Mani Rao's terrible Gita translation

Scroll.in has published an excerpt from Mani Rao’s introduction to her translation, ‘Bhagavad Gita: God’s Song,’ from the Sanskrit.' It is headlined 'Can modern poetic techniques be used to translate the Bhagavad Gita?'

Obviously, any type of technique can be used to translate anything. The question is whether the translation is faithful or has literary merit.

People who belong to a living religion like Hinduism need to translate a Hindu religious work in a different way- an 'emic' way- than people from a different, 'etic', culture writing for their own people. Mani Rao has not done this. On the other hand, she 'spearheaded the 'kaun banega crorepati' campaign for Star TV. She represents a type of cultural illiteracy and spiritual imbecility which may have been 'modern' at one time. But, it no longer is. To be fair, I think this shitty book of hers was published a dozen years ago back when India had peak-Sickurlarism. Nowadays, however, Rahul baba is a janeodhari Brahmin.

Since the first translation of the Bhagavad Gita in 1789 by Charles Wilkins, there have been hundreds of translations into English. Some have translated the poetry of the Gita into prose, and some others have attempted metrical poetry. Whereas prose translations do not convey the delights of the original, good metrical translations have no choice but to compromise on fidelity. .

Not really. Sir Edwin Arnold's metrical 'Song Celestial' was pretty faithful. It sold well and was read at a stretch in the same manner as the Iliad or the Aeneid. 

This is also why commentaries exist, but, they tend to be loaded with terminology and digressions, and however useful, deter the eager reader from a continuous reading of the text.

Commentary can be relegated to Footnotes and don't break the flow for the reader. Eliot's Wasteland has footnotes. Perhaps what this lady is referring to translations done by English poets under the supervision of an Indian Swamy. But that is the traditional way our Scripture is imparted. 

Reading the Gita is a happy afternoon project for a reader who knows Sanskrit;

 Reading the Kairatarjunya- maybe.  There is a pure appreciation of 'rasa'. But, with the Gita, there is always an 'apoorvata' of a metaphysically challenging type. People tend to return to particular chapters of the Gita when faced with different dilemmas. 

for a reader who does not know Sanskrit, old-style translations may not offer the same easy reading speed. The Gita is a teaching, it is not a pedantic text.

Pedants teach. The Gita has artistic as well as didactic merit.  

Thought-provoking wordplay, connections and associations between words, and implied meanings are present throughout the seven hundred verses. Sometimes, the meaning is adequately conveyed only when you take in the suggestiveness and resonance (dhvani), characteristics of memorable poetry.

But you still need the correct 'Structural Causal Model' of the Mahabharata. Its 'physics', so to speak, is 'non-dissipative' or 'Noetherian' and  exhibits the conservation of karma, across time, and dharma, across social space, by reason of every episode being a 'balanced game' and having a 'dual'. Thus the Bhagvad Gita is the dual of the Vyadha Gita. You can't understand them separately. However, what makes the Gita challenging for ordinary Hindus is the complexity of the Vedic references. The Bhagvad Gita is simpler because its Veda is the Sama which is short and its Upanishad is the Chandogya which is pretty straightforward. 

As languages, Sanskrit and English are different from each other

but English descends from a similar language. English poets have been translating from Latin for centuries and thus Sanskrit posed no special challenge. Chinese was genuinely different and translating its poetry did contribute to English modernism.

– not just in terms of the conceptual worlds they rise from and refer to, but also in their linguistic structures, their ‘deep grammar.’ Sanskrit nouns are declined, and thus, have case endings; therefore, in a sentence, the parts of speech are made clear within the words. A simple example – in the sentence “A girl goes to school”, “girl” is the subject, and “school” is the object. In Sanskrit, the noun “girl” will be in the nominative case (prathamā vibhakti), and the noun “school” will be in the accusative case (dvitīyā vibhakti). Therefore, we may structure the sentence any which way, including “to school – goes – girl”. Now if all those components of the Sanskrit sentence (to school / girl / goes/) were written separately, in different corners of a single page, they would still make sense. In Sanskrit, we comprehend the words along with their roles in the sentence. In a Sanskrit stanza, then, what decides the sequence of words is rhythm, smoothness, or metrical considerations.

Which is also true of English or Chinese poetry. A good poet in any language can create a good poetic translation of any poem from another language. 

This is also why when we read Sanskrit poetry, we may begin with analysing the “prose order” (anvaya, or connections). This involves a reordering of the words in the stanza in a way that becomes easier to follow.

This may be true of laboriously translating from a language you don't know. It isn't true of reading and enjoying poetry.  

Such structural freedom inherent in Sanskrit composition opens up possibilities in translation via contemporary poetics.

Sanskrit observes the rules of Sanskrit grammar. Its poetry is actually poetic. I don't know what this stupid woman means by 'contemporary poetics'. 

