Several readers (including my mother) have now informed me of the passing of Bibek Debroy, who did the translation of the Mahabharata that I’ve been reading for the past six months.
From personal experience with the religious right in the United States, I think you make some remarkably salient observations. I have met religious auto-didacts teaching themselves Greek and Latin for the love of it. And so much attention is paid to Greek and Latin at the religious right colleges. They actually teach there. Liberty University has a rigorous curriculum. It's not the academia that most educated people expect, but it's a form of academia, and I can see some worthwhile translations coming out of it. Ugh, insert disclaimer here.
Yeah I mean...this is also something they can do where they can make a concrete impact and be taken seriously. No scholar at Liberty is gonna be respected by the academic mainstream, but a great translator forces people at some point to take notice!
It's also interesting to know that no one has completely translated Plutarch - that is new information for me. It makes me curious to know how much work is out there in Latin and Greek that is not yet translated. Apparently more than I estimated.
Oh it was translated several times, back in the 19th century! There is a fair amount of untranslated Latin and Greek, but more common are books that have been translated but haven't been issued in modern times in versions that a person can read. Most 19th century translations are good, but the free versions online lack intro matter and footnotes and so can, in practice, be a difficult reading experience.
Meanwhile, elite(TM) programs are making themselves more inclusive(TM) by eliminating the Greek and Latin requirements for the classics major (*cough* Princeton *cough*).
I found this blogpost today and I'm very impressed and inspired by the depth and details of the things discussed. As an Indian, I can second you that everything you've said about the incumbent governemt, english in India is correct. [Although many people, including gen Z kids, in North India are equally poor in both Hindi and English].
I was not aware of Mr Debroy's translation and have not read a single bit of any religious text expect Gita, and thanks to your detailed posts, I may pick it up in future.
As someone who works on Classical Chinese philosophy, I actually had a professor tell me I shouldn’t be reading the Lunyu in Classical Chinese because that’s too advanced and despite appearances I actually wasn’t translating because translation is too advanced a skill. (In fairness, the Lunyu is especially difficult to interpret).
Devoted Asian studies departments do better, but It’s probably still right that our largest body of translations into English from ancient Chinese is Buddhist texts done by Buddhists. Other equally important things, like the vast majority of the important Song Ming Neo-Confucian writings, are egregiously untranslated.
I know there are essays. But there's not an actual volume I can put on my shelf to remind me that the author exists so that someday I can actually read him ;)
Yep. I looked just now and only found one work of translation with his name on the cover. It may amuse you to hear that the one amazon review says few poems are actually translated and those are embalmed in pages and pages of academical commentary.
Your characterization of Modi and Debroy's ideology as "Hindu Nationalist" is unfortunately too lenient.
This is a Hindu-supremacist movement - fully proclaimed by the ruling BJP party's parent organization, the RSS (India's KKK).
The fact that Ganguli's prose translation exists, and is of excellent quality, actually shows that Debroy's effort was fairly pedestrian; he only repeated what had been done already, a century ago.
If he had made a good, readable *verse* translation, that would be something. But the Hindu-supremacist intellectuals are averse to good poetry, just as they are to anything beyond their narrow-minded chauvinism.
In Gujarat, in 2002, Narendra Modi presided over (and ordered the police not to intervene in) the massacre, torture and rape of around 2,000 Muslim Gujaratis. He used this religious pogrom as a springboard for his rise to national power.
I sincerely hope you can take a harder line against Modi, his acolytes, and their poisonous worldview. Anything less is a betrayal of Gujarat's martyrs and so many others after them.
The point isn't about the quality of the translation, it's that the Ganguly translations don't exist in a readable form. You yourself are advocating for them, but you have not really read them. You have read a volume or two, but not even close to the whole thing.
