Source, exegesis, and translation: Sanskrit commentary and regional language translation in South Asia.

• Author: Patel, Deven M.
• Position: Essay

INTRODUCTION

A range of remarkable transformations marks India's literary history in the late medieval to early modern period. (1) Established forms of literary composition, prevailing exegetical practices, and new creative genres such as the regional-language translation began to share spaces in a literary culture marked by complex intersections and convergences that linked the efforts of multi-lingual poets with professional pedagogues and wider audiences for literature. What follows is an exploration of some of these relationships, particularly the strong affinities Sanskrit commentaries share with translations of Sanskrit poems into regional languages and new adaptations of older Sanskrit works in the same language. These translation efforts (both inter-lingual and intra-lingual) reveal a deep familiarity with the methods and procedures of Sanskrit commentaries and employ them to mediate, reorient, and sometimes displace Sanskrit literary texts in varying forms, degrees, and contexts. They also represent a new kind of exegesis, whose functions in the pedagogical cultures of South Asia overlap with the work of the traditional commentary. These translations represent, therefore, not only inaugurating moments in the literary history of regional languages but also reflect philosophical shifts in attitudes toward literature, embodying debates and ideas forged in pedagogical contexts and reproduced in new creative forms.

With the emergence of new literary cultures in South Asia, Sanskrit commentaries inevitably began to share their functions with regional language translation. Translators, in turn, absorbed and adapted commentarial practices for their own creative purposes. One important tactic appears to have been the adoption of the Sanskrit commentary's surface text and/or its itinerant compositional strategies. Thus, for example, syntax is often reordered into a standard prose order; synonyms are strategically inserted for explanatory or creative effect; meanings implied or suggested in the original are unpacked and expanded in the reformatted commentary or translation. Other standard practices of commentators are, as expected, dropped by translators: citations from texts on lexicography (Amarakoth, etc.) and grammar (P[a.bar]nini's s[u.bar]tras), for instance; identification of particular alamk[a.bar]ras; and, most visibly, multiple readings or interpretations for any given lexical or semantic unit in the root text. Another important feature usually found ain both Sanskrit commentaries and regional-language translations is the inclusion of a pointed preface. Because commentators and translating poets are anxious about how successful they were in rephrasing or representing their source text, their introductory remarks reveal a strikingly similar attitude to their root texts. Both, at turns, affirm their loyalty to the original's intent and profusely praise the Sanskrit poet. Sensing that they are rewriting the original-- the commentators through a special kind of paraphrase and the translator through an audacious presumption that a classic original can be somehow replicated and even, perhaps, reformed in another language--the commentator and the translator unsurprisingly find themselves apologetic.

The case of the widely read Naisadh[i.bar]yacarita (or Naisadhacarita, Nc) is particularly instructive for sorting out the dynamic and often complicated interrelationships of commentary and translation during the first several centuries of the second millennium. The Naisadhiyacarita (often just called Naisadh[i.bar]ya) is a mah[a.bar]k[a.bar]vya composed in the twelfth century by poet and philosopher Sr[i.bar]harsa. It famously recounts the early life of the epic hero-king Nala. The poem bookends a canonical formulation of the five Sanskrit court epics (pa[n.bar]camah[a.bar]k[a.bar]vya) and has long held a cherished place in the traditional system of Sanskrit education. Naturally, as foundational documents of Sanskrit pedagogical culture, commentaries on the Naisadh[i.bar]ya abound. Glossa and interpretive commentaries of the poem proliferated soon after its initial appearance. Their prefaces especially suggest that a lively academic culture of contestation and pedagogical debate accompanied the poem's reception; in these opening statements Naisadh[i.bar]ya commentators often defiantly uphold the merits of their contribution and denigrate the work of others in a spirit of robust competition. Indeed, between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, writing a worthy commentary on the Naisadhiya apparently conferred upon its author the title of mahamahopadhyaya, something akin to a university professorship. (2) Alongside its Obvious significance for commentators, the mahakavya was also a lightning rod for translation and adaptation. The Naisadhiya is perhaps the first and most important Sanskrit mahakavya to be translated into regional premodern Indian languages and intralingual Sanskrit versions. As objects of outright translation, these mah[a.bar]k[a.bar]vyas served as models for both imitation and rhetorical innovation. In this regard translations of the Naisadh[i.bar]ya played a crucial role in establishing the status of several newly emerging regional literary cultures.