Like science, poetics has also become more developed, and today there are more resources available to writers and readers. Poetry was once an oral art, and belonged to the dimension of time. Even though manuscripts and inscriptions were used, the dimension of space arrived into everyone’s daily lives through the printing press and the printed page. Translating ancient texts is also a translation from a temporal, to a temporal and spatial medium. The line, for example, does not need to hang on for life to the left margin. Spacing and connections are available to be used if they help understanding. Here is an example:

This isn't poetry. It is lazy stupid shite. Any cretin could come up with poetry of this sort just by cutting and pasting from Google Translate and then changing the spacing. 

The fact is, conventions regarding how words were arranged on the page were dictated by economic considerations. Paper costs money. An Indian author of a popular ecumenical work decided to eliminate certain definite articles from his text so as to reduce the cost of publishing his book so as to ensure it could reach a wider market. What this lady has done is wasteful and ugly.

In my translation, the stanza has been deconstructed into the components and relationships between them.

This nutter will now translate her illiterate translation.  

The vedantic idea of “neti” (‘not this’) is imitated. i.e., how discarding reveals the true you.

In which case, the Gita would be just too words long- 'neti, neti'.  

You discard and you discard (what you are not) and that is how you find out who you are.

That is not the message of the Gita. You need to make a choice of 'svadharma' and then think about how to best fulfil the duties it imposes on you. Moreover, you must act without appetency for the fruits of your action. You must cultivate Yoga by seeking a preceptor. You don't have to find out who you are. You already know. But there is more to you- you have an immortal soul- and your actions in this life will determine your station in your next.  

It is by discarding (whatever is intransient) that “you are”.

What is transient will pass away by itself.  What is 'intransient' can't be discarded. This woman is a cretin.

The analogy between old clothes and the old worn-out body is stacked vertically,

In this life you had a decent enough body. Your clothes were functional. In your next life you may have a really shitty body. You may be doomed to be naked because you can't afford clothes. Your life might be nasty brutish and short. Discarding your proper duties has bad karmic consequences. But this is along the horizontal axis of time along which reincarnation operates. What is 'vertical', is the relationship between the Yogi and Yogishvara- the God of Yoga.  

so it is a quick and easy connection upon the page.

A quicker and easier connection is made by the reader between this lady and a lump of shit.  

At this stage, Krishna is only speaking about the nature of ātman – it is that which has the body.

No it isn't. The jiva has the body. The atman pervades everything including the body. 

Readers will notice that Krishna does not tell Arjuna directly – “you are ātman.”

Because the Gita is a Yogic text. The Lord of Yoga gives instruction to the disciple. Just as a Professor of Medicine can't say to his students 'you are Doctors' because they haven't yet qualified as such, so too Yogishvara has to first inculcate the different types of Yoga such that this can finally be said.  

Krishna explains the concept of ātman, and without saying so, lets Arjuna realize his identity with ātman.

Arjuna wishes for instruction from Yogishvara and thus can attain that goal.  

What occurs here is an identity shift, a point that is communicated without being spelt out.

No. What occurs here is a process of learning from a Divine preceptor such that the acolyte's identity can change from nescience to gnosis.  However, the starting point is 'oikeiosis' or 'purushartha' based on your natural sense of belonging to a family and a community. 

Hence, my translation uses vertical as well as horizontal space,

Everybody uses both. A line unfurls horizontally. The next line is beneath it. The vertical direction goes downward from the first line to the last line.  

and presents the sub-text vertically – “this is who you really are.”

Arjuna really is a warrior who has chosen to obey his eldest brother. The twist is this is actually Karna, not Yuddhishtra, and Arjuna will end up killing Karna while in the grip of 'manyu' or 'dark anger'.  

The reader can take it in visually, even as she continues to read the line.

The reader won't read stupid ignorant shit. There is nothing to take in here. 

When older Hindus like myself read 

वासांसि जीर्णानि यथा विहाय
नवानि गृह्णाति नरोऽपराणि |
तथा शरीराणि विहाय जीर्णा
न्यन्यानि संयाति नवानि देही

we see more meanings in each word now than we did when we were kids. Vaasaansi, for e.g., which in School is glossed as 'garment', now reminds us of 'Vasana' or mental imprint like that left by a scent. This is interesting because we identify an 'epoche'- e.g. that of the Gita- with 'antarabhava' ruled over by Gandharas. This is also the Tibetan notion of bardo or the Islamic barzakh. Obviously, the Indic conception of 'limbo' is different because we have reincarnation. I may mention that 'dehi' has both the meaning of 'embodied' and 'heart' such that there is pain and suffering but also Love and Joy. There is thus a passional and poignant aspect to this lyrical stanza. We remember that Krishna and Arjuna loved each other deeply and were brothers-in-law. Moreover, the death of Abhimanyu will bring both great grief. Yet, through the resurrection of Parikshit, Abhimanyu's son, the 'oikos' of both is redeemed. Thus, in this pithy quatrain we have a profound meditation upon the Manyu Sukta and a way out of the labyrinth, or Chakravyuha, of 'dark anger'. 

