Source of this article: This article is reproduced from the Beijing News
From: A Study of The Ancient History of the World
After seventeen years, the Hindu epic Mahabharata was published Chinese full translation
The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are also known as the two great indian epics. Ramayana was translated by Mr. Ji Xianlin and published in the 1980s. The content of the Mahabharata is four times the length of the Ramayana. The book is divided into eighteen chapters, and the core story is set in indian society in the era of civil strife, and tells the story of the struggle between the two descendants of the Borneo tribe, the Kulu and The Bundu, for the right to inherit the throne. This epic, known as the encyclopedic style, is grand in scale and complex in content, and so far only the Indian Sanskrit writers have completed the "Mahabharata" in half a century and the previous incomplete English translation, while the French, American and other scholars have died in the middle of the way. At the end of the 1980s, under the support and leadership of Mr. Jin Kemu, the translation project of the Chinese edition of the Mahabharata was launched, and after the hard work of a group of scholars, it took seventeen years to complete the project under the auspices of Mr. Huang Baosheng, and it has become one of the only three texts in the world today.
Huang Baosheng
Born in 1942, a native of Shanghai. In 1965, he graduated from the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures of Peking University with a major in Sanskrit Pali. Since September 1965, he has worked in the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and is currently a researcher, the director of the academic committee of the institute and a member of the academic advisory committee of the academy. He is also the President of the Chinese Foreign Literature Society and the President of the Indian Literature Research Society. He is the author of "Ancient Indian Literature" and "Indian Classical Poetics", and his translations of "Indian Philosophy", "Dream Book", "Selected Stories of Buddha Bunsen" and "Selected Stories".
The Mahabharata is a 6-volume book published by the China Social Sciences Press, with a total word count of 4 million.
The translation of the Mahabharata is a twist and turn
Beijing News: In the process of translating the whole book of "Maha Bradhya", several gentlemen "died before they left the teacher", what is the cause and process of translating this book?
Huang Baosheng: In 1960, the Department of Oriental Languages and Literatures of Peking University opened a Sanskrit Pali class, and Mr. Ji Xianlin and Jin Kemu personally taught for five years and trained a group of our disciples. Soon after these disciples set foot on their respective jobs, the "Cultural Revolution" broke out. The two gentlemen were tortured, and the disciples' studies were abandoned. After the seven-volume and eight-volume Chinese translation of the Ramayana was completed in the 1980s, it was natural for us disciples to wonder when we would be able to translate the Mahabharata as well. But the Mahabharata is four times as long as the Ramayana, which is daunting. According to the experience of Western scholars in translating the Mahabharata, we can start with the interjection in it. Earlier, Mr. Jin Kemu and my classmate Zhao Guohua had selected and translated the interjected stories in the Mahabharata. Mr. Kim also translated the wedge of the Mahabharata, The Origin of the Serpent Sacrifice, and wrote an anatomy essay.
Beijing News: So what about the subsequent progress? What did Mr. Kim Kemu do in later translations?
Huang Baosheng: Subsequently, Zhao Guohua cooperated with Xi Bizhuang and Guo Liangxun to compile the interjection story by Mr. Jin and translated the "Selected Words of Mahabharata", which was published by the People's Literature Publishing House in 1987. At the same time, with the support of Mr. Jin, Zhao Guohua agreed that Xi Bizhuang, Guo Liangxun and I would work together to translate the entire Mahabharata. The translation was decided to be in prose style, and the translation was intended to be divided into twelve volumes. Mr. Kim personally translated the first four chapters of the Mahabharata. The first four chapters contain an outline of the whole book, which is very difficult to translate. Mr. Kim's translation played an exemplary role in translating the entire book. After that, Guo Liangxun and Zhao Guohua agreed that we would start from the fifth volume, and the first four volumes would be mainly undertaken by him and Xi Bizhuang, and translated first. At the end of 1990, Zhao Guohua once again agreed with us on the division of labor and implementation of the translation plan, but unexpectedly, just when the translation project of "Maha Bradhya" was restarted, Zhao Guohua suddenly died of a myocardial infarction in 1991. He was only forty-eight years old and was at the peak of his academic life.
Beijing News: Mr. Jin Kemu did not see the whole book later, which is very regrettable.
