Abstract
Cultures that embody and perform their memories rather than store them in disembodied external systems (archives) seem to remain indifferent to the activity of translation. For millennia Sanskrit, though circulating in a polyglot milieu, remained indifferent to translation and to the “foreign”. But the entire theoretical discussion on translation is entrenched in the Judaeo-Christian framework and thus remains impervious to the experience of Sanskrit. While exploring the interface between Sanskrit and Telugu as an act of responsive reception, this chapter critiques the dominant conception of translation.
[The] central disaster for any possibility of true communication between different cultures is the ‘critical’ turn in modern philosophy. In the wake of this turn, the model intellectual is an incredulous debunker, an observer far too clever to be duped by any particular belief about much of anything.
Harman (2005, p. 167)
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- 1.
This epithet is misleading here for Sanskrit has not developed any sense of a unified ethne as such; but it is used here to suggest how an outsider might perceive Sanskrit.
- 2.
Rajasekhara goes on to even identify regions where these languages excel (Gauda for Sanskrit, Lata and Maru [Gujarat-Rajasthan] for Prakrit; Takka-Buddhaka (found between Vipasha and Siddha rivers, Marwad, East Punjab, Sialkot) for Apabhramsha; Avanti, Pariyatra, Dashapura for Paishacha). Middle country people are competent in all the languages.
- 3.
Rajasekhara, it must be pointed out, is more inclined towards Prakrit than Sanskrit. He contends that Sanskrit emerged from Prakrit. The differences between these languages are, for him, like the differences between man (Sanskrit) and woman (Prakrit); for the former is more coarse and jarring and the latter delicate and sweet. Cf., Sreeramachandrudu, “Preface” to Kavyamimamsa (Rajasekhara 2003, pp. ix–xi).
- 4.
“Translation in the Near East had been going on ever since the second millennium BC and the translation of Sumerian documents into Akkadian” (Gutas 1998, p. 20).
- 5.
One can roughly sketch at least four pivotal “translation movements” from the beginning of the Common Era. The Latin/Roman translation and appropriation of Greek culture, as a kind of military exercise, said to have initiated a model of translation. Such appropriation has been described as the “victor’s prerogative” (St. Jerome’s phrase), of incorporating the foreign into the language of the triumphant: “this involves the pursuit, capture, and reduction of the foreigner’s meaning or ideas.” The triumphalist model of translation has repeated itself throughout European imperial expeditions (Spanish, Portuguese, British, French and in a different way German) into the 20th century (Claro 2009, pp. 108–111). Given that the Roman appropriation of Greek culture was devoid of any access to the originary experience of that culture, the triumphalism had no base to celebrate. “The groundlessness of Western thought begins with this translation”, contends Heidegger (quoted in Sallis 2002, p. 17). Such a model might have begun with the destructive expeditions of Alexander. Alexander is said to have pillaged the Persian archival repositories, got their works translated into Byzantine Greek and Coptic and finally condemned them to destruction. One can track the second translation movement precisely as a Persian reaction to Alexander’s destruction. The resurgent Persia, claiming the glory of Achaemenid Empire, sought to retrace and reclaim all extant knowledge of the world as a creation of Zoroaster. The extended translation activities of Chusroes Anushirvan in the Common Era open up another epoch of translation. Persian, Tibetan, Chinese, Buddhist translational expeditions can be tracked on the Silk Route of this epoch. Within a century after the end of Sassanid Empire, one could see the efflorescence of Abbasid translational movement. The Abbasid Caliphs were drawing on and extending the Sassanid ideals of reclaiming Persian knowledges—this time into Arabic (via Persian, Greek and Syriac). This third movement opens up a vibrant network of radical intellectual inquiries. The legacy of this movement can be traced to the end of the Mughal era in India—where Akbar’s, Dara Shikoh’s and Sawai Jai Singh’s (18th century Rajasthan) translational endeavours flourished. The fourth one, of course, returns one to the Roman model of “victor’s prerogative”—when the reappropriation of Greek knowledges extends on a large scale and turns itself into a movement—the Renaissance. The dominant concept of translation (sublating the sense, spirit, and essence over the chaff, the body, the literal signifier—a deeply Christian concept) consolidates itself from this fourth epoch of translation movement. For Sassanid and Abbasid movements, cf. Gutas (1998, pp. 28–60) and Saliba (2007, pp. 1–72), for Arabic translations and their impact on the Renaissance; for the Mughal work, cf. Ali (1999, pp. 171–180). Here it must be noted that in the Mughal period we are referring to a phenomenon of Sanskrit lending itself to translation. The only exception to this phenomenon is the translations into Sanskrit in the field of astrology. Cf. Sarma (1998, pp. 67–87). Despite their internal differences, it must be emphasized here that, all these “movements” are fundamentally contingent upon their primary bonding with mnemotechnologies, their lithic turn and their scribal investment. The epistemophilic urge (“archive fever”) haunted these cultures.
