Dominik Wujastyk or incarnation of Agastya

[Sid Harth]

Dominik wants to dominate
So I want him to nominate
a person with smarts innate
to manage indology on internet

Nyet! Nyet!!

Whats up Doc Vous Agastyk?

just kidding,

Sid Harth
 


> From mehta at mgmt.purdue.edu 15 1995 Jan U 12:53:16
Date: 15 Jan 1995 12:53:16 U
From: "Mehta, Shailendra" <mehta at mgmt.purdue.edu>
Subject: RE: SOCIOLINGUISTIC QUESTIONS

Allen Thrasher asks:

          Is it likely that a significant market of publishing of Hindi 
          translations of Sanskrit religious classics (with  or without the 
          original Sanskrit) was speakers of  other languages?  It  strikes 
          me   that   a  highly  Sanskritised  style  of  Hindi  would   be 
          intelligible to  those  who  knew Sanskrit or Sanskrit vocabulary 
          with a very small acquaintance with specifically Hindi vocabulary 
          or specifically Hindi grammar.  Many people may have picked up  a 
          bit  of Hindi from pilgrimage sites as  well  as  by other means. 
          The Hindi translations might be very useful as cribs to those who 
          knew some Sanskrit but  not  very  much  and  who  did  not  feel 
          confident with  it.   Any anecdotal evidence  of  relatives using 
          Hindi versions for these purposes? 
   
I believe it is most certainly the case. As one who has accumulated several
thousand such volumes, and avidly followed their publication trajectories, I
would like to append several remarks.

1. On account of the widespread use of the Devanagari by several Indian
languages, script is almost never a barrier in the comprehension of Hindi. A
fortiori for those who have received at least some secondary-school level
education in India, since at that level, the teaching of Hindi becomes
mandatory almost everywhere under the three language formula.

2. On account the long standing popularity of Hindi films, and on account of
recent explosion of Hindi TV (including state and cable channels) spoken Hindi
is not really a problem for most people either. 

(Indeed a major worry of the Bengali speaking intelligentsia - they held a
major demonstration on this issue about a year ago - is that in recent years
Hindi has made major inroads even in rural Bengal at the expense of Bengali.
Perhaps this is true of other languages as well ( I suspect Marthi among
others...  but others can tell us.)

3. Hindi has been well served by popular and inexpensive editions of classical
texts  brought out by several organizations. The presses of Chaukhamba, Arya
Samaj, Gita Press, Gayatri Parivar etc.. come to mind.

4. Many individuals who have a full familiarity with the roman script (like
myself) prefer NOT to read romanized Sanskrit. The true enjoyment of any Indian
language, especially Sanskrit demands (in my opinion) a syllabic script. It
scans much better.

Ergo...the phenomenon you mention.

Several other remarks which are related.

5. Thanks to Jnanpith and others almost every major figure writing in Indian
languages is available in superb Hindi translations. This is true of prose as
well as poetry. 

6. There is a very serious demand for Urdu written in Devanagari. Indeed there
might well come a time (if it has not come already) when more Urdu poetry will
be read in India in Devanagari than in the Persian script.

7. Even the misguided efforts of Goverment of India sometimes bear unexpected
fruit. Often, translations from Eastern European languages (state sponsored
mostly) sound and scan much better in Hindi than in English. I will vouch for
two - translations of Pushkin's "Beci" and Chekhov's "Dama  c cobockoi" (the
greatest short story ever told in the opinion of the critic Cyril Connally -
obviously he had not read Premchand's 'Shatranj kE KhilAdI') by Madhu are much
better than the any in English.

8. For all these reasons Hindi is becoming a link lanaguage to a certain
extent.

9. More Sanskritised and less Persianised Hindi is often much easier to follow
for many non-Hindi speakers. The mother of a good Bengali friend encountered no
problems following the news on radio (highly Sanskritised) but was often
puzzled by spoken Hindi (more Persianised). 
Another example which completely floored me as a child when it was first
introduced on railway platforms was this. Vegetarian and Non-vegetarian was
changed from Shakahari and Mansahari to Niramish and Samish. The latter are
almost foreign to Hindi speakers even to this day, but not to Bengali and
Sanskrit speakers of course.



Shailendra Raj Mehta
mehta at mgmt.purdue.edu