Huang Baosheng: Yeah. After Zhao Guohua's death, we were hesitant to continue this translation project. After the first volume of the Mahabharata came out, the social response was very good. The leaders of the China Social Sciences Publishing House hoped that we would continue to complete the translation of the entire Mahabharata and entrusted me with this work. Considering the cultural significance of the Mahabharata itself, and considering that the last wish of my deceased friend Zhao Guohua should be fulfilled, I decided to take on this responsibility. Xi Bizhuang and Guo Liangxun were the original participants, and I invited Ge Weijun and Li Nan to participate. Later, Duan Qing also volunteered to join us. The translation work was carried out in accordance with the format established in Volume I. On August 5, 2000, Mr. Jin Kemu died of illness in Beijing and was unable to see the book out.
Mahabharata is a popular Sanskrit word
Beijing News: Mr. Tian Dewang translated Dante's Divine Comedy into prose, which is also a good translation. There are other translations that also have this phenomenon, translating the poetry of the original text into the prose style of Chinese. Did the Mahabharata do this because the Sanskrit style is difficult to translate into poetry in Chinese or for other reasons?
Huang Baosheng: It is difficult to translate the theme of epic poetry into poetry, because it is not a purely artistic poetry, but a colloquial folk rap style. If you completely translate it into a written language like a grammatical poem, if you translate it into a folk song style, it will be a problem if it is too dead, and it will be more difficult to translate from the style. The two epics we are translating now are not read in written language appreciation. In ancient times, the rap body was infected by the form of rapping, which had an improvised voice, intonation, gestures, movements and other artists' expression methods, not reading poetry like modern people. We believe that the prose style can be expressed more accurately. In addition, the Mahabharata involves not only literature, but also law, ethics, philosophy and other contents, which is of little significance, more difficult, and it is difficult to reflect the characteristics of its rhyme——— because the language is different, the rhyme cannot be transformed. We have translated some of the "ancients sang" into poems, and if we want to translate them all into poetry, the scale will be expanded several times, and it will take another time. If someone can translate it into poetry in the future, that's fine too. We have too few people.
Beijing News: When it comes to multi-person co-translation, I have always had an experience, that is, its language style is difficult to unify, because each translator has its own language habits and characteristics. You are the reviser of the whole book, how is this problem solved?
Huang Baosheng: Generally speaking, works that are not very large in scale still need to be translated by individuals. However, there is a tradition of translating Chinese Buddhist scriptures collectively, some people are responsible for reading Sanskrit, some people are responsible for translating into Chinese, some people are responsible for recording, some people are doing word processing, and some people compare Sanskrit with the translation and verify it. In ancient times, the place where this was translated was called "translation field". I also noticed this problem in the translation of the Mahabharata. Translation of names, colloquialisms and stylistic problems, some people pull the sentence very long, Sanskrit belongs to the Indo-European language family, I pay more attention to separating the sentences, more in line with the expression habits of Chinese. In general, because Mr. Jin Kemu has translated some of it, everyone has seen it beforehand, and basically translates it in this style. In addition, when I was co-ordinating, I consciously made some unifications, so the current translation style difference is basically not large. Mr. Zhao Guohua liked to use some antique words when he translated in the early days, but because it is an epic style, which is different from the creation of the literati, it is not suitable for the text to be too carved, and it is not consistent with its own style.
Beijing News: I saw your self-report and said that my dreams were still translating. How much have you translated in addition to proofreading?
Huang Baosheng: That's because I put all my energy into this work. Especially in the past two years, when I am getting closer and closer to the final goal, I have been fully engrossed and working day and night. Sometimes after I put my pen to sleep in the middle of the night, I am still translating in my dreams. In these days, the Mahabharata seems to have become one with my life, causing me to put everything else in my life out of it. I translated a third of the book, adding up to more than a million words.
Beijing News: Have you ever counted how many names there are in the book? Also, why is this set of books not indexed?
Huang Baosheng: We have not counted because there are too many names. At the time of translation, the publisher wanted us to do an index, but because the workload was too large, it was finally abandoned. If made, it will be a thick book. In foreign countries, there are special teams for indexing. We still have too few people, those who know Sanskrit, there are just a few people in china. It is also possible for someone to do this work alone in the future.
The author and date of the book are difficult to define
Beijing News: What is the status of the Mahabharata in Indian culture?