- 6.
It must, however, be stated clearly that the juxtaposition of Sanskrit and German Romanticism is not a comparison of two national cultures. Despite ill-thought conflations of Sanskrit and the Indian nation, the former, in its entire historical existence (before colonial modernity) never produced any notion akin to nation or national community. If German Romanticism forged a conceptual apparatus to project a theory of art (work and/as criticism), if it rearticulated the age-old agonism between art and philosophy and institutionalized it, Sanskrit traditions moved on a-conceptually, non-institutionally and, as shown in Chap. 4 earlier, the war between poetry and philosophy makes no sense in these traditions. The discursive and institutional structures within which we function (and bring forth this kind of work) are a legacy of the conceptual ventures of German Romanticism (or German ideology). The juxtaposition here is more to accentuate the contrast, or differentia specifica, of the Sanskrit reflective and creative traditions.
- 7.
First and foremost translation is a res latina and a res romana—a fundamental element of Latin and Roman culture. Cf. Berman (2009, p. 8).
- 8.
Cf. Derrida (2001, p. 181) on “failure of the translation”, and Sallis (2002, pp. 120–122) on “untranslatability” of music: “Music would attest even more forcefully [than painting], if it were possible, the untranslatability of sense into sense: the impossibility of saying in words what is sounded in a musical composition is so patent as to be proverbial”.
- 9.
Tasyartha vada rupani nishritah svavikalpajah
Ekatvinam dvaitinamcha pravada bahudha matah
(Depending on their autonomous positions diverse arguments/positions concerning the Vedic imports emerged.)
- 10.
Although para as “it” inhabits the body (pura) is called Purusha—it has no virility attached to it. Para is rather beyond or before the division of gender—para is not phallic. After the division, para refers equally to male and female (para shakti—the other force, here conceived as female).
- 11.
Here, one can surely mention the peculiarity of the field of astronomy/astrology. This field for some reason appears to have been more receptive to the foreign than any other fields of Sanskrit traditions. The earliest (and probably the only one) foreign text that appeared in a Sanskrit rendering is Sphujidhvaja’s Yavanajataka (mid 3rd century CE). Similarly, after the travel of Sanskrit astronomy and mathematical compositions into Arabic in Abbasid period, Arabic texts from this domain get translated into Sanskrit during the Sultanate and Mughal periods. Despite such apparent translational flurry, these Islamic sciences “did not fundamentally reshape or eclipse Sanskrit mathematical science” (Plofker 2009, p. 277; also p. 47, pp. 266–278). Also see Ansari (2004, pp. 587–608).
- 12.
One curious account of a pandit refusing to enter Akbar’s palace indicates the cultural resistance or indifference of Sanskrit tradition to Yavana culture. As Akbar was keen to know about the Mahabharata from him, the pandit was lifted over the wall to reach the balcony level of Akbar’s palace and from the palace balcony, Akbar conversed with him (in Hindi, of course through translators) (Das 2005, p. 11, footnote 13).
- 13.
Here, one must point out that Adrian Claro’s effort to salvage a strand of German Romantic translation activity as “promoting hospitality toward the foreign” appears only limited to European past “in history”, whereas the colossal German Indological translation machine can hardly be said to be hospitable to the sonic-reflective compositions of Sanskrit tradition (Claro 2009, p. 112). On the contrary, we have the instances of 19th century German Indologists setting out to correct Upanishadic Sanskrit. Cf. Olivelle (1998, pp. 173–187); also Deshpande (2001).
- 14.
In his report for the International College of Philosophy, Derrida specifies the need for “basic” or “fundamental” research on language, “the multiplicity of languages, and the general problematic of translation” (Derrida 2004a, pp. 241–242).
- 15.
Rajaraja Narendra’s court was composed of shastra pandits who delved deep into the endless vyakaranashastra (“grammatical studies”); purana pravaktas who could offer oral exegesis on many puranas and on the Ramayana and the Mahabharatas; extraordinary poets who could forge delicate, delightful sentences shining with erotic and other affective moods; the most competent and renowned pandits of logic and argumentation who possessed the ocean of shastras formed with the sustenance of multi-branched logical/argumentative shastras, and other savants.
- 16.
G.V. Subramaniam quotes Errapradgada in his Preface to Aranyaparva (Mahabharatamu 2000–2007, p. 3).
- 17.
