For some time, I have thinking of reading something that lies outside my usual basket of reading. I toyed with the idea of reading the Greek epics Illiad and Odyssey. But a few months have passed with no effort to start reading them, so I guess that's that. The next brainwave is to read Sanskrit literature.
Insofar I can make out, Sanskrit literature can be grouped into 3 lumps:
1. Shruti: The ancient Vedic literature consisting of Rig, Yajur, Sam and Atharva Ved, and each set having its own Samhita, Upanishad, Aaranyak and Braahman texts. The Samhita contain the mantra that they recite in yagya, the Upanishads contain philosophy about Aatma, Brahm, etc. I am yet to look at any Aaranyak or Braahman texts.
2. Smriti: This consists of Ramayan, Mahabharat, various Purans and texts like ManuSmriti, Yagyavