim on the veneration of modern Europe which an<br />
Indian poet can never pretend to. To thousands of European readers Homer is familiar in<br />
the original, to hundreds of thousands he is known in various translations in various<br />
modern languages. What Homer actually wrote, a numerous class of students in Europe<br />
wish to know; and a literal prose translation therefore is welcome, after the great Epic has<br />
been so often translated in verse. The case is very different with the Maha-bharata,<br />
practically unknown to European readers. And the translators of Homer themselves<br />
gracefully acknowledge, "We have tried to transfer, not all the truth about the poem, but<br />
the historical truth into English. In this process Homer must lose at least half his charm,<br />
his bright and equable speed, the musical current of that narrative, which, like the river of<br />
Egypt, flows from an undiscoverable source, and mirrors the temples and the palaces of<br />
unforgotten gods and kings. Without the music of verse, only a half truth about Homer<br />
can be told."<br />
Another earnest worker of the present day, who is endeavouring to interpret to modern<br />
Englishmen the thoughts and sentiments and poetry of their Anglo-Saxon ancestors, has<br />
emphatically declared that "of all possible translations of poetry, a merely prose<br />
translation is the most inaccurate." "Prose," says Mr. Stopford Brooke, further on, "no<br />
more represents poetry than architecture does music. Translations of poetry are never<br />
much good, but -it least they should always endeavour to have the musical movement of<br />
poetry, and to obey the laws of the verse they translate."