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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 31Translation in Sarala’s hands, therefore, was a tool of subversion notonly of the text in question but also of the ideological structurerepresented by the texts and the social forces that were controllingthem. Sarala ostensibly was not in favour of the Brahminic ideologythat informed texts like Mahabharata and Ramayana. A lot ofviolence and mutilation has therefore accompanied his rendering ofthese texts into Oriya. Translation is more of a reshaping andreworking within a broad narrative framework, which is also anuncanny reflection of the redistribution of power among varioussocial groups in the society of those times.This dynamics of social processes and translationalmethodology seems to have continued in subsequent phases oftranslation giving rise to a methodological tradition, which is inessence an instinctive apprehension of the shifting socialperspective. What follows is an analysis of that phenomenon bylooking at a few representative translations across the ages. We mustclarify here that the texts or passages from them have not beenchosen at random because they also represent a pattern, a pattern ofemergence from the various aesthetic practices in the dominantlanguage Sanskrit and their assimilative appropriation into thepractices of translation in the target language Oriya.The Sanskrit aesthetic/scriptural practice ofelucidation/interpretation had been dominated for a long time by thepronouncements of Jaimini, Kumarila, and Mallinath. According toJaimini the three major axioms of interpretation are the autonomy ofverbal meaning, its impersonality and the unity of meaning (Chari1993:163). This formulation virtually closed the scope oftranslational practice, because any translation is bound to violate theautonomy and unity of a verbal structure. However, the scope ofexegetical discussion was not fully closed down. Moreover,Mallinath claims explicitly at the outset of his commentaries on