Ramesh Krishnamurthy’s “Indian tradition”

History of translation in the Indian subcontinent

Languages spoken

Indian subcontinent

• Indo-European languages: Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bengali, Nepali, Sinhalese, etc., ~70% of the population, mainly in the northern Indian subcontinent;
• Dravidian languages: Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, etc., 20% of the population, mainly in the south;
• Austric languages;
• Tibeto-Burman languages;
• Dardic languages;
• English: main non-indigenous language, spoken alongside the mother tongue of a large percentage of the population.

​

Problems around the earlier history of translation in the Indian subcontinent

• Predominant oral tradition;
• Destruction of innumerable texts: climatic conditions, pests, hostile human agency;
• chronology of texts or the actual date of writing of texts is rarely exact;
• difficulty in distinguishing adaptations of previous texts and actual translations;
• little work on this subject in this region;

​

​

The ancient period (~ 2500 - 800 BC)

• Earliest linguistic evidence: steatite seals → dating from 2500 BC to 1500 BC

​

​

The Pashupati Seal

→ After this, no other linguistic material evidence was found for around 2000 years.

​

The arrival of the Aryans

The arrival of the Aryans

• Spoke Sanskrit
• Brought with them the Rigveda, or “hymns of wisdom” → oldest of the 4 Vedas
• Their linguistic and religious tradition was entirely oral and lasted for several hundred years

→ in order to preserve their cultural and linguistic “purity”

The Vedas

• Rigveda: written form appeared between 1500 and 500 BC
• Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda: between 1200 and 900 BC

Translations of the Rigveda

• Only started to appear in the 19^th century

→ Tradition of restricted transmission only to qualified priests

→ Belief: Vedas were direct revelations of divine origin

• 1838: first published translation in a European language (latin), by Friedrich August Rosen
• 1849: first German translation, by Max Müller
• From 1850 to 1888: first English translation, by H. H. Wilson

​

The Vedas

• Used to be, and still are today, recited as:

- mantras;

- benedictions;

- rituals;

- ceremonies;

- sacrifices or symbolic-sacrífices;

- among others

“[…] the Vedas are oral compositions that have been transmitted orally. They do not consist of texts. The Sāmaveda, moreover, consists of melodies. It should be heard and if studied it must be, it should be done by someone who is at least in part a composer or musicologist.” Frits Staal

→ Can the written form of the Vedas be considered accurate, comparing to the original oral form?

​

→ Is it possible to translate these originally oral compositions?

​

​

The pre-classical period (~800 BC – AD 100)

• The Aryans spread to the Ganges Valley and South towards the Deccan
• Their language started to fragment into dialectal or regional forms, and this was reinforced by the religious reformers of the 6th century: Gautama Buddha and Mahavira

​

The pre-classical period (~800 BC – AD 100)

• Vedas: very restricted transmission

​

• Teachings of the Buddha and Mahavira: for the masses

→ propagation of vernacular languages

Early Buddhism

• Encouragment to propagate the Buddha’s teachings
• From ~250 BC: Buddhist missions to the south and west Indian subcontinent
• ~1^th century BC: The Buddhist canon was written in Sri Lanka, in Pali, a vernacular language

→ then written in other vernacular languages

→ eventually, the Buddhist texts also began to be written in Sanskrit

• ~2^th century BC: translation of Buddhist texts into Chinese

}

Translations

Bibliography

• Baker, Mona; Kirsten Malmkjær, and Gabriela Saldanha. Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, pp.449-458, London: Routledge, 2011.
• Squarcini, Federico. Boundaries, Dynamics and Construction of Traditions in South Asia, London & New York: Anthem Press, 2011.
• Staal, Frits. Discovering the Vedas: Origins, Mantras, Rituals, Insights. Penguin Books, 2009.

​