Among the multiple literary re-workings of this masterpiece, three examples are considered below to -demonstrate the richly interwoven textures of commentary writing and translation in premodern India. The first is Bh[A.bar]lan's fifteenth-century Gujarati work Nal[A.bar]khy[A.bar]n (Nal[A.bar]); the second Srindtha's Telugu grngara-naisadham (or Naisadhamu) (SrN) from the late four-teenth century. The final work considered is Krsndnanda's thirteenth-century Sanskrit poem Sahrday[A.bar]nanda (Sahrd). Examined alongside verses translated from the Naisadhiya in these creative works are the corresponding commentaries on these verses in three standard commentaries of Saharsa's poem: the Dipika ("Illustrator") of Cartclupanclita from the thirteenth century, fourteenth-century Mallin[A.bar]tha's J[A.bar]v[A.bar]tu ("Enlivener"), and Narayana Bectarkara's sixteenth-century Prak[A.bar]sa ("Illuminator"). While not implying that regional language translators of the poem and post-Naisadhiyacarita Sanskrit poets for whom Sr[i.bar]harsa's poem--is an intertext--were intimately familiar with formal commentaries, or themselves commentators (although some of them apparently were), it does appear that a commentarial consciousness closely allied to that found in Sanskrit commentaries informs their translations in ways that invite close analysis. Collectively, I argue, these documents participate in a larger project of translatio studii that takes place over several centuries and reveal, in part, the diversity of literary practices during what Sheldon Pollock (1998) has called "the vernacular millennium."

NAL[A.bar]KHY[A.bar]N AND NAISDH[I.bar]YACARITA

With the composition of the Nal[a.bar]khy[a.bar]n, Bh[a.bar]lan inaugurates a new genre of Gujarati literature known as the [a.bar]khy[a.bar]n, a form which transports metrically tight, but thematically loose, verse composition (pada-m[a.bar]l[a.bar]) into a formal narrative (akhyan) dimension with clear boundaries or links (kadavu). In rendering the Nala episode of the Mahabharata into Old Gujarati, Bh[a.bar]lan explicitly clarifies the great epic as his source text while implicitly engaging with, in an obviously intertextual relationship, the Naiyadhiyacarita. In articulating a Gujarati literary consciousness through his Nal[a.bar]khy[a.bar]n--this is the first time the word [a.bar]khy[a.bar]n is used and the first time the language (bhaka)-- is called something akin to Gujarati (gufara-bh[a.bar]k[a.bar])-- Bh[a.bar]lan's prefatory remarks position the poet and his work in terms of the Sanskrit literary world's cultural capital through an economic code of power disparity: the mighty, wealthy, and successful Sanskrit literati contrasted with the lowly, poor, and downtrodden Gujarati (Nal[a.bar]khy[a.bar]n 1.1-1.5). (3)

While Bh[a.bar]lan claims his chief intertext to be the Nala episode found in Vy[a.bar]sa's Mah[a.bar]bh[a.bar]rata (the word used in Nal[a.bar]khy[a.bar]n 1.2 is campu), it is clear, as will be seen below, that Sr[i.bar]harsa's Naiyadh[i.bar]ya is the most important source text for Bh[a.bar]lan's depiction of Nala's life up until his union with Damayant[i.bar]. Notably, Bhalan mentions neither the Naisadh[i.bar]ya nor Sr[i.bar]harsa and, therefore, does not consider his work to be a translation of the k[a.bar]vya. A close look at his translation, however, discloses to what extent his Gujarati rendering of the Nala story lexically and syntactically coincides with the paraphrases found in Sanskrit commentaries on the Naiyadh[a.bar]ya. In the fourth kadavu [canto, literally 'link of a chain'] of the Nal[a.bar]khy[a.bar]n, Bh[a.bar]lan combines two of Sr[i.bar]harsa's descriptions of Nala's outstanding character (details found in Naisyldh[i.bar]ya 1.14 and 1.16) and constructs a passage of six verses that condenses and reorders the semantic content of Sr[i.bar]harsa's verses. In Naisadh[i.bar]ya 1.13 Sr[i.bar]hara suggests that Nala was more powerful than the Sun. In verse 1.14, he continues with this theme:

tad-ojasas tad-yascasah sthitavimau vrtheti citte kurute yad[a.bar] yad[a.bar]/tanoti bhanoh parivesa-kaitav[a.bar]t tad[a.bar] vidhih kundalan[a.bar]m vidhor api // Nc 1.14 Whenever the thought comes to the Creator that those two are redundant in the presence of Nala's brilliance and eminence, he draws a circle around them to cross them out--that's the illusive halo around the Sun and the Moon. Here there is an implicit comparison of the Sun and Moon with king Nala's magisterial qualities: powerful brilliance, associated with the Sun, and the ubiquitous celebrity enjoyed by the Moon. The complex image combines several desires on the part of the poet: to profusely praise Nala, to...