Here one must surely acknowledge (and inquire into) Indological excavations into the foreign “influences” on Sanskrit reflective traditions. David Pingree (Enrica Garzilli, 1996, pp. 105–110), for instance, argues that by the 6th century Indian or Sanskrit mathematical poetry shows the impact of Babylonian and Greek astronomy. He refers to a composition by Varahamihira, where allusions to other traditions can be deciphered; but these allusions can be gathered only through Babylonian cuneiform and Greek papyri data. He suggests that the transmission of Babylonian and Greek knowledge might have happened via the Achaemenid Empire. But this does not indicate convincingly that the “texts” of these foreign traditions were actually referred to in Varahamihira; nor, more importantly, whether these Akkadian and Greek texts were ever translated into Sanskrit. More recently, Kim Plofker (2009, p. 42) has this to say: “there is nothing in these similarities [between Mesopotamian and Sanskrit] that necessarily has to be accounted for by transmission, and there are no indisputable traces of transmission such as Akkadian loan-word technical terms in Sanskrit texts”. For similar observations about Islamic influence on Indian mathematics, see Plofker (2009, pp. 255–270).
Similarly, Sheldon Pollock (2009, pp. 116–117) refers to a Kashmiri “historiographer, anthologist, and savant” of the 15th century who is said to have partially translated Jami’s Yusuf wa Zulaihka under the title Kathakautukam. He also states that translation occurred from Prakrit to Sanskrit (of a Jaina cosmographical work—Lokavibhaga in 5th century). But, as can be seen, one is required to search intensely to seek out such translations—if they can be called such. But, curiously, both these scholars the overwhelming question of the indifference to translation remains unaddressed. Why is it that Sanskrit traditions for nearly two millennia did not undertake any kind of rendering of the foreign works in their distinct forms? That is, why is it that the Sanskrit reflective tradition stayed away from rendering their work into a foreign tongue? Why does such an effort break forth in the Buddhist and Jaina traditions—more particularly and prominently during the Common Era? Can these questions be thought beyond historical, political causalities (as Pollock tries to do when he obsessively pursues the relation between “power” and “culture”)? However, one may argue that if responsive reception is the mode of communication of Sanskrit traditions, the latter might have surely used it to incorporate the foreign (be it Babylonian, Greek, Persian or any other ancient civilization). Nothing prevents from such an argument—excepting that the entire excavational work of that kind will have to depend on lithic or archival civilizations—civilizations that have invested in material representational appurtenances of communication. Secondly, such data still would not answer the question of the absence of translational investment in Sanskrit traditions.
- 18.
It can be argued that critical European thought is relentlessly involved in re-reading its theological constitution otherwise. The theological constitution of it structured European heritage on the Biblical basis as the divine logos creating form out of formless chaos. Originary formulations are all theologically derived infrastructural categories here. In contrast, the critical intellectuals like Benjamin and Derrida see origin as a repetition—“not as an absolute beginning, nor as a passage from formlessness to form, nor as the result of anything like the intervention of divine logos”. Moreover, for Benjamin “origin is an event involving both singularity and repetition”. Origin for Benjamin has a double significance: (i) origin as “revelatory as reinstatement” and also “incomplete, unfinished.” Origin seeks to repeat, restore, and reinstate something anterior to it which it will never succeed in achieving. But this turns origin into a concept for mourning—and so does translation. Doesn’t this mean that the concepts of origin and translation continue to mourn the death of God? Doesn’t this also mean that whatever may be the strategies of thought—theological, secularizing the theological, mourning the death of the divine—European thought seems to function only from within the onto-theological framework? The critical intellectual too is decisively governed by the theological past—and hence his attempt to rupture that relation: “Translation thus suggests [in the critical intellectual such as Benjamin and Samuel Weber] a conception of medium that would be very different from that of the transparent interval between two fixed points. Instead of diaphanous transmission and transparency, translation brushes up against a part and in so doing opens itself to the future” (Weber 2008, p. 94).
In Benjamin’s rendering (ii) this series of analogies actually suggests an Oedipal relation between the original and what derives from it such as philosophy, translation, history and criticism: “They kill the original, by discovering that the original was already dead”. They dismember and de-canonize the original. Once again the thematic of modernity as the death of God, as the overcoming of the theological is repeated here. The entire argument of Benjamin that Paul de Man explicates hinges on this fundamental theological imperative. Benjamin rigorously separates the pure language from poetic language; the poetic is the strategy for such disassociation “Reine Sprache, the sacred language, has nothing in common with the poetic language; poetic language does not resemble it, poetic language does not depend on it, poetic language has nothing to do with it. It is within this negative knowledge of its relation to the language of the sacred that poetic language initiates” (cf. De Man 1986, pp. 83–92).
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Rao, D.V. (2014). Responsive Receptions: The Question of Translation Beyond the Accursed Zone. In: Cultures of Memory in South Asia. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 6. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-1698-8_8
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