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Nidān, Volume 4, No. 2, December 2019, Pp. 21-42 ISSN 2414-8636 Nidān, Volume 4, No. 2, December 2019, pp. 21-42 ISSN 2414-8636 “Tell Us This Story from the Beginning”: Genre, Dialogue, and Cultural Translation in Thomas Stephens’s Kristapurāṇa Annie Rachel Royson, School of Liberal Studies Pandit Deendayal Petroleum University [email protected], [email protected] Abstract Missionary compositions from Portuguese Goa have often been read as colonial impositions in which the missionary spoke, and the convert merely listened. The present study is an attempt to locate “dialogue” as a critical aspect of cultural translation in Kristapurāṇa (1616), a seventeenth-century retelling of the Bible in the Marathi language. A close reading of select verses from Kristapurāṇa is undertaken to unravel the multiple layers of “dialogue” at work in the text. The dialogic nature of Kristapurāṇa is twofold: a) the conversational tone and development of the narrative through the question-answer format; and b) a more complex dialogic relationship where texts from diverse traditions such as the biblical and the purāṇic, “speak” to one another. Dialogue as a generic feature of purāṇic tradition, the question answer format of the Church’s catechism, and exchanges between missionaries and converts will be analyzed in this study in order to highlight the dialogic nature of cultural translation in Kristapurāṇa. Keywords: Kristapurana, cultural translation, dialogism, genre and translation, Marathi Christian writing Introduction The neo-converts of Portuguese Goa were rarely passive recipients of the translations created for them by missionaries. They actively “translated back” these texts, bringing out unexplored meanings of the translated work, and in the process, creating a Christian narrative unique to their cultural landscape. Dialogue with locals was also one of the ways in which missionaries negotiated local customs and familiarized themselves with culture. These dialogic voices introduced local social markers such as caste into Stephens’s “Christian” text, by compelling the translator to justify his narrative within the framework of local Goan culture. A more complex dialogism between textual traditions may be found in Stephens’s use of purāṇic genre in Kristapurāṇa. The use of ovi metre, used by Marathi saint-poets, and the use of purāṇic concepts such as “Vaicunttha” to interpret Christian theology are especially significant in this context. The dialogue of the 21 Royson / Tell Us This Story biblical narrative with local customs and texts composed in the region gives rise to a “creative Christianity” suited to the socio-cultural intricacies of seventeenth century Goa. This work is also an attempt to bring an early text such as Kristapurāṇa into the purview of scholarly discussions on Christianity in India. Select verses from the text have been translated into English to highlight its dialogic nature and the emergence of a distinctly Goan landscape in Stephens’s biblical text. Dialogue in Missionary Writings Scholarship on Christian writing in the Indian Subcontinent has often focussed on Bible translation, with the eighteenth century as their starting point, with a cursory glance at the ages that have gone before (See, Hooper, 1938; Israel, 2011). The eighteenth century is notable for the first “translation proper” of the Bible into a South Asian language—the Tamil New Testament, published in the year 1715. This was followed by a surge in Bible translation by missionaries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, the period of early missionary work by Catholics under the Portuguese regime produced some critical works which are significant in understanding the development of sacred-text translations within the subcontinent. A large volume of orientalist works by Catholic agents of the Portuguese empire were created beginning in the sixteenth century (See, Xavier and Županov, 2015). Catholic missionaries, specifically Jesuits, composed several works in the vernacular languages of their mission fields. Translation of the Bible, however, was not one of the priorities of these early missionaries (Hooper, 1938: 8). Their works were largely Catechisms, involving the lives of saints and other poetic pieces and commentaries that familiarized converts with Church culture. Kristapurāṇa (1616) is a rare sighting, in this period, of an attempt to translate the entire biblical narrative into a South Asian language. While it is clear that these works of Christian literature were composed to aid conversion efforts by missionaries, these texts, because they were not “official” Bible translations, provided spaces for dialogue between the missionary and convert, providing rare insight into the voice of colonized and converted individuals. The present study reads such dialogic relationships into one of the earliest Christian compositions from Portuguese Goa, Kristapurāṇa, a poetic retelling of the Christian Bible in the Marathi language. Father Thomas Stephens S.J. (1549-1619) composed his magnum opus Kristapurāṇa, in poetic form, to sanctify Christ as a saviour in the lives of neo- converts in seventeenth century Goa.1 This text may be read as one of the 1 Stephens was born in Bushton in the diocese of Salisbury in Wiltshire, England in the year 1549. After his ordination into the Jesuit order in Rome, he reached Goa in 1579, and lived and worked there until his death in 1619. He is the only Englishman known to be in Portuguese Goa during those times. 