Download Complete Volume - National Translation Mission

58 Translating Medieval Orissaexample, which was never under Muslim rule, where the Oriyalanguage was used. In this essay, we have tried to train our attentionon all these fragments, as much can be gained from a look at thecontext that surrounds texts translated into the Oriya language. Thisis a rather humble attempt, in the sense that it employs a novelmethod of constructing history, but is constrained by a paucity offactual evidence because of the very nature of methodology andenquiry.We have tried to limit our enquiry to the system of knowledgeproductionand dissemination in medieval Orissa. This society wasnot very literate, if being literate meant having access toinstitutionalized knowledge, which was codified in Sanskrit. In sucha society, translation has played a more important role than the socalledcreative literature, catering solely to aesthetic enjoyment inmediating various types of knowledge and its dissemination within avery short span of time. Contrary to popular perception, we havedemonstrated that much before Macaulay’s time, a people’slanguage was already privy to a vast body of knowledge that hadbeen under the control of the elite only because of the intervention oftranslation as practice. Translation truly democratized the episteme.Since ideology plays a crucial role in the institutionalizationof knowledge, we have tried to unearth the ideological basis oftranslational practices in the Orissan society of the period understudy. It is apparent that translational practice in Orissa has not beenartificial or bureaucratic in any sense--- there have not been manyinstances of translation undertaken by learned men in various royalcourts. It is rather, in Vazquez’s words, a “creative praxis”,enriching the social self (for a distinction between bureaucraticpraxis and creative praxis, see Vazquez 1966: 200-214) and cateringto social needs.