“The design… of Mr. Dutt of presenting the English reading public the pith of the story of the voluminous epic within the limit of 2,000 verses has been happily conceived and admirably executed. The passages selected for translation are, roughly speaking, about the best to be found in the epic and, in the clean and liberal rendering of the translator, cannot fail to impress the English reader with the faculty divine of the Homer of the East”.
APRIL 14, 1900
Ramayanam – By Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt
WE HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE WITH THANKS THE RECEIPT of this latest book from the pen of Mr. Romesh Chunder Dutt, C.I.E., his metrical translation of important passages of the Ramayana, and to apologise to him for not having reviewed it earlier in our columns. Mr. Dutt is too well-known to the literary world to need any introduction from us. As the author of books treating of the history of ancient civilisation in India, he had already won immortal fame and established an indefeasible claim to be regarded as an interpreter between the East and the West. His unostentatious patriotism did not stop there and with a view to the commendable object of bringing about a better understanding between the people of the West and the East, he has of late been engaged in publishing a translation in verse of the most important portions of the two immortal epics which so well describe the political, social and religious life of the ancient Hindus. His “Mahabharata” was published sometime ago and was received with no small praise by the reading public for which it was intended, and his “Ramayana” will, we trust, be accorded an equally cordial reception.
The Ramayana has already been translated into English prose and verse by other writers; but the existing translations whether in prose or verse cover volumes of considerable size, and despite the literary grace of the translators, the busy reader can scarcely find the time to read them even once. The design therefore of Mr. Dutt of presenting to the English-reading public the pith of the story of the voluminous epic within the limit of 2,000 verses has been happily conceived and admirably executed. The passages selected for translation are roughly speaking about the best to be found in the epic, and, in the clear and liberal rendering of the translator, cannot fail to impress the English reader with the marvellous faculty divine of the Homer of the East. The choice of passages for translation from a work of such accreditedly high poetical merits as the Ramayana is no easy task, especially when the object of the translator is not only to show to the West that there have been Indian poets who could hold their own with the best poets of other nations, but also to present to the world the ancient Hindu ideals – ideals which, despite the effects of the Mahomedan domination and the aggressive civilisation of the West, continue to exercise today no small influence on the political, social and religious life of the Hindus, and the difficulty of the task is certainly not diminished by the fact that the translations of such passages connected together by short notes of the translator are to present the long story of Ramayana in a short space. It is therefore no small praise to the translator to say that this work of selection has been admirably done, and is well-calculated to serve all the ends in view. Some critics may perhaps complain that passages of exquisite beauty either for language or for sentiment do not find a place in the book before us. But if such criticism were intended to be avoided, it would result in Mr. Dutt producing a book containing more than 20,000 couplets of English verse instead of the 2,000 we now have; and the reading public would be just as little benefited by it as with Mr. Griffith’s metrical translation of the Ramayana. We have often heard it said that Anglo-Indians and some Indians who share their views have no faith in Indians writing English poetry. How far Mr. Dutt’s book now before us is a refutation of that Anglo-Indian view, we safely leave it to the reader of the book to judge. The book contains passages of considerable poetic merit, and we do not hesitate to say that the spirit of the original has undergone the least possible amount of evaporation in the process of translation into English verse. We are however bound to say that if the translator had discarded rhyme, the translation would have been even more acceptable.
We should very much like to support our high opinion of this book by quotations of choice passages from it, but we are afraid that that course would make our review too long for a newspaper article. We have therefore to content ourselves with referring to some of such passages. We would single out for this purpose the portions which relate how Mandara, maid of Kaikeyi, transformed her gentle mistress into a veritable fury by playing upon her maternal affection; the passages describing the council of war held in Ravana’s court, almost as interesting as the council of the fallen angels in Pandemonium; and the passages describing the fidelity of Sita and her noble conception of a wife’s duties.
Long as the review has already grown, we cannot conclude it without a few remarks on the excellent epilogue written by the translator. With much that is said there we are at one with him. That the Ramayana and the Mahabharata contain between them a correct description of the political, religious, social and domestic life of the ancient Hindus is evident. But we do not quite agree with the translator in the distinction he draws between the different phases of Hindu life portrayed by the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Orthodox Hindus may not quite relish the idea of Rama and Sita being represented as the creations of the poet’s brain. But it is no small consolation to them that Mr. Dutt writing at the fag end of the nineteenth century should have given the Ramayana an antiquity of three thousand years while the epic is considered by some oriental scholars as an allegorical representation of the spread of Aryan civilisation towards the South.
Reference:
The First 100
A Selection of Editorials, 1878-1978, THE HINDU, VOLUME I