Translation and Reception as a Cultural Process: On the Emergence of Tragedy in Kannada Literature T.S. SATYANATH* Although translation is generally considered as a literary process, it involves a series of cultural maneuvers by the cultures involved in the process, both ideologically and otherwise. The absence of tragedy as a genre in Indian literature has generally prompted scholars to perceive the emergence of tragedy in Indian literature variously as influence, reception, emergence of a new genre etc. However, a closer look at the controversies, debates, criticisms and experimentations and the changes in parallel native performing traditions reveal interesting cultural maneuvers undertaken by different groups of people in responding to the genre of tragedy, which also needs to be looked at as a part of the translation process. The paper attempts to probleinatize the issue by going through different modes of representations attempted in the history of modern Kannada literature, particularly during the period 1920-50, which constitutes the formation period for the genre. The problem has been approached from six different perspectives. 1. The early translations of tragedies. 2. Controversies that surrounded the early translations. 3. Attempts to create an appropriate aesthetics (sensibility) to appreciate the new genre. 4. Attempts to demonstrate the existence of tragic elements in Indian literature. 5. Attempts to demonstrate the existence of tragic heroes in Jaina literature, specifically in medieval Kannada epics. 6. The tragic nature in Kannada folk performing traditions. The paper argues for a need to understand translation as a process of cultural production and consumption rather than as a literary one. =Dr. T.S. Satyanath is a Reader in the Dept of Modern Indian Languages and Literatures, University of Delhi. He can be reached at the e-rnail id of [email protected]; [email protected] 'Iranslation Todau v cvattv; (1) No (1) Mar. 2004 © CIIL 2004. Translation and Reception As a Cultural Process 93 1. Introduction Translation, right from the time of its inception, is a project of cultural domination and was conceived and executed by the colonial rule in order to substantiate its political interest. Whether it is translation of the law texts or the classics, we can see the western Canon operating behind it and gradually dominating the paradigm. Notions such as the original text, interpolations, different receptions, the accuracy of translation, the chronological ordering of the texts, thereby, implying the influence of one over the other are only some of a few problems that one confronts in the field of textual criticism and translation. At the same time, it is equally important to identify and explore the ways that medieval India used to deal with the processes that are similar to translation during the modem period. As many as three hundred renderings of the Ramayana have been identified and terms such as versions and variants have been used to denote them. However, looking into the divergent and pluralistic nature of the narrative traditions, Ramanujan prefers to use the term 'tellings' to denote them. These medieval tellings, many of them radically deviant from the reconstructed original text, seem to perform multiple functions, sometimes mutually antagonistic to each other. It is highly relevant to probe further the dimensions of different tellings in medieval Indian literary co-text. Each telling probably intended to construct a different cultural view point, but at the same time also affirmed other view points, which were shared by other communities. In this sense, they are attempts to represent various positions reflecting the religious, social, linguistic and regional cultures. At the same time these tellings were probably consumed and appropriated by multiple communities is evident from synchronic evidence available from the performing traditions of such tellings. The processes of participation in such tellings, both at the level of performers, infrastructure providers as well as at the level of audience are always a pluralistic one - multi-religious, multi-caste, multilinguistic and multi-regional. Thus multiplicity of tellings in medieval India represented not only different view points but also made the communities mutually accommodative ones by sharing the view points of each others. This appears to me to be a 94 T.S. Satyanath radically different one as compared to a monolithic, original text and its authentic translation, which attempts a eliminate the very possibilities of multiple tellings, firstly by its print media in which it gets transmitted and secondly by establishing a single text or telling as an authentic one. The possibilities for multiple readings as a continuous on going process and of infinite nature in medieval Indian telling traditions need further exploration. Within the hermeneutic tradition, the multiple readings that are possible on a text and the multiplicity of components that get into its representation and interpretation have been highly debated. In addition to the readings that is possible with in the text, the readings that are possible due to extra-textual field of reference, the readings that are possible due to inter-textual field of reference can result in the production of several re-presentations. If the listeners of the telling tradition is brought into focus here to theorize the relationship between the performers and listeners, then the process of representation and its readings not only become collective but also its re-presentation becomes a continues process and its possibilities are going to be infinite. Tellings in such cultural contexts do not have a hierarchy or power relationship as they could also act as mutual contestants. This is all the more significant if we consider the fact that there always exists a power relationship between the original text and its translation. It is against the backdrop of this problematization that we need to look at the translation and reception of tragedy in Kannada literature. In this context, the present paper not only urges to look at the medieval Indian processes of tellings in problematizing the translations studies but also interrogates the power and authority that has been acquired by the discipline, both academically and economicall y. Anyone who tries to take a closer look at the development of drama in different Indian languages is struck by certain conspicuous trends that are more or less common to all of them. First of all, there is a conspicuous absence of a dramatic tradition, marked by the lacuna of written plays till the introduction of the English education system. It was for the needs of this newly educated class that the professional drama companies, based on the model of the Translation and Reception As a Cultural Process 95 Parsi theatre companies, started adapting and wntmg new plays with the specific intention of performing them on the stage. This stage, in fact, was then using the conventions of the proscenium theatre from the European continent, which had made in roads into the newly emerging Indian theatre. On the one hand, plays were adapted and translated from the classical source, mainly from Sanskrit, where a long standing dramatic tradition had been claimed to have prevailed. On the other hand, plays were also adapted and translated from English, mostly the plays that the Parsi theatre companies were performing during those days. In addition, new plays were also written, mostly making use of the Puranic themes from Indian mythology. Thus the emergence of drama in different Indian languages have an underlaying Orientalist statement that the light to overcome the darkness created by the absence of drama has to be over coine not only by establishing a link with the tradition of Sanskrit drama through constructing its historical and thematic components (the ancient east), but also through establishing a link with the European west (the modern west). It is interesting to note here that several of the newly written plays, though contained Puranic themes, followed the conventions of the Parsi theatre, thereby, implying the Western form in its desi version, blending with the traditional Indian themes. An interrogation of the choice of the genre, the nature of translations, the selection of the themes, the modifications and transformations incorporated into them in the process of translation and the heated discussions that have taken place around these early experimentations reveal and demonstrate the complexities of an ambivalent society that was trying to blend the western genre with eastern sensibilities and the transitional nature of the newly emerging middle-class society and their world view. It is against this background that this paper problematizes the emergence of the genre 'tragedy' in Kannada in the form of translations and adaptations and the reception and controversies that surrounded it during the early phase of its experimentation. Though most of the discussion has been confined to the tragedies that- Sri (B.M. Srikanthaiya) wrote during the third and the fourth decades of the present century, I have gone beyond this time frame. Firstly, I have probed the period prior to the beginning of theatre 96 T.S. Satyanath movement in the Kannada speaking regions during the later part of the nineteenth century and subsequently, to the later period, which involved the controversies following the introduction of the tragedies in Kannada literary and drama spheres. The paper has four parts. In the first part, an introductory background for the study of translations and reception of tragedies has been outlined. The second part deals with the three translated / adapted texts of Sri and the controversies that surrounded them. The third part brings into focus the attempts made by the scholars to construct a history or tradition of tragedy in Indian and Kannada literatures, on the one hand to justify the need for it, and on the other, to show that it is not something totally new to the Indian world view.