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While Jagannatha remains close to the spirit of the original, discusses the same themes, takes up the same issues, he also introduces variations of his own, extends certain metaphors, sometimes intensifies certain images and often elaborates and elucidates. In other words, there are places where the translation also extends into commentary.

To begin with, the content of the four verses of the Sanskrit text are covered in around 20 short verses in the Oriya Bhagavata. As indicated earlier, the metre is different, the approach elucidatory, giving rise to certain repetitions that one doesn’t find in the Sanskrit text. This is an interesting point since by very nature, Oriya didactic poetry is repetitive. It is a part of this tradition. On the other hand Sanskrit verses are aphoristic more often and pithy, given as they are to condensation by the very compounding of words. Such attempt at pithiness hardly exists anywhere in the Oriya literary tradition and is in fact alien to it. While the Sanskrit Bhagavata is elucidatory in nature in the context of Sanskrit verse, compared to the Oriya text, it is very compressed.

The Oriya text, here, begins with a metaphor – one which is cultural and very powerful. He uses the metaphor of the net or the web for the world. Entrapment in the world of desires is the theme of both the texts, but in the Oriya text, the metaphor of the net is new. Maya Jala or the “illusory web” of the world is a very common metaphor in Oriya religious poetry. The poet uses it here in the Oriya text to intensify the state of affairs with the fallen woman who feels entrapped.

           Another interesting case is the use of extended metaphor and its elaboration. Both in the Sanskrit and the Oriya tradition, the body being seen as a ‘cage’ is a very powerful cultural metaphor. In the Bhakti poetry of the 16^th – 17^th century Orissa, it is very frequently used. In this context, the Oriya text extends this metaphor, elaborates on it and highlights the disgusting elements that constitute this body. The reference to “diseases” is also new, not directly referred to in the Sanskrit text.

           Is it not possible to go through a text, internalize it, and then express it in your own cultural context as cogently as possible? Is it not possible to take a metaphor and then extend it in order to intensify it? Is it not possible to elaborate, give flesh to stories or outlines that stand bare in the “original?” Is it not possible to get out of the mindset that makes one the “original” and the other the “copy?” I believe all these things happen when we look at “translation” in the Indian context.

          Both the Sanskrit and the Oriya works seek inspiration prior to the beginning the work. If we had a translation in the literal sense, as we understand it today, the Oriya text would have sought the blessings for the poet of the Sanskrit text. But that does not happen. The Oriya text seeks inspiration and blessings for itself – its travails and smooth journey.

In this tradition, not only does the author internalize the text, but the text also internalizes the author. For instance, at the end of almost each chapter, Jagannatha says something like this:

The tale of these twenty-four gurus

Uddhaba tells, O Chakrapani.

That tale is one of great delight.

And this is the summary of the eleventh canto…

Jagannatha Dasa tells this

Setting his mind at the feet of Lord Krishna. (11^th Canto, chapter 10)

The author of the Oriya Bhagavata has made the text his own and is himself embedded within the text. This is another common feature of much medieval poetry of India.

          The notion of translation, as we understand it today, involves an ‘original author’ and an ‘original text’. Faithfulness, devotion, textual integrity are highlighted; or else one rebels against them; they are never transcended. In the Indian tradition, internalization and transformation appropriate to the cultural context are indicated. Even as the author absorbs, the author is absorbed too.

           However, a word of caution! Not all texts are or can be treated in this way, even in the Indian tradition. For instance, there was hardly any attempt to translate the Vedas into any other language prior to colonization. Vedas are apaurusheya (= not man-made), and are transmitted by sruti (= listening). They cannot be made one’s own the way the Puranas can be. From the point of view of content, the meaning of the Vedas is embedded in the sound. Meaning proliferates at various levels – only one of them is literal. At another level meaning and sound are so closely linked that separating them divests them of all meaning. Mantras thus become untranslatable (Roy: 2004).

          But the same is not the case with Bhagvad Gita, which is considered anonymous in origin. In the Oriya language itself, there must be at least five Gitas between the 15^th and 17^th century A.D. The framework became so popular that almost any treatise on any religious subject started making use of it. In such a context, Gita referred to the format (Krishna and Arjuna) and not to the content. What was translated, if at all it can be called that, was the form (even proforma) and not the content.

In the context of philosophical works, there were not many translations, at least from Sanskrit to the regional languages. For instance, I know of no translations of Sanskrit philosophical works into Oriya in the pre-colonial context. This could possibly be because those who indulged in philosophy were expected to know Sanskrit. It was the language of philosophy and there was no popular demand for philosophy as there was for Puranas or the epics.

An exploration of the translation of Pali canonical texts into Sanskrit would give us a lot of insight into the strategies followed in translating philosophical texts. However such an exploration would be outside the tether of this paper.

            Let us now at Indian aesthetics and Indian poetics seeking some light on the act(ivity) we call ‘translation’.

                                                                           Section II

            The various art forms, in the Indian context, are closely interrelated. This is indicated in many ancient treatises on art as I have pointed out elsewhere (Patnaik: 2004). For instance, the Visnudharmottara (Part 3, cpt 2, Verse 1-9), in a passage emphasizing the knowledge required to understand image-making, says:

Lord of men, he who does not know properly the rules of chitra can, by no means, be able to discern the characteristics of image… Without any knowledge of the art of dancing, the rules of painting are very difficult to be understood... The practice of dancing is difficult to be understood by one who is not acquainted with music… without singing, music cannot be understood. (Kramrisch: 1928, 31-32)

In the context of dance, vachikabhinaya (expression through words) can be easily translated into angikabhinaya (expression through gestures) since an elaborate and well developed language of gestures exists which is capable both of description and narration.

          Concepts like alamkara (ornamentations), dosas (defects), gunas (qualities), bhavas (emotions expressed successfully through art) and riti (style) are common to music, painting, dance as well as literature. It is perhaps because of this interrelation that around the 16^th century A.D., there evolved a form of painting known as Ragmala. This is the depiction of the ragas (musical forms) through a series of paintings. Such a radical conceptualization – translating something that is temporal and transient into something spatial and static – would not have been possible without a set up in which the various art forms shared many values, strategies and ideals.

Hence, stories belonging to the corpus of our tradition could be enacted in plays, dance forms, indicated in murals or paintings or transmitted through songs. A great degree of translatability among modes existed in such a tradition. Notions of authorship did not interfere with such translations or, as I have tried to suggest, ‘transmutations’.

          In the background of such inter-modal exchanges that Indian aesthetics permitted, it is not difficult to point to possible ways of translating between different languages and even cultures.

           I shall begin with the observations that T.R.S. Sharma makes about Indian poetics and translation and then build on those ideas. In the context of rasa, he considered it the shaping principle, the inner rhetoricity working through the text and shaping it (Sharma 2004: 148-49). Rasa can also be considered the aesthetic emotion that pervades the work that gives it its emotion-based orientation. Unless this is successfully transmitted to the audience, according to Indian poetics, the work fails. The same principle can apply to translation. Though it looks apparently innocent, this can be radical when applied to translation – the translation may, if necessary, have to use totally different words or figures or configurations in order to successfully evoke similar emotions (to the source text) in another language or another culture. Thus, rasa, as a guiding principle, allows for departure from textual, word-for-word translation. If we look at Jagannatha’s Bhagavata, the different verse form used can be justified in these terms – the cultural difference required a different verse form which was lucid and seemed effortless. But I do not of course wish to indicate that Jagannatha’s choice was necessarily based on rasa theory.

 

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