Regarding Hindu supremacy, I do not support the Modi regime. Hindu nationalists get mad at me all the time just like you are getting mad at me. But I do not see how trying and failing to read a translation of the Mahabharata that does not exist in a readable form, will in any way help Muslims in India
I'm certainly not mad at you. I hoped that my choice of restrained language over bombast would have made that clear.
I simply wish to point out the intellectual bankruptcy of Modi and anyone who follows him. It fatally undermines the quality of whatever intellectual work they achieve, as I believe it has with Debroy's.
To put it plainly, you can't sign on to a regime built on the massacre and brutalization of innocent people and have your work remain unscathed. Much the same thing affected German intellectuals of the 20th century who justified their own supremacist movement.
If you haven't read HRW's damning report on Modi's Gujarat crimes against humanity, I highly recommend it:
The Ganguli translation is readily available now from several sites, digitized as an ebook on Archive.org among other places. I've read some, and highly recommend it for readers looking for a translator not tainted by the Butcher of Gujarat (Modi, 2002)
You've read some, but not all...I could not have spent the last six months reading an ebook from archive dot org. I might have wanted to, but I wouldn't have actually done it. By bringing this book back on an accessible form, Debroy has done a good thing. He's the reason that I read this book
Some, only from having inadequate time. All of its volumes are available and well digitized in my e reader.
The main version I've read all the way through is the 2 volume retelling by Ramesh Menon, which is based on the Ganguli and I'd recommend to anyone as a starting point. That and of course the wonderful comic book version of Amar Chitra Katha
That article definitely gives appropriate pride of place to his translation, but even there it doesn't really contextualize the achievement. Usually when a literary figure dies there are quotes from other literary people, quotes that say how important they are. In this case this article doesn't really have those quotes, because even in India most literary people don't really like the Debroy's politics. Even in the context of Indian academia, he is hard for the Indian literary establishment to digest
This is very interesting. Thank you for writing it. I guess there are projects that are only ever going to get done if the people doing them expect zero monetary compensation for the work. Simply because it makes no financial sense (for the publisher) to make it financially worthwhile (for the author/translator). It's just too much work for too small of a potential readership. To the extent that academia can do anything at all about it, it is to count projects like this for things like promotion. Say, the author translated some major ancient text and put it on the Internet for free. So, give the person some credit for it, even if you cannot give any hard cash for it.
Do you know any ancient languages yourself, Naomi?
I don’t think religious nationalism is the only thing that bring about this type of translation (solitary, done for the love of it) - Robert Alter did an amazing, complete translation of the Hebrew bible despite not being religious. He is a prominent academic, so he was acclaimed for that translation, but you can’t read his work without realizing it was an monumental passion project.
Subscribed (first ever on Substack). First comment: just wanted you to know you are not alone. I’m working through Debroy now after going as far as I could on van Buitonen and a scraggly mishmash of abridgments and stand-alone volumes to get through the story. And I have a year of Sanskrit under my belt. Your points on how those who love the classics and/or grew up steeped in a religious tradition will carry these texts hit home. I’m going to make it the mission of the rest of my life to grapple with these texts and introduce them to others. Thank you for carrying your torch of love for this work.
He will only be remembered for the Mahabharata. It is an amazing achievement that will eventually get traction. Even when the last person who knows him is no more, the translation will endure both because it is good and because there is nothing else like it.
I agree completely. It is such a monument. Shocking how much he's been ignored by the literary establishment, but ultimately there will be no ignoring him bc the only route into the text will be through him!
From personal experience with the religious right in the United States, I think you make some remarkably salient observations. I have met religious auto-didacts teaching themselves Greek and Latin for the love of it. And so much attention is paid to Greek and Latin at the religious right colleges. They actually teach there. Liberty University has a rigorous curriculum. It's not the academia that most educated people expect, but it's a form of academia, and I can see some worthwhile translations coming out of it. Ugh, insert disclaimer here.
Yeah I mean...this is also something they can do where they can make a concrete impact and be taken seriously. No scholar at Liberty is gonna be respected by the academic mainstream, but a great translator forces people at some point to take notice!
