The First English Translation of Mahabharata: Authorship, Authority, Translation and Utility Matters

Abstract

the Mahabharata’s ‘utility’ and necessity of its English translations might 48 The First English Translation of Mahabharata appear slavishly craven, and repulsive to the modern Indian ears, given that it is seventy years that they have been rendered ‘people’ with “rights to rights,” with distinct subject positions and 22 scheduled languages (English being one of them) asserted as distinctly Indic. The last lines of Roy’s “Preface” might assuage the bruised ego of modern Indians because it is also a position espoused by cosmopolitan thinkers such as Tagore and Goethe. The translation of Sanskrit Mahabharata is useful because: The production of genius [is] the common inheritance of the world. Homer lived as much for Greeks, ancient or modern, as for Englishmen or Frenchmen, Germans or Italians. Valmiki and Vyasa lived as much for Hindus as for every race of men capable of understanding them.