44 The New York Reviewseventh volume of which alone is 1,522
pages long) into a new one- volume
paperback intended for “the general
reading public” has been achieved in
part by jettisoning the notes, the seven
long introductions, and the appendi-
ces, though there is still a forty- one-
page introduction, a ten- page glossary
of important Sanskrit terms, and a
seventy- one- page index. Considerable
space was saved by changing the origi-
nal verse formatting to paragraphs and
by using smaller print, which will be a
problem for many readers (especially,
but not only, older scholars who have
ruined their eyes poring over Sanskrit
texts). The book might be sold with a
little magnifying glass like the one that
comes with the compact one- volume
edition of the Oxford English Dictio-
nary in tiny print.
Inevitably, there are losses. Drop-
ping the notes made it necessary from
time to time to insert information into
the translation itself to clarify the iden-
tities of the huge cast of divine, human,
and animal characters. But readers of
the new one- volume edition do need
some notes on other subjects; not as
many, and certainly not as technical,
as in the big edition, but a thoughtful
note might often have guided read-
ers through puzzling passages. And I
miss the grand appendices. The reader
of the new edition is at one point ad-
vised that “an extensive glossary of
flora and fauna [in the Ramayana]
has been posted online” at Prince-
ton University Press’s website, but I
couldn’t find it.
It’s puzzling, and a shame, that the
one appendix the editors did decide
to keep in the one- volume edition
concerns weapons (such as half- iron
arrows, barbed darts, nooses, cudgels,
axes, ploughshares, and double- edged
swords), which have only a minor part
in the Ramayana. I wish they had in-
cluded instead one of the other appen-
dices, such as the genealogical charts
of Ravana’s paternal and maternal
lineage, blood relations, and marital
alliances. And the index is so com-
prehensive that it sometimes collapses
under its own weight; what reader will
search through five pages of index
under “Hanuman”?
A translation can’t be all things to
all audiences. If you don’t let go of the
scholars, you won’t draw in other read-
ers. And this new edition can’t bear to
let go of the scholars. The introduction
is thoroughly laced with superfluous
Sanskrit terminology, such as a refer-
ence to the poem’s upodghƗta, or “pro-
logue.” Why not just say “prologue”?
And why use Sanskrit diacritics at all?
These puzzling little dots beneath and
dashes and slashes above certain letters
will stop many otherwise enthusiastic
non- Sanskrit- readers in their tracks
and forestall casual attempts by pur-
chasers of the e- book version to search
the text.
On the other hand, the one word they
should have left in Sanskrit, and did
not, is dharma, an untranslatable term
for the way things are, or the way things
are not but should be. The new edition
usually renders this crucial term as
“righteousness” but also, variously and
confusingly, as “religion, duty, inherent
nature, law,... character, and insignia,
among others.” Since, however, the
word is by now familiar to Anglophone
readers, and its more complex shadings
emerge from the contexts in which it
appears, it need not be translated at all.The sorts of decisions that translators
of Sanskrit have to make can be illus-
trated by comparing a few translations
of one of the most famous passages in
the Ramayana (1.2.12–14). In these
three verses, Valmiki sees a hunter kill a
waterbird in the act of mating and spon-
taneously cries out in the first instance
of both poetry in general and the partic-
ular meter in which he will compose theentire Ramayana. This meter is called
the shloka, because the poet spoke it
out of sorrow (shoka). In this myth of
the origin of poetry, the sound of heart-
break is the sound of the first poem.
Let me begin by providing a very lit-
eral translation of this passage:And when he saw that twice- born
bird brought down like that by
the hunter [NiৢƗda], compassion
arose in that poet/sage whose soul
was dharma. From this emotion ofcompassion, thinking “This is not-
dharma [adharma],” the twice-
born brahman, hearing the female
waterbird [krauñcƯ] weeping, said
this speech: “Hunter [NiৢƗda], may
you not find a final resting place for
eternal ages, since you slaughtered
the one male of this mating couple
of waterbirds [krauñcas] when he
was infatuated by sexual passion.”There are several challenges here. Val-
miki is called a ܈܀i (rishi), an inspired
poet who is also a sage or seer. In this
context, I think it best to call him a
poet rather than a sage. Then there is
a pun on “twice- born” (dvi- ja), a word
that means both a bird (born first as
an egg from the mother bird and then
reborn from the egg) and a brahman
(born first from his mother and then re-
born as an adolescent in the ceremony
of initiation, the Hindu equivalent of a
bar mitzvah or first communion). TheThe poet Valmiki seeing a hunter kill a waterbird in the act of mating; illustration from the
Ramayana, northern India, 1597–1605. Wendy Doniger writes that the bird’s death caused
Va lmiki to ‘spontaneously [cry] out in the first instance of both poetry in general and the
particular meter in which he will compose the entire Ramayana.’Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.Available from booksellers or nyrb.comA New York Times Notable
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