10 yrs of a unique classical library

Murty Classical Library is unique initiative with a 100-year plan to publish the English translations of some of the greatest literary works of India from the past two millennia

Malvika Kaul

Updated At : 09:09 AM Dec 15, 2024 IST

Rohan Narayana Murty

Entrepreneur and computer scientist Rohan Narayana Murty’s ambitious plans for the Murty Classical Library are more or less on course. The Library ‘opened’ in 2010 and started publishing, after five years, the English translations of some of the greatest literary works of India from the past two millennia. It’s probably the only publishing house with a 100-year plan to publish 500 manuscripts of authors ranging from Kalidasa to Mir Taqi Mir.

To mark the first 10 years, the Library recently released ‘Ten Indian Classics’, an anthology featuring ghazals and devotional poems, journeys of nirvana by women Buddhist followers, words of Sikh Gurus and poets, and epic Ramayana’s hero Ram’s battle for justice and honour. This English edition captures almost 2,500 years of literary tradition, translated by experts and richly introduced by poet and art critic Ranjit Hoskote.

The Murty Library books are available worldwide in bookstores and on conventional e-commerce platforms.

Rohan founded the Library by making a generous contribution (around $5.2 million, according to some media reports) to Harvard University, the institution from where he earned his PhD. With close to a century’s experience in publishing bilingual editions (both for Greek and Latin classics), Harvard appeared the perfect choice.

For the firm believers in India’s glorious past, the Murty Library may appear as another visionary idea from a family (father NR Narayana Murthy and mother Sudha Murthy) with a remarkable success record. For many modernists though, the Library is a brave attempt to reboot India’s humanities education programme, long hijacked by the IIT brigade.

Subjects like philosophy, literature and history are often viewed in India as “future-less”, compared to the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fields. Humanities degrees are less pursued though they are more likely to stir students towards critical thinking and ethical reasoning.

Rohan’s dream is simple. He imagines students in schools and colleges to read classical Indian poets like Kalidas and Tulsidas, besides consuming Shakespeare or Homer. “I dream of a day when students across India will voluntarily read these texts,” he says.

The Library, he believes, has done a commendable job, having already published close to 50 volumes translated from more than 10 classical languages like Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Pali, Persian, Sanskrit, Urdu and Sindhi. The author list includes Guru Nanak, Bulle Shah, Kalidas, Surdas and Nandi Timmana. For the first time, it is pointed out, a wide international audience is reading these texts in English. “Several universities around the world have started incorporating these texts into their classrooms,” he says.

For Murty Library, the Harvard University Press, with a team of distinguished scholars, editors and translators, has published English translations of great Indian classics that include ‘The Sea of Separation: A Translation from the Ramayana of Tulsidas’ by 16th century poet Tulsidas; ‘Theft of a Tree, A Tale by the Court Poet of the Vijaynagara Empire’ by Telugu poet Timmana; ‘The Kannada Mahabharata V.1’ by 15th century Kannada poet Kumaravyasa, and ‘God at Play V.1’, the oldest extant Marathi work by 13th century biographer Mhaimbhat.

Rohan finds it difficult to pick his favourites from the impressive selection, but says he often revisits Raghavanka’s ‘The Life of Harishchandra’ (Kannada) and Shah Abdul Latif’s ‘Risalo’ (Sindhi).

Sharmila Sen, Editorial Director and Director of Special Initiatives, Harvard University Press, says, “To publish original books that instruct and delight in equal measure is never easy.” Book trade in North America, Europe and Asia varies, and only complicates the task for them. She claims that compared to Greek and Latin translations, their publications are far more complex, varied, richer and more alive to literary tradition.

Indeed, the task has been demanding as Murty Library does not reproduce previously published translations and every work is originally commissioned. It produces the original Indic text in the relevant script on the verso (the left-hand side of the books). It has also faced some criticism in the past, mostly from the Indian scientist community and strong believers of India’s glorious past, regarding the choice of certain editors (like distinguished Sanskrit scholar Sheldon Pollock) of the Library.

Rohan has treated the attacks merely as “noise”. According to a media report, he likened the attacks to people throwing empty shells in a “peanut gallery”. Defending Pollock, he declared that nationality, gender, race, creed or colour will not decide who the editors shall be.

Rohan says he has envisioned a “living library” that continuously interacts with its readers and is not shackled by the ivory towers of an academic project. He claims he does not micro-manage the project and “it relies little, if at all, on any single individual”.

He has planned for the centenary of Murty Library. Those who will celebrate it may not have been born yet, but both Rohan and Team Murty believe they are doing their bit in “elevating Indian classics as first-class members of world literature”.

— The writer is based in New Delhi