The Mahabharata: Volume 5
Translated by Bibek Debroy
Penguin books
Rs. 599 pp 593
How far can an economist keep numbers away from literature? If Bibek Debroys translation of the Mahabharata is any indication, not at all and footnotes become more than mere
references. Apart from making this greatest story ever told even more accessible to a modern reader, in a language thats contemporary, it is the mathematician in Debroy that delights. In Bhumi Parva, while describing Svarbhanu, another name for Rahu, the lines say its diameter is 12,000 yojanas and circumference 42,000 yojanas. The immediate question that came to my mind was: what is the value of pi? The answer came in Debroy's footnote: 3.5 given the time it was written, not very far from the accurate value of 3.14.
Debroy captures Veda Vysyas drama with the skill and rigour of an academic underlined by his innate passion for the work nobody can attempt such a project without it. The dramatic death of Bhishma at the beginning of the Bhagwad Gita Parva shows the mind of Vysya come through Debroys. It is not very different from the pioneer Kisari Mohan Gangulis 19th century, 12-volume work in spirit. Bhishmas fall his death comes much later in uttarayana when the sun is in the North, towards the end of Shanti Parva with the These cannot be Shikhandis arrows motif moistens the eyes. His death stays with you.
This volume contains the Bhagwad Gita one of the 16 Gitas in the Mahabharata, 13 of them in the still-to-be-translated Shanti Parva alone. The one problem encountered in reading the Bhagwad Gita in the Mahabharata, compared to a standalone, is that you are not used to the continuum. My favourite nainam chindanti
(verse 23) merges into acchedyo yam
(verse 24) without a break. Corrupted by verse-by-verse renditions, it was a refreshing change to reread the original.
The subtlety of language, diligently modernised, brings Debroys Mahabharata one step closer using Himalayas rather than Himavat, for instance. But where both Debroy and Ganguli get tiresome is in the use of adjectives while describing protagonists. Expressions like lion among men or descendent of the Bharata lineage flow freely in Sanskrit not English. What we need is a Sanskringlish version that Debroy would, some day, oblige to offer us.