22 Nidān, Volume 4, No. 2, December 2019, pp. 21-42 ISSN 2414-8636 earliest retellings of the Bible in a South Asian language and is one of the earliest printed works in South Asia.2 Stephens retold the story of the Bible in Marathi, in the form of a Purāṇa. This poetic work, in its 10,962 verses, uses the dialogic form of the Purāṇic genre and is also reminiscent of the question-answer format of the early catechisms that were translated into Indian languages. It emerges from a reading of texts such as Kristapurāṇa that the convert was hardly the passive recipient of the “translations” of Christian works that were offered to them. I argue that the encounter between the missionary and convert gave rise to a dialogue that had a transformative influence on the texts that missionaries composed in these South Asian regions. “Dialogue”, in this study, is taken to mean both the words exchanged between the characters of the text, as well as moments wherein diverse texts and traditions speak to one another in the process of cultural translation.3 This introductory section addresses the critical relationship between missionary writing, translation, and dialogue, with specific reference to Kristapurāṇa. In the second section, I attempt to highlight conversations between the missionary and convert, and the effect these conversations had on the narrative of the text. The dialogue between listeners and the narrator of Kristapurāṇa, the Padre-guru, is analysed to understand the progression within narrative and the development of a local Christianity that was unique to seventeenth century Goa. This section will also familiarize readers to the text. The final section of the present study brings out another, deeper layer of dialogue—that between the purāṇic genre, Marathi saint-poetry, and Kristapurāṇa. Purāṇic elements which unravel yet another layer of dialogism in the text, involving transactions with the local literary genre. Through these discussions on the Jesuit tradition of literary compositions and the place of “dialogue” in the missionary enterprise, this study attempts to underline the position of Kristapurāṇa as a text that lies at the intersection of multiple cultural-literary traditions and constitutes a key text in the fabric of South Asian Christianity. Kristapurāṇa is divided into two parts: the Paillem Puranna (First Purāṇa) and the Dussarem Puranna (Second Purāṇa). The Paillem Puranna has thirty-six Avaswaru (cantos) while the Dussarem Puranna has fifty-nine Avaswaru. While the First Puranṇa begins with an invocation to the Trinity, the apostles and saints, the remaining sections of the thirty-six Avaswaru contain translations of all major episodes from the Old Testament: creation; the fall of angels; the fall of Adam and Eve; the flood; stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; Joseph; slavery in 2 A detailed discussion establishing the position of Kristapurāṇa as an early translation of the Bible into Marathi may be found in an earlier publication: (George, Annie Rachel, and Arnapurna Rath, 2016: 304-324). 3 In the “Introduction” to the edited volume In Dialogue with Classical Indian Traditions: Encounter, Transformation and Interpretation (2019: Introduction), Brian Black and Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad note that dialogue forms a “recurring and significant component of Indian religious and philosophical literature”. This dialogue could be a “a language-loaded encounter between two or more interlocutors whether these interlocutors are people – real or imagined – or texts – either contemporaneous or of different historical periods”. The articles in this volume study different aspects of dialogue in various Indian classical texts. 23 Royson / Tell Us This Story Egypt; the journey to Canaan; the kings and prophets of Israel; the desolation of Jerusalem; captivity in Babylon; Daniel and other prophets of the Old Testament. Christ’s birth is foretold time and again throughout the First Puranna. The Dussarem Puranna is divided into four parts. The first part deals with the birth and childhood of Christ. This part contains striking passages describing the Virgin Mary and the birth of Christ, among other episodes. The second part also describes the miracles of Christ and his public ministry and a description of the apocalypse and Judgement Day. “Part Three” describes the trial and crucifixion of Christ, while the fourth part deals with the resurrection and ascension of Christ into Vaicunttha, where the throne of the Creator is placed.4 Kristapurāṇa is composed in a dialogic format, as a discussion between the narrator, Padre-guru, who is a priest of the Catholic Church, and the neo- Christians in seventeenth century Goa (Kristapurāṇa 1.1.129-146). And dialogue is the key feature that shapes the narrative of the text.
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