|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ardhakathanaka:
Half-a-tale
Alternatively, you write a great book about a great book and rest assured that no researcher worth his salt can skip you, even if there is a slightest reference to any book about the great book. Most translators and critics shine in such borrowed glory. Then you meet the third kind. People who work hard on a book buried deep inside the dusty shelves of a library, translate it, swathe it in references, cross-references, annotations and then some more. Theirs is a labour of love. They delight in an endeavour, where their effort sometimes far exceeds the effort of the original author. The job is exacting, the rewards uncertain, but their story, for sure, makes history. Mukund Lath, a crusader of the third kind, has done that for an obscure autobiography called Ardhakathanaka, written by a Jain merchant-mendicant of the Mughal era called Banarasi Dass. The autobiography, when read in the old Hindi, is barely brilliant. It uses the metre/parts of speech/turns of phrase that had probably been bracketed as well-worn clich`E9s even in his time. Its sole claim to fame, as Lath has us believe, is that it is probably the only autobiography in the Indian tradition, as also the fact that its author, evidently working without precedents, has left us with a tale that paints the complex socio-political scenario in bold strokes. In addition, like a Japanese pen-and-ink drawing, it captures the subject’s deepest undulating thoughts, subtle and profound, which had stirred his conscience. Lath, however, is a patient craftsman, who knows how to deal with antique. He has the eye to see the gold in the mud and the art of polishing a diamond to perfection. He has researched well the life and times of Banarasi Dass so that you almost hear the gallop of the Mughal officers’ horses as they pillage and plunder, go on a rampage and strike or, at best, threaten and exploit the merchants and shopkeepers in bazaars spilling with spices and silk, gems and gold. He has brought alive in English the external struggles of the life of Banarasi Dass the merchant as well as the internal wanderings of Banarasi Dass the mendicant, which made him a leader of the men in his later life. Ganesh Pyne’s illustrations have certainly aided the resurrection. A scholarly effort that no researcher of literary history worth his salt ought to ignore. |
HOW do you ensure yourself
a place in literary history? You write and hardsell a great book, see it
climb the charts, sit back and count the bucks and assure yourself that
no researcher worth his salt can skip you, since you are now part of The
Canon. Kalidasa to Khushwant Singh—all have probably been there and
done that.