It's also interesting to know that no one has completely translated Plutarch - that is new information for me. It makes me curious to know how much work is out there in Latin and Greek that is not yet translated. Apparently more than I estimated.
Oh it was translated several times, back in the 19th century! There is a fair amount of untranslated Latin and Greek, but more common are books that have been translated but haven't been issued in modern times in versions that a person can read. Most 19th century translations are good, but the free versions online lack intro matter and footnotes and so can, in practice, be a difficult reading experience.
Meanwhile, elite(TM) programs are making themselves more inclusive(TM) by eliminating the Greek and Latin requirements for the classics major (*cough* Princeton *cough*).
I found this blogpost today and I'm very impressed and inspired by the depth and details of the things discussed. As an Indian, I can second you that everything you've said about the incumbent governemt, english in India is correct. [Although many people, including gen Z kids, in North India are equally poor in both Hindi and English].
I was not aware of Mr Debroy's translation and have not read a single bit of any religious text expect Gita, and thanks to your detailed posts, I may pick it up in future.
I really appreciate your work.
Yay, thanks! Love this comment. You should try this edition of the Mahabharata out, you might really like it
This hits the nail on the head.
As someone who works on Classical Chinese philosophy, I actually had a professor tell me I shouldn’t be reading the Lunyu in Classical Chinese because that’s too advanced and despite appearances I actually wasn’t translating because translation is too advanced a skill. (In fairness, the Lunyu is especially difficult to interpret).
Devoted Asian studies departments do better, but It’s probably still right that our largest body of translations into English from ancient Chinese is Buddhist texts done by Buddhists. Other equally important things, like the vast majority of the important Song Ming Neo-Confucian writings, are egregiously untranslated.
OMG I really really looked for a translation of the Neo-Confucian Han Yu. Doesn't exist! Was absolutely shocked!
Chan is one of the greatest translators of Chinese philosophical writings into English. Chapter 27 of his sourcebook has a little Han Yu: https://traditionalhikma.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Sourcebook-in-Chinese-philosophy-1.pdf
There are also some essays in this more recent anthology: https://hackettpublishing.com/readings-in-later-chinese-philosophy
Was there anything in particular by Han Yu you are interested in?
I know there are essays. But there's not an actual volume I can put on my shelf to remind me that the author exists so that someday I can actually read him ;)
Yep. I looked just now and only found one work of translation with his name on the cover. It may amuse you to hear that the one amazon review says few poems are actually translated and those are embalmed in pages and pages of academical commentary.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1670133.The_poetry_of_Meng_Chiao_and_Han_Y_
Your characterization of Modi and Debroy's ideology as "Hindu Nationalist" is unfortunately too lenient.
This is a Hindu-supremacist movement - fully proclaimed by the ruling BJP party's parent organization, the RSS (India's KKK).
The fact that Ganguli's prose translation exists, and is of excellent quality, actually shows that Debroy's effort was fairly pedestrian; he only repeated what had been done already, a century ago.
If he had made a good, readable *verse* translation, that would be something. But the Hindu-supremacist intellectuals are averse to good poetry, just as they are to anything beyond their narrow-minded chauvinism.
In Gujarat, in 2002, Narendra Modi presided over (and ordered the police not to intervene in) the massacre, torture and rape of around 2,000 Muslim Gujaratis. He used this religious pogrom as a springboard for his rise to national power.
I sincerely hope you can take a harder line against Modi, his acolytes, and their poisonous worldview. Anything less is a betrayal of Gujarat's martyrs and so many others after them.
If two people do something, a hundred years separated, that doesn't make it unremarkable, it actually means it's very difficult.
But you yourself wrote that the translations were 'similar.'
And what about my point vis. Hindu supremacy
The point isn't about the quality of the translation, it's that the Ganguly translations don't exist in a readable form. You yourself are advocating for them, but you have not really read them. You have read a volume or two, but not even close to the whole thing.
