The Mahabharata

The ancient civilization of India differs from those of Egypt, Mesopotamia and Greece, in that its traditions have been preserved without a break down to the present day-A.L. Basham,The Wonder that was India

Though the above mentioned proposition and the title of the book are paradoxical, yet we are charmed by the former, not the latter. If the proposition is true, we would be inclined to change the title into The Wonder that is India.

One of the reasons why India (Bharatavarsa) as an idea and an entity is a wonder is its experience of the past as the living presence. The past flows along and within the present. The past never passes away. Which could in a certain sense, explain the typical Indian disinclination to mummify the past as a document called history. Even the Indian artists considered it blasphemous to leave their personal mark on their creations, dedicating them to their cherished deities instead. It is especially true of the Mahabharata, the greatest epic ever written. The civilizational memory that the Mahabharata carries with it contains in sedimented layers the genetic prints of all forms and modes of human experience as enfolded in the peninsula. The Mahabharata is thus a metahistory. Starting from granny’s world of stories to the attainment of our second-childhood (grannyhood) the Mahabharata is never far from our narrative consciousness. It is the primal source of sense of all our stories; the repertoire of all our archetypes. That is why it is proclaimed of the Mahabharata: “what is not in it is nowhere”. As R.K.Narayan in his retelling of the Mahabharata posits: “it is a greatest tale with well-defined characters who talk and act with robustness and zest—heroes and villains, saints and kings, women of beauty, all displaying great human qualities as well as power, satanic hates and intrigues all presented against an impressive background of ancient royal capitals, forests and mountains”.

Translation being a major component of comparative literature, it is necessary to know more of the translations and adaptations of the Mahabharata into various regional bhasas in our country. In the western tradition, the translation of the Bible stands as the paradigm for all subsequent translations, religious or secular. An intransigent conception of fidelity, in the literal sense, to the letter of the text, is the hallmark of biblical translations. In the Indian tradition, however, a certain measure of latitude is given to the translator to depart from the source language text (SLT). Such freedom is teleological: it allows the translator to free into purposive play his creative ability to build upon, restructure, ramify or amplify the original.