Vyasa and Vigneshwara - Analysis

Analysis of Vyasa and Vigneswara
P. Sachidanandan known by the pseudonym Anand, is an Indian writer who writes

primarily in Malayalam and one of the noted living intellectuals in India. His works are
noted for their philosophical flavor, historical context and their humanism. “Vyasa
and Vigneshwara" in translation from the Malayalam original rebuilds and re-
establishes the concept of the story in an amazing manner.
Anand combines, in startling fashion, the modern with the traditional, memory with
myth, the past with glimpses of the future, revealing the finer aspects of beauty and
thought. A complete piece of work, it offers half-complete texts from times far
removed from each other and yet woven together in myriad ways. Revealing the
finer aspects of beauty and thought, criticism and analysis of society. Politics and
myth, this work, in translation from the Malayalam original, rebuilds and re-
establishes the concept of the story in an amazing manner.
"Vyasa and Vighneswara" (1996) uses a postmodern approach to questions of time

and history. The two sections of the novella are called ‘Kriti’ (Text) and ‘Kalam’
(Time). Anand comments at the beginning of this book: ‘When smirthi, what is
remembered, and shruthi, what is heard, get subsumed in vismruthi, amnesia or
oblivion, and further by mrithi, death, krithi, text alone remains’.
The central figure that runs through ‘Kriti’ is that of Eklavya, the forest dweller who
was punished by Drona, a Brahmin guru, for excelling in the art of archery. Drona
asked him to sacrifice his thumb, as his gift to him, and Eklavya obeyed him without
protest. This helped Arjuna, the great warrior prince of the Mahabharata, to remain
invincible in the art of archery. However, in the story narrated by Anand, we come
across a text called Nishadpurana, which recounts a long conversation between
Eklavya and Abhimanyu, Arjuna’s son.
The story recounts the author’s search for Nishadpurana through many years of his
journeys. When he finally chances upon the book in a library in Delhi, he finds that a
crucial part of the dialogue dealing with Eklavya’s death was missing. The second
part of the novel also deals with a missing text. The narrator meets an activist in one
of his long distance railway journeys. He is obviously a rebel on the run. They
discuss what befell ancient kingdoms such as Vaishali, Kosala and Magadh. He
gives the author an unfinished play titled Nagaravadhu (The Bride of the City) which
is about Amrapali who is forced to become the Nagaravadhu through a democratic
process devised by the wise people of Vaishali. In the words of Amarasena we have
the central argument of the story: ‘Listen, you selfish and greedy people, society is
the soil, from which germinate fine, dignified people. But you, you fear such people.
You mow them to the ground, then you make them the pillars that bear weight of the
edifice of a decadent civilization which you yourself have constructed’ (Anand
2000:104–5). Anand shows how knowledge cannot liberate us as it is mediated
through discourses and institutions that partake of repressive ideologies. This is why
Anand quotes from a book titled The History of Torture towards the end of the book:
‘Torture is ubiquitous. At times, it is inflicted on the faithful, at other times, on those
who question faith, and yet other times, who are neither’
The translator has tactfully brought out the workings of certain modes of historical
memory and cultural connectedness. The two sections of this novel, Kalam and
Krithi, centers on the concepts of history and creativity foregrounded on culture. The
allusions to “the story of the Nomadic tribe who had forgotten the language in which
their sacred text was written” as well as the secret history of their wandering destiny
pinpoints to the forgotten sources of literature, which is very much part of our history
(153). This primordial experience of literature leads to the level of culture-
Samskaram- which is a medium for recording literature and histories. The story of
oppression experienced by the silk weaver‟s, their mode of resistance –all become
part of history and there by literature. The translation, much alike the original,
portrays the interactions of
figures from history and literary texts, across the discontinuous territories of time.
The specificities of tradition is threaded to the imaginative imparting the intricacies of
history and culture.
Catford‟s deliberations on cultural and linguistic untranslatability get highlighted as

the author uses in abundance culture specific terminology. Taking into consideration
the translation of Anand‟s work, even the words in the title are so culture specific
that the translator is bound in the chains of untranslatability. All the character names-
Ekalavya,Abhimanyu,Ananda, Sadhashiv Joshi and Dharmadikari as well as place
names- Heliodoras,Udayagiri,Vaishali and Magadh allude to cultural untranslatability.
Anand‟s work creates a unique sense of translatedness of the conversations and
thoughts of characters located outside the malayali culture bearing a certain
unspecified trace of foreignness in its idiom. The reference to the etymology of
Purana, a heavily loaded cultural term, is another instance in this regard: “child, do
you know the root form of the word, purana? It is puranava- pura (ancient) and nava
(new) at the same time” (23). The simultaneous existence of the old and the new
has a constitutive translatability to itself. The insistence use of the word, Vidya, by
the translator, which could be replanted by equivalents to afford a moment of
untranslatability. The conversation between Ekalavya and Abhimanyu divulge the
same: “Dear Prince, it is the vidya I have lost that bestows on me the liberty to enter
or quit any vyuha. No one can stop me,”Ekalavya said. The translator could have
resorted to the English equivalent of the word but the untranslatability of the word
emphasizes the power of „vidya‟, which couldn't be replaced by anything.
H.C.Trivedi's observation becomes relevant here that while translating from an
Indian language into English, one is faced with two main problems: first one has to
deal with concepts which require an understanding of Indian culture and secondly,
one has to arrive at target language meaning equivalents of references to certain
objects in the source language which includes features absent from target language
culture.

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Analysis of Vyasa and Vigneswara

P. Sachidanandan known by the pseudonym Anand, is an Indian writer who writes

"Vyasa and Vighneswara" (1996) uses a postmodern approach to questions of time

Catford‟s deliberations on cultural and linguistic untranslatability get highlighted as

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