Regarding Hindu supremacy, I do not support the Modi regime. Hindu nationalists get mad at me all the time just like you are getting mad at me. But I do not see how trying and failing to read a translation of the Mahabharata that does not exist in a readable form, will in any way help Muslims in India
I'm certainly not mad at you. I hoped that my choice of restrained language over bombast would have made that clear.
I simply wish to point out the intellectual bankruptcy of Modi and anyone who follows him. It fatally undermines the quality of whatever intellectual work they achieve, as I believe it has with Debroy's.
To put it plainly, you can't sign on to a regime built on the massacre and brutalization of innocent people and have your work remain unscathed. Much the same thing affected German intellectuals of the 20th century who justified their own supremacist movement.
If you haven't read HRW's damning report on Modi's Gujarat crimes against humanity, I highly recommend it:
https://www.hrw.org/report/2002/04/30/we-have-no-orders-save-you/state-participation-and-complicity-communal-violence
The Ganguli translation is readily available now from several sites, digitized as an ebook on Archive.org among other places. I've read some, and highly recommend it for readers looking for a translator not tainted by the Butcher of Gujarat (Modi, 2002)
You've read some, but not all...I could not have spent the last six months reading an ebook from archive dot org. I might have wanted to, but I wouldn't have actually done it. By bringing this book back on an accessible form, Debroy has done a good thing. He's the reason that I read this book
Some, only from having inadequate time. All of its volumes are available and well digitized in my e reader.
The main version I've read all the way through is the 2 volume retelling by Ramesh Menon, which is based on the Ganguli and I'd recommend to anyone as a starting point. That and of course the wonderful comic book version of Amar Chitra Katha
Tan-fastic post, thank you so much
His translation did make the lede here: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/bibek-debroy-economist-with-epic-career-dead/articleshow/114867467.cms
That article definitely gives appropriate pride of place to his translation, but even there it doesn't really contextualize the achievement. Usually when a literary figure dies there are quotes from other literary people, quotes that say how important they are. In this case this article doesn't really have those quotes, because even in India most literary people don't really like the Debroy's politics. Even in the context of Indian academia, he is hard for the Indian literary establishment to digest
This is very interesting. Thank you for writing it. I guess there are projects that are only ever going to get done if the people doing them expect zero monetary compensation for the work. Simply because it makes no financial sense (for the publisher) to make it financially worthwhile (for the author/translator). It's just too much work for too small of a potential readership. To the extent that academia can do anything at all about it, it is to count projects like this for things like promotion. Say, the author translated some major ancient text and put it on the Internet for free. So, give the person some credit for it, even if you cannot give any hard cash for it.
Do you know any ancient languages yourself, Naomi?
I don’t think religious nationalism is the only thing that bring about this type of translation (solitary, done for the love of it) - Robert Alter did an amazing, complete translation of the Hebrew bible despite not being religious. He is a prominent academic, so he was acclaimed for that translation, but you can’t read his work without realizing it was an monumental passion project.
Loved learning more about Debroy, thank you!
Subscribed (first ever on Substack). First comment: just wanted you to know you are not alone. I’m working through Debroy now after going as far as I could on van Buitonen and a scraggly mishmash of abridgments and stand-alone volumes to get through the story. And I have a year of Sanskrit under my belt. Your points on how those who love the classics and/or grew up steeped in a religious tradition will carry these texts hit home. I’m going to make it the mission of the rest of my life to grapple with these texts and introduce them to others. Thank you for carrying your torch of love for this work.
He will only be remembered for the Mahabharata. It is an amazing achievement that will eventually get traction. Even when the last person who knows him is no more, the translation will endure both because it is good and because there is nothing else like it.
I agree completely. It is such a monument. Shocking how much he's been ignored by the literary establishment, but ultimately there will be no ignoring him bc the only route into the text will be through him!