One of the interesting working from Sanskrit forward is to see discrepancies in what Manmatha Dutt translated versus the original source Sanskrit text.
I have speculated before that Mr. Dutt may have faced the withering sarcasm and cultural superiority of British editors who insisted Dutt erase Sanskrit and cultural leaning metaphors such as ‘tiger among men’ to ‘great man’ when translating common metaphors such as naravyaghra. Given Mr. Dutt’s unabashed declaration of appreciation for Sanskrit’s artistic and literary flourish, it does not feel to out of line to put these type of deviations onto the English.
There are other types of deviations - I found at times the translated English falls out of pace with the Sanskrit verses - such that the English translation of the Shloka is placed above the Sanskrit rather than below. One imagines Mr. Dutt working through thousands of Shlokas with his notebooks in the hot India air and losing track. Other deviations appear to be no more or less than some bit of exhaustion - where Mr. Dutt would leave out or overly summarize a few Shlokas.
In Sambhava Parva the story of Gandhari’s pregnancy and 100 sons is told - as are all the names of their children. Similar to above, as I worked through the names in Sanskrit and compared my list of names to the source I realized there were differences in order and other unexplained differences. Some of the names I had are not in his list and some of his names are not in the source Sanskrit! In any other case I would defer - but names are pretty straight forward translations. Some of the names Mr. Dutt had are not there, and in one case he repeated the same name twice (highlighted below - Chitraksha)
Anyway I starred Duryodhana, Duhsasana, Yuyutsu and Duhshala as the key Kaurava siblings. Duryodhana being the principal antagonist of princes, of course. Duryodhana is considered the incarnation of the demon Kali. Comically asses bray and jackals howl when Duryodhana is born - emerging from his pot. Duhsasana was featured in the aftermath of the game of dice in his vicious assault on Draupadi before the Sabha.[1] He is just a mean SOB. Yuyutsu was born to a Vaishya woman, not Gandhari. Interesting Yyuyutsu fights on the side of the Pandavas against his half-siblings. Dushala is the lone daughter and marries Jayadratha - who Arjuna kills in revenge after his son Abhimanyu is slain. At one point Jayadratha tries to take Draupadi from the Pandavas, but he is chased down on his chariot by Bhima, thrashed within an inch of his life and shaved - Bhima leaves five tufts of hair for each Pandava. His life is spared by Yudhishthira after he promises to swear allegiance to the Pandavas in public. (13. Karna is not the same Karna that was born to Kunti[2]). Bhimasena kills them all in the end, so maybe it doesn’t matter?
There is a folk story about Duhshala, before marrying Jayadratha, approaching Arjuna at his residence with some of her brothers in tow to propose. Arjuna refused her. Things got heated when the Kauravas took offense at Arjuna’s refusal. ‘You think you are too good for our sister?’ pushing shoving and all that rot. Badly outnumbered Arjuna strung his bow and shot a razor-sharp arrow through Duhshala’s beloved pet goat - whom she led around with a rope leash - killing the animal instantly. After that the Kauravas lost interest in pushing Arjuna into marrying Duhshala and she settled for Jayadratha. At least Jayadratha had a wonderful head of hair until Bhima scalped him. lol.
All right last bit of notebook dump -
“During the Gupta Golden Age (300-600 CE) - Sanskrit, which for the last thousand years had been used only by archai priests for archai rites, came back in vogue as the language of literature and intellect.” - Archana Garodia Gupta & Shruti Garodia
This is interesting - thinking back to the late Roman age and Sanskrit was in much the same place it is today. Then, as now, no one would have guessed this old dead language would revive.
So this is a notebook dump. I hope its got some interesting content. :) I am working on the next chapter should be up as usual on the weekend. Last year I was keeping/advertised a once-a-week pace - going forward with the Kaurava rhymes I think I may be slowing back to a more like once a month with the translations. Just so you know.
Don’t call it a comeback, I’ve been here for years…
[1]
[2]