Abstract: The canon of Indian literature begins with Vyasa and Valmiki, and runs through the Sangam poets, Kalidasa, Premchand, Tagore, and many others, but Kumaravyasa, the crown jewel of Kannada literature is never mentioned. Clearly, this is due to lack of a good translation, which we are trying to remedy, through our Kannada Mahabharata, the first volume of which has just been published by Harvard University Press, in the Murty Classical Library of India. Kumaravyasa’s 15th century epic poem, Karnata Bharata Katha Manjari, is a brilliant re-telling of the Mahabharata. The author renders only the first ten books and ends with the war, eliminating didactic passages and subsidiary tales. In this crisp, fast-paced narrative, Kumaravyasa flouts many conventions, such as descriptions of nature, except when it is organically needed to advance the narrative. The story is told through powerful dialogues and intricate soliloquies. Each episode erects and resolves a moral dilemma with complex, universal human interest, often a dramatic confrontation. In the process, we find wonderful commentaries on contemporary issues such as combating female sexual harassment; the futility of war; the emptiness of social hierarchies; the vanity of class hegemony; and quest for perfection, and so forth.
In this retelling, the charismatic Krishna is the central character and all others are defined in relation to him. There is a wonderful interplay of the human and the divine, where humans aspire to be god-like while gods behave like humans. Kumaravyasa creates a gallery of memorable characters, including the feminist firebrand Draupadi, the loyal but torn Karna, the hyper dramatic, manipulative Duryodhana, the urbane Arjuna, the comical Uttara, and so forth. A supreme master of Kannada, Kumaravyasa fashions a supple, smooth-flowing, versatile poetic idiom, with a surfeit of brilliant metaphors and an easy commerce between the high Sanskritic style and the common, rustic, powerful desi vernacular. In all of this, Kumaravyasa demands comparison with the greatest writers, including, especially, Shakespeare. This narrative has been enjoyed for centuries by the learned and the illiterate alike across the Kannada country. In this lecture, Prof Sridhar will outline, with illustrations, why India’s literary canon needs to be reimagined to include The Kannada Mahabharata of Kumaravyasa as a world classic and how the great poet’s genius comes through, even in translation.
About the Speaker: Professor S.N. Sridhar is State University of New York Distinguished Service Professor of Linguistics and India Studies, and Director of the Mattoo Center for India Studies at Stony Brook University, New York. Professor Sridhar is an expert on the languages of India, bilingualism, second language acquisition, Indian English and World Englishes. He is the author of three books: Kannada (a reference grammar), Cognition and Sentence Production: A Cross-Linguistic Study (psycholinguistics) and Indina Kannada (contemporary Kannada). He is co-editor of two reference volumes (Ananya: A Portrait of India (AIA) and Language in South Asia (Cambridge University Press). He has published over 75 book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and papers in refereed journals. He is chief editor and a translator of the 15th century classic, The Kannada Mahabharata by Kumaravyasa into English. The first of four volumes has just been published by Harvard University Press in the Murty Classical Library of India. Professor Sridhar is founder-Director of the Mattoo Center for India Studies at Stony Brook university. The Center teaches 30 courses a year, taught over 25,000 students, with a large library, distinguished lecture and performing arts series, and an Outreach program. With the Indian American community, he has established a $7 million endowment for India Studies, including a Chair in Classical Indic Humanities. He was also founding Chair of the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies. He earned the M.A. degree in English literature and linguistics from Bangalore University with a first class and first rank, and the Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has taught at Stony Brook for 43 years.