MAHABHARATA CONDENSED INTO ENGLISH ... - Mandhata Global

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