Introduction

Kalidasa's Abhijnanasakuntalam was one of the first Indian literary works to be translated into English. The translated Sakuntala became a symbol of the colonizer's attitude to native culture and literature. Sakuntalam was translated by many people at various periods of time from the colonial age to the present. A study of these translations would reveal the translation strategies in these respective periods. Sir William Jones and Sir Monier Monier-Williams are representatives of the colonial Orientalist school of translators, in their somewhat condescending appreciation of Kalidasa. M. R. Kale and Chandra Rajan who are latter day Indian translators, show different approaches to the text. Sir William Jones's translation was published in 1789, Monier-Williams in 1855, Kale's in 1898 and Chandra Rajan's in 1989. Each of these translators is divided not just by the years, but by their cultural ideology which is manifested in their translations. At this point we should also remember that Kalidasa's text can also be thought of as a ‘translation', as it is a retelling of a story from the Mahabharata . Kalidasa has radically departed from the basic text. Dushyanta in the epic is a king who seduces and abandons Sakuntala. She is an aggressive woman who walks into Dushyanta's court with her son and demands the King to acknowledge her as his wife and crown their son the next emperor. Dushyanta is forced to oblige. Kalidasa's narrative is different. Here Dushyanta is flawless. The ring which Dushyanta gives Sakuntala to use as a token of reminder becomes the ‘villain', because Sakuntala loses it at a crucial moment and Dushyanta fails to recognize her as he is under a curse from the sage Durvasas. Sakuntala is a helpless woman who is scorned and repudiated. The focus of Kalidasa's play is the political system under a king and the kingly duties. The translations, however, seem to have a different focus. Each of them becomes representative of the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial translation strategies.