Inter-semiotic renderings

The epic has been translated into various other art forms like dance and painting. Raja Ravi Varma, India’s brilliant painter, has used the epic as source material for a lot of his paintings. The portrait of Sakuntala who pretends to have a thorn in her foot as an excuse to take a backward look at Dushyanta is one of the most famous ones. He has painted other scenes like Parashara and Satyavati, Arjuna and Chitrangada, the young Bharata playing with the lion cubs, Damayanti listening to the message from the hamsa etc. In fact, Ravi Varma’s paintings were so effective that it is difficult for us to imagine other personalities for the characters in the epics.

As has been pointed out earlier, all forms of classical Indian dance are based on one or the other of the two epics. One episode is usually the base for a dance performance. Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi usually have episodes based on the life of Krishna, and other stories from the epic. But a very popular episode is that of the Gitopadesham or Krishna’s advice to Arjuna on the battlefield of Kurukshetra. Dance forms like Kathakali and Yakshagana almost entirely draw their material from Mahabharata. Most of the Indian folk art forms are also based on it.

B. R. Chopra’s television serial based on the epic was immensely popular. This serial was again telecast by BBC with English subtitles where it grossed the maximum viewership. Chopra’s interlingual (Sanskrit to Hindi) and intersemiotic (epic to television serial) translation was again translated into English, without losing any of its appeal. There have been animated films and other graphic adaptations (like Amar Chitra Katha). Shyam Benegal’s Kalyug was a transcreation of the Mahabharata which tells the story of a feud between cousins over a family inheritance, and the characters are thinly disguised modern versions of the epic characters.