However, there is also an erotic and delicate motif. If we Google the word 'vasan', which underlies vasansi, we quickly discover that the Sankhya-Yoga 'vasana' conception was parallel but distinct from a Theistic tradition where the word more naturally meant the garment- particularly the specific colour of the garment- of the preceptors. Thus, we understand that the 'Nara' mentioned isn't 'Man' in the ordinary sense. It is the enlightened Theist who is not afraid to put away the old body and accept the gift of a new incarnation. Suppose you are very poor and can't buy a new suit. You may be very reluctant to part with the smelly garment you have. But those who have spiritual wisdom and are of higher status don't have this fear. New garments will be provided or a new body will be provided and, chances are, it will be superior or more fitting. 

If, from the Theistic point of view, the body is a perfumed garment received in the womb, by the agency of the Gandharvas- with whom Vak, Goddess of Speech, mother of the Vedas, went off in vagabondage- then, though Eros underpins Oikeiosis, Kama regulates Purushartha, 'vastra' is immune to 'shastra'- Draupati can't be disrobed by superior armaments, nor can fire burn Sita.  Rather, as in 'slash and burn' agriculture or 'Krishi', or- indeed- the burning of the Khandava forest- there is the renewal and regeneration of an entire ecology.  This also points towards  the 'khila' or 'appendix' or 'uncultivated portion' of the Mahabharata itself which is the Harivamsha. One could say there is a 'vertical stacking' such that Veda gives rise to Upanishad which gives rise to the Mahabharata which, for Theists, gets subordinated to the pure Vaishnavite devotional texts.  Ved Vyasa is the editor of the Vedas and narrator of the Mahabharata and author of Harivamsha. 

For a stupid, useless, ignorant, 'acharabrashta' Hindu like myself, more especially now I am over sixty years old, every word in Gita, in which the Lord incarnates the Sama, increases  that musicality, which Schopenhauer said, outlasts the Universe. But does so only as 'Vasana'. 

The final two words- शोषयति मारुत:- that arid simoom shrivelling up this wine-bibbing wretch's baroque saudade- also tell me of the Iranic Saoshyant, or Messiah, who will make things 'juicy' again. Sanjay's 'Maruti' did, after all, become, after his aerial or Icarus-like death, the symbol of my Dehli's resurrection as a paradise for the PUPPY- or, post Independence born, Punjabi-type upwardly mobile professional. In other words, the type of demographic Murdoch's Star TV appealed to. 

I suppose if this lady- who must be smarter than me (she had a more successful corporate career and has a PhD from Amrika)- had interlocutors of my type- she wouldn't have written utter shite. She would have produced a poem- maybe a 'rap'- which tens of thousands of people similar to her would have found it rewarding to read. But, in that case, she might have come across as 'Hindutva'. That's the fucking kiss of death and, smart cookie that she is, she has avoided it by shitting out a book relating to Hinduism which even Harper Collins can publish because it harms, not that way of life, but such Hindus as worship at the unclean altars of Amrikan PhD granting authorities.

The fact is the final word of the quatrain this lady chooses to highlight is सनातन:. The soul of people who, by oikos and oikeiosis, are of the 'Sanatan Dharma'- are precisely that. I can befuddle myself with drink and distract myself with Mathematics, but what is eternal is my ignominy. The poet must e'er be the polar opposite, the homo sacer, of the Holy Prophet. 

Perhaps, I'm being unfair to Dr. Mani Rao who is two years younger than me and a good and virtuous person. It may be that she is writing for some specific subsection of illiterate ignoramuses who are too cognitively challenged to grasp the notion of karma. However, such people are also wholly illiterate or ignorant of any human language whatsoever. 

The Gita was composed for ordinary people like me who were already familiar with their ancestral religion and customs.  It takes up 'wedge' theological issues and combats schismatic tendencies so as to promote an ecumenical outcome. This is because, to use its seemingly declarative statements one way or another is to undergo a 'Baldwinian' channelization. This is because the Gita is Sanjaya's report on what Arjuna reports on his own 'qualia' or experience. 

Krishna & Arjuna are like Nara & Narayana but what is their exact relationship? The answer is  complicated, for, as Krishna says, Dharma is very difficult to grasp. Still, we understand that as 'agents' (rather than 'principals') there is Duality for a purpose- as in Category Theory- but not, and certainly not necessarily, otherwise. 

On the other hand, if something is really emphatic in a text, it can be spatially demarcated from the other words in the verse. Here is another example from my translation:

Arjuna uses the verb “see” – (I see, paśyāmi) – in every single stanza from stanza 11.14 to 11.19 11.19. Noticing this makes one much more aware that what is being described is a spectacle and an extraordinary sight. This is not just a description of Krishna’s viśvarūpam (universal form) – it is a description of viśvarūpa-darśaṇam (the vision of Krishna’s universal form). Hence, I extracted the verb “see” into a separate column, and relocated everything that was seen within its frame.

What this lady has written is ugly and stupid. In Theophany description is univocal with what any particular person sees. That is why the bard Sanjaya can describe what Arjuna sees.  This silly lady hasn't noticed that everything in the Gita is Sanjaya's report to the Blind King. 

Still, this lady has found a 'crown club discus' in the Gita. Her ancestors must be so proud.