144
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[May 3, 1872.
the technical name for this is mangalācharana.
and connote the same attributes.
The n a n di being concluded, the manager says audibly—“Enough, no need of enlarging on this.”
Greek or Latin author into English is, as every scholar is aware, a far harder task; yet an essen tially true rendering may, in most cases, be obtain ed in good idiomatic English. The chasm is not too great to be bridged over. Oriental, and espe cially Sanskrit works, will not, however, admit of
(nándyante stitradhārah alamati vistarena.)
He
then commences the p r a stä van ä–or the pro logue, i.e. the propounding of what is going to be undertaken.
He gives utterance to this not as ad
dressing the audience, but as speaking to his own actors. The p r a stä van ä gives him the oppor tunity of manifesting his programme—in which he
gives a succinct account of the author and subject of the drama about to be acted. After the p r a sta van ä, commences the actual performance of the play. But notwithstanding the prast a van ä which
is a general introduction to the whole play, every an ka or act, after the first, has its own peculiar prelude called the “vishkambhaka," which pre pares the audience for what is coming on in the Act itself.
The ‘v i s h k a m bhaka' in this sense
somewhat corresponds to the Chorus in a Greek play. The Sanskrit ars poetica does not lay down dis tinct rules for tragedies and comedies. There is, in fact, no Sanskrit tragedy in the proper sense of the term. The destruction of Rāv an a and his
host in the Mahá Vira Charita might have been considered a tragedy, if the actors and auditors had
been Rák s h as a s, but as the play is for the amusement of the followers of Brahmanism, that catastrophe of the demon race is celebrated as one
of the most joyous events in Indian history or tra dition.
And except the death of the ethereal bird
J at à yu, there is no other really tragical event to produce any sensation in the audience. The late Professor Wilson was the first to intro duce the Sanskrit drama to the notice of the Euro
pean public, though Sir William Jones had preced ed him as the translator of Sakuntalā.
But Pro
fessor Wilson only gave extracts from the dramas he summarized, and his translations were too free - representations of the original. We are now in a position to congratulate the In
dian public on two translations from Bhavabhāti, —Professor Pickford's Mahá-Vira-Charita, and Pro
To translate a
the same kind of treatment.”
Professor Tawney's object was to supply a local and a temporary desideratum, and, as he states in his Preface, his object has been “to give the literal meaning of the original in tolerable English prose.” Notwithstanding these modest apologies of the two accomplished translators, however, we think that the one has rendered the original Sanskrit quite as closely as any author has ever translated Greek, and the other has presented the public with a book that scholars will value for its abiding merits. We cannot admit without qualification Profes sor Pickford's implication that it is easier to give a literal translation of Greek than of Sanskrit into
idiomatic English ; and we need no other evidence to justify our dissent than his own Maha-Vira-Cha rita as compared with an ordinary version of a Greek play. Elegant as it is, his translation can not be charged with want of fidelity to the ori ginal. If disposed to find fault, we might criticise his views respecting some words and phrases in the original which we would interpret in a different sense; but where we have so much to admire we need not stop to notice what we consider to be a few errors. One, however, we must notice since it
pervades the whole volume. The translator con founds the word siddh a with prasiddha, and has invariably rendered the former in the sense of “famous:"—that may be the signification of pr a siddha, but the meaning of siddha is very different. Its proper sense is perfected. When applied to persons, it implies the perfection or ac
complishment of the exercises or efforts they had
the best form of which circumstances will allow, still it would be wrong to give up fidelity to the original for a specious affectation of elegance. The
undertaken. In theology it would denote those who had been perfected by their devotion, and would be equivalent to the English Saint. The word siddh ás r a ma is therefore wrongly rendered “famous hermitage.” Taking the expression as a tatpurusha samása, we would interpret it, “the her mitage of the Saints,” or ‘the sacred hermitage.' Professor Tawney has in a parallel passage (siddha kshetre Janasthāne) renderedit, “the holy Janasthā
sense and character of the author's work must be
na.” In another place Professor Pickford has rendered
retained as much as possible, even at the cost of the translator's style. The literature of one modern language may be translated into another with little difficulty, and the turn of expression retained with out awkwardness, as it is generally possible to find words and phrases to denote the same conceptions
sid d h a “well-known” (p. 12), but there the con text itself drove him to explain by a foot note what he correctly guessed was the true meaning. He says “the meaning, I think, is—for the family of Raghu is great already.’” This explanation would have been unnecessary if the proper meaning
- MAHA WIRA CHARITA, translated into English prose
from the Sanskrit of Bhavabhuti, by John Pickford, M.A., Professor of Sanskrit, Madras.
UTTARA RAMA CHARITA, a Sanskrit Drama by Bhava bhūti, translated into English prose by C. H. Tawney, M.A. Professor of English Literature, Pres. Col. Calcutta.
fessor Tawney's Uttara Rama Charita.” The principle Professor Pickford has observed in
his translation is thus explained by himself — “Desirable as it doubtless is to give a translation