Huang Baosheng: The highest scriptures in India in the past had four great Vedas, and the Mahabharata is called the fifth great Veda, which shows its canonical status. To this day, Indian films, television and other literary and artistic works often quote aphorisms and aphorisms. Like our Three Kingdoms and Water Margin, it has penetrated into the souls of Indians.
Beijing News: You say, "Indians say that this book first appeared in 3100 BC, and the Austrian Sanskrit scholar M. Winternitz once proposed that the Mahabharata was written 'between the fourth century BC and the fourth century AD', although the time span is eight hundred years, it has long been accepted by most scholars." "However, the span of 800 years is still very large, why is this phenomenon happening?
Huang Baosheng: It is difficult for Chinese readers to understand this phenomenon, which also reflects the cultural differences between China and India. Ancient Indian oral literature is particularly developed and has a long history. Chinese written culture is particularly developed, so the Han chinese will not produce such oral epics. There was no historical work like the Chronicle of History in ancient India, and it also had wars in ancient times, but it was passed down from generation to generation through orality, so it became bigger and bigger. Due to the way it was disseminated in its early days and the fluidity of its content and text, it is difficult to determine its specific time of completion today.
Beijing News: As far as I know, China's ethnic minorities have epics, and Homer's epics are also passed down orally.
Huang Baosheng: This may also have something to do with the way of writing. The tools used to record writing very early in ancient China were bamboo and bamboo, which were relatively easy to preserve, and many historical facts were recorded. The Indian script was produced relatively late, and the tools used for recording were all bark and palm leaves. They are not easy to preserve and rot before long. So it pays more attention to oral transmission and does not pay more attention to writing. Once it is passed on orally, it becomes a story, mythologized, and becomes epic rather than historical. Later, epic poetry became a way to preserve their cultural accumulation and traditions, incorporating philosophy, religion, ethics, etc., and passing them on in this way.
Beijing News: The identity of the author of this book, BiyeSha, is also a very interesting topic. Legend has it that he was both the author of this epic and the character of it. The name Viyasa, on the other hand, means "division", "expansion", and "arrangement", which is as difficult to determine as Homer's identity.
Huang Baosheng: This is a problem that most oral epics in the world have. An epic has been passed down to the present, condensing the painstaking efforts of generations of artists. In general, it should be said that it was created collectively. But it is not excluded that individuals played a great role in the shaping of the epic. For example, his rap talent and expression are very good and make it more organized. In the absence of written evidence, the true author is difficult to determine.
The Mahabharata is a cautionary work
Beijing News: You think that "the Mahabharata overflows with the concept of Western epics", which means that you think it is more unique. So, where is this uniqueness?
Huang Baosheng: For epic poems, Voltaire said, "Habit makes this word refer specifically to a poetic narrative of the hero's adventurous behavior." This is the traditional Western concept of epic, or in other words, epic mainly refers to heroic epic. According to this concept of epic, the Mahabharata can be said to be a long poem with a heroic epic at its core. However, the Mahabharata describes itself as a "historical legend." It is sung in the form of poems to the legends of ancient Indian history. It deals with creation myths, genealogies of kings, political systems, religious philosophies, legal ethics, and astronomical geography, all along the main storyline of the Borneo Wars. Western epics have something, and it has it all in it, but its content is richer. So, I make that observation.
Beijing News: We often say that Greek epics have a tragic spirit, but what about the Mahabharata?
Huang Baosheng: Insightful people in ancient India affirmed "Dharma-rectification, interest, love, and liberation" as the four major purposes of life. They affirm the human pursuit of interest and love, but believe that this pursuit should conform to the Dhamma, and that the ultimate purpose of life is to pursue liberation. Their fear is that once humanity's quest for profit and love gets out of control, it will spiral into endless strife until it kills and self-destructs, leading to tragedies like the Great Borneo Wars. Therefore, the Mahabharata is a cautionary work. It condenses a heavy historical experience and is full of profound insights of ancient Indian insights into the dilemma of human existence. Naturally, their view of "Fa-rectification" also has obvious historical limitations. However, since human beings entered civilized society, they have gone through various social forms, and their way of living has not fundamentally changed... The joys and sorrows of people caused by interests, gains and losses, misfortunes and hatreds are still the same, and the social problems and life confusion faced by human beings are still the same. Therefore, as an ancient mirror of history, the Mahabharata is not completely covered with green rust, but still has the effect of learning from the past and knowing the present.