The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

The Mahabharata of
Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

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Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
Translated into English Prose, by Kisari Mohan Ganguli Copyright
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Title: The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Translated into
English Prose Adi Parva
Author: Kisari Mohan Ganguli
Release Date: April, 2005 [EBook #7864] [Yes, we are more than one

year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 27, 2003]
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Language: English
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MAHABHARATA OF KRISHNA-DWAIPAYANA ***

Produced by David King, Juliet Sutherland, and Charles Franks, John B.
Hare and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team

The Mahabharata
of
Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
Translated into English Prose from the Original Sanskrit Text
by
Kisari Mohan Ganguli
[1883-1896]
Scanned at sacred-texts.com, 2003. Redaction at Distributed Proofing,
Juliet Sutherland, Project Manager. Additional proofing and formatting
at sacred-texts.com, by J. B. Hare. This text is in the public domain.
These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this
notice of attribution is left intact.
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE
The object of a translator should ever be to hold the mirror upto his
author. That being so, his chief duty is to represent so far as practicable
the manner in which his author's ideas have been expressed, retaining if
possible at the sacrifice of idiom and taste all the peculiarities of his
author's imagery and of language as well. In regard to translations from
the Sanskrit, nothing is easier than to dish up Hindu ideas, so as to
make them agreeable to English taste. But the endeavour of the present
translator has been to give in the following pages as literal a rendering
as possible of the great work of Vyasa. To the purely English reader

there is much in the following pages that will strike as ridiculous.
Those unacquainted with any language but their own are generally very
exclusive in matters of taste. Having no knowledge of models other
than what they meet with in their own tongue, the standard they have
formed of purity and taste in composition must necessarily be a narrow
one. The translator, however, would ill-discharge his duty, if for the
sake of avoiding ridicule, he sacrificed fidelity to the original. He must
represent his author as he is, not as he should be to please the narrow
taste of those entirely unacquainted with him. Mr. Pickford, in the
preface to his English translation of the Mahavira Charita, ably defends
a close adherence to the original even at the sacrifice of idiom and taste
against the claims of what has been called 'Free Translation,' which
means dressing the author in an outlandish garb to please those to
whom he is introduced.
In the preface to his classical translation of Bhartrihari's Niti Satakam
and Vairagya Satakam, Mr. C.H. Tawney says, "I am sensible that in
the present attempt I have retained much local colouring. For instance,
the ideas of worshipping the feet of a god of great men, though it
frequently occurs in Indian literature, will undoubtedly move the
laughter of Englishmen unacquainted with Sanskrit, especially if they
happen to belong to that class of readers who revel their attention on
the accidental and remain blind to the essential. But a certain measure
of fidelity to the original even at the risk of making oneself ridiculous,
is better than the studied dishonesty which characterises so many
translations of oriental poets."
We fully subscribe to the above although, it must be observed, the
censure conveyed to the class of translators last indicated is rather
undeserved, there being nothing like a 'studied dishonesty' in their
efforts which proceed only from a mistaken view of their duties and as
such betray only an error of the head but not of the heart. More than
twelve years ago when Babu Pratapa Chandra Roy, with Babu Durga
Charan Banerjee, went to my retreat at Seebpore, for engaging me to
translate the Mahabharata into English, I was amazed with