Lectures on Ramayana by Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri

LECTURE ON RAMAYANA
BY Rt. Hon. SRINIVASA SASTRI *

DR. PREMA NANDAKUMAR

The classics can never be ignored. We might gallop towards the future on the wheels of scientific and industrial progress, but that nation alone is safe which is anchored to its traditional moorings. India is particularly lucky to possess an unparalleled treasure-house of classics. Take the Ramayana for example. From the adikavi to Viswanatha Satyanarayana thousands of creative writers and devotional poets have interpreted the story of the Prince of Ayodhya. For, the Rama theme is a perennial spring that sustains people through the changing times, mores and behaviour-patterns. The Ramayana is the foundation of the Indian way of life. For us the epic is a many-coloured solid Mandala that contains history, science, religion, literature, ethics, law and social life. Rightly has C. Narayana Menon described the epic as a perennial experience in his book, An Approach to the Ramayana (1942):

“The reader himself is Rama, Sita and the quest. What takes place within the reader produces the illusion of the story, an illusion which bodies forth an inner process and enables him to realise progressively his own truth.”

The Rt. Honourable V. S. Srinivasa Sastri’s Lectures on the Ramayana is one such attempt to realise our soul-truth and contains a series of illumining studies of the chief characters in the epic. The silver-tongued orator delivered the lectures under the auspices of the Madras Sanskrit Academy from April to November 1944. The meetings contained a rare concentration of culture. The audience was from the cream of scholarly Mylapore, the speaker was Sastriar whose mastery of English was tremendous, and the theme was the Ramayana. The evenings were memorable. Five years later the lectures were Published; but alas! Sastriar no more.

What is most surprising about the lectures is that the original live voice has not been smothered by the cold print. Sastriar had chosen each word with loving care. We exult and sorrow with him; through his eyes we view the conflicting elements in such superhuman personalities as Rama and Ravana; we shed tears as Sastriar did when Lakshmana is unable to identify Sita’s jewels except her anklets. “I know not her ear or shoulder ornaments. But I recognise her anklets due to my daily prostration at her feet.” We wander with him in the realms of English literature, where Shakespeare and Tennyson add to the lustre of Sastriar’s character studies in the Ramayana. We suspend our questions for the nonce when he takes us across controversial episodes like the ‘rejection of Sita’, ‘the killing of Vali’ and ‘the choice of Vibhishana.’ How significant are his unstressed comments!

Here is Rama’s coronation and let me quote Sastriar:

“Then takes place a most wonderful incident. Sugriva and Vibhishana and all the big monkeys stand about and watch the conversation between the brothers (Rama and Bharata) with great concern,–the one brother having returned from a glorious campaign after recovering his wife and his honour to take the kingdom, the other yielding it out of the gladness of his heart enhanced ten-fold in value all round...whether it was the monkey spirit (Sugriva’s) or the Rakshasa spirit (Vibhishana’s), it melted at this sight.”

It is well nigh impossible to translate the noble accents of Sastriar’s English into any other language. And yet, miracles do still happen! Dorothy L. Sayers demonstrated such a miracle when she rendered into modern English Dante’s The Divine Comedy. K. Savitri Ammal has achieved a like wondrous feat by translating the Lectures into Tamil.

It was obviously no easy task. Fortunately, the ideal person had been chosen by Sastriar himself. Smt. Savitri Ammal had then undertaken the task as a Tapas, a Sadhana. Sastriar’s English would not bend to any lesser discipline. Smt. Savitri Ammal had listened to Sastriar as he delivered the lectures. Subsequently she spent more than a decade polishing each phraseological nugget with rare devotional craftsmanship. In her preface she refers to Sastriar’s brilliance as an orator in English, and the clarity of his critical pronouncements. Afraid of causing injury to the noble edifice of the lectures, she had approached the work of translation with deep humility. Her total involvement with Valmiki’s tale did the rest. She finds the epic’s narrative technique as refreshingly modern as any well-conceived novel of today; as for the lectures, they lead us constantly from light to greater illumination. No wonder, then, that we read Ramayana Peruraigal at a single sitting. But so thousht-provoking are the literary judgments presented with exquisite simplicity and so inviting the choice quotations from Valmiki that we return to the book again and again, and give it a special place in our personal library close to our reach. The modestly-priced volume is beautifully produced and is an ornament to one’s bookshelf.

Translation is a sacerdocy in the realm of literary communication. Srimati Savitri Ammal is no stranger to this art, and has done commendable service by presenting Tagore and K. S. Venkataramani to the Tamil reader. In Ramayana Peruraigal she is at her best. This is how English should be translated; this is how Tamil should be handled. Her faith, patience and inner involvement are a beacon light for the younger generation of writers and translators.

* Ramayana-P-Peruraigal: By V. S. Srinivasa Sastriar.Translated into Tamil by K. Savitri Aminal. (Kalaimagal Karyalayam. Mylapore, Madras-4, Price: Rs. 15)