महावीरचरितम् (महाकवि भवभूति - वीररस-प्रधान रामकथा नाटक सम्पूर्ण ७ अङ्क सटीक)

Preface [xxx]
Moreover, the history and technique of the drama in general have now
become a recognized university study; and as a specimen of what India, inde-
pendently, has achieved in the way of dramatic literature, the present play will
not fail to be interesting. To Indianists, to students of comparative literature,
and to students of drama, accordingly, this edition makes its appeal.
But it is one thing to read a book and feel its beauties for oneself,
and a very different thing to help others to feel them. And the difficulty
is all the greater when that help has to be rendered through the medium
of a language which is not one's mother tongue. In that case the trans-
lator can never be quite certain that the English word which he is using
will convey the exact shade of meaning which the original Sanskrit word
has for him; or that the English word may not have, for an English
reader, some unpoetical connotation or lurking suggestion due to facts in
his social environment which the translator may not fairly be expected
to know. The kind criticism of Professor Lanman has saved me from
some of these pitfalls; but it is too much to hope that I have always
done full justice to the poet.
To translate a narrative work, or a work which interests us only by
reason of the facts which it tells us, is fairly easy. For a scientific or
philosophical treatise one has only to choose suitable technical terms and
define them precisely and use them consistently; and what is obscure or
unduly terse you can explain and expand. But in translating poetry we
are called upon not only to give the meaning correctly, but also to repro-
duce the subtle literary qualities of the original. Rhythm, word-order,
figures of speech, compactness or diffuseness of expression—in short,
almost every literary device of the original ought, in theory, to reappear
in the translation. But since the genius of one language differs radically
from that of another, an ideal translation is, as von Wilamowitz-
Moellendorff observes, a travesty or perhaps a metempsychosis: in other
words, a wellnigh impossible task. Some things must be sacrificed. But
it is far better, wherever possible, to keep close to the original and show
the author in his true native colours, rather than, under the pretext of
giving a literary finish to the translation, to make him say things which he
did not say and would never dream of saying.
A few words then as to certain principles, mostly limitations, that have
governed me in my translation. First, whereas the original play is
mingled prose and verse, the translation is all in prose. The translation
of the stanzas is set in narrow measure (that is, with an indentation on
both sides) and with the stanza-number at the end in bold-face type, and it
is thus distinguished typographically from the translation of the prose.
There are in the play nineteen kinds of metre, having from eight to nine-