The Clay Toy-cart , popularly known as Mrchchakatikam , is among the earliest known Sanskrit plays that’s set in the mode of a racy thriller, replete with the scope to unveil facets of lust, love, deception and betrayal. That there’s a universality in it is obvious; the play has been adapted across various storytelling formats (including Girish Karnad’s Utsav ) and languages.
Renowned Sanskrit scholar and author Padmini Rajappa, who won the Sahitya Akademi award for her translation of Bana’s Kadambari , adapts this in English. The story revolves around a courtesan Vasantasena and a penniless merchant Charudatta whose love affair has wide ranging repercussions in the region.
Padmini Rajappa's ‘The Clay Toy-cart’
Commenting on the relevance of Mrchchakatikam ’s popularity across various formats and countries, Padmini says, “Most western scholars of Sanskrit literature feel that Indian drama bears striking similarity to the work of Elizabethan dramatists; Arthur A Macdonell among them singles out Mrchchakatikam as being ‘allied in genius to Shakespeare.’ It portrays a wide variety of emotions including humour.”
Given the rising popularity of Indian literature across the globe, she says it is no wonder that there have been various adaptations of Mrchchakatikam both on stage and on screen.
What she’s brought into her translation of Mrchchakatikam is her sensibility. She feels there’s something original that comes in with every translation but that certainly does not mean he or she is altering the original text.
Gained in translation
The bigger challenge was to take up an old classic and woo the interest of the modern reader. “Although the reader may be at ease with the language of translation, some ideas expressed and practices described may appear outlandish and fussy, making him lose interest in the work. Besides, even a modern language like English does acquire a certain old world flavour when describing archaic practices found in the original; this is likely to lead to boredom.”
The author gets the timing of the book right, with the ever-growing interest in Indian mythology, historic-fiction and folkore.
She, however, has a different opinion, “I would think any time is right time for learning more about ourselves! It is necessary to have a foundation of our cultural values, a critical knowledge of the significance of our myths and an understanding of how they have contributed to our being what we are.” She does not mean an unquestioning acceptance of all things old, only that our myths would help us better understand what is to be preserved and what discarded.
Mrchchakatikam being a play, consists of dialogues in both prose and poetry without literary embellishments, which helped her case. Comparing this to Kadambari , she says it was smooth-sailing. However, she encountered a problem. “In translating the colloquial speech of most of the characters of the play drawn from ordinary walks of life, I had difficulty in conveying the raciness of the common man’s chat into the English bound by rules of grammar and usage.”
Reaching out
Wouldn’t a regional language translation have worked better? She agrees the transference of ideas into an Indian language is likely to be more congenial and natural than into English. Yet, an overwhelming point favouring English is its enormous reach. “It feels great to imagine that one of these days a reader in New York may relax on a Sunday afternoon with a copy of the English translation of Mrchchakatikam .”
Also, she dedicates an entire chapter to bust myths surrounding the identity of the author Shudraka.
“There is a lot of speculation about who the author might have been, with several scholars both Indian and foreign, conferring that honour on the poet Dandin who lived in the seventh century. The robust style of his Dasakumaracharitam bears comparison with the racy style of Mrchchakatikam . But the question remains why he chooses to hide behind a pseudonym in the case of this play, a practice he never adopts with his other works.”
