THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE

V. 4. On Translating Kalidasa237volume. In the first place, a certain concession may be madebut within very narrow and guarded limits to the need for localcolour, a few names of trees, flowers, birds etc., may be transliteratedinto English, but only when they do not look hopelesslyoutlandish in that form or else have a liquid or haunting beautyof sound; a similar indulgence may be yet more freely permittedin the transliteration of mythological names. But here the licenceends; a too liberal use of it would destroy entirely the ideal oftranslation; what is perfectly familiar in the original language mustnot seem entirely alien to the foreign audience; there must be acertain toning down of strangeness, an attempt to bring homethe association to the foreign intelligence, to give at least someidea to a cultured but not orientally erudite mind. This may bedone in many ways and I have availed myself of all. A wordmay be rendered by some neologism which will help to conveyany prominent characteristic or idea associated with the thingit expresses; blossom of ruby may, for instance, render bandhoula,a flower which is always mentioned for its redness. Orelse the word itself may be dropped and the characteristic broughtinto prominence; for instance, instead of saying that a womanis lipped like a ripe bimba, it is, I think, a fair translation towrite, “Her scarlet mouth is a ripe fruit and red”. This deviceof expressingly declaring the characteristics which the originalonly mentions, I have frequently employed in the Cloud-Messenger,even when equivalent words exist in English, becausemany objects known in both countries are yet familiar and fullof common associations to the Indian mind while to the Englishthey are rare, exotic and slightly associated or only withone particular and often accidental characteristic. 1 A kindredmethod, especially with mythological allusions, is to explain fullywhat in the original is implicit; Kalidasa, for instance, compares1It is an unfortunate tendency of the English mind to seize on what seems to itgrotesque or ungainly in an unfamiliar object; thus the elephant and peacock have becomealmost impossible in English poetry, because the one is associated with lumberingheaviness and the other with absurd strutting. The tendency of the Hindu mind on theother hand is to seize on what is pleasing and beautiful in all things and turn to see acharm where the English mind sees a deformity and to extract poetry and grace out of theugly. The classical instances are the immortal verses in which Valmiki by a storm of beautifuland costly images and epithets has immortalised the hump of Manthara and the stillmore immortal passage in which he has made the tail of a monkey epic.