Module 5: Postcolonial Translation
  Lecture 18: Sakuntala's Colonial and Postcolonial Versions
 

Sir Monier Monier-Williams

Sir William Jones's translation made a deeper impact in Europe than in his native England . By the time his successor Monier Williams translated it, the nature of the English administrators had changed. The East India Company was about to give way to the British monarch, and the indulgent fondness that Jones had for early Indian civilisation was replaced with disapproving intolerance. Gone also was the view that this was a civilisation that could be considered at par with the western. Romila Thapar is of the view that the colonial administration had another purpose: “It was necessary, they felt, for those who governed India to be familiar with Indian culture as, indeed, it had been the policy of earlier scholar-administrators to educate Europe about India . It was also the policy to rediscover the Indian past for the Indian and to revive Indian culture as defined by Orientalist scholarship. The object was not only to make the emergent middle-class Indian aware of this culture, but to imprint on his mind the interpretation given to it by Orientalist scholarship” (218). She points out that this was another way of control, of creating an image and making the colonized accept that image.

The Monier-Williams translation bore the imprint of this attitude. He is also full of admiration for the play, but there is more of condescension here. “That the colonised had a civilisation is conceded, but much is made of what is seen as warts...The appreciation of poetry takes second place to practical ways of making society more functional” (Thapar: 235). The emphasis of the play had subtly shifted from a lesson in statecraft to the rustic Sakuntala and her love. It also came to be seen as representative of a Hindu way of life and as an “icon of Hindu culture” (236). This was also a departure from the Indian tradition where the play was translated into Urdu during Mughal rule. The Victorian attitude to sexuality as reflected in Monier-Williams was to influence Indian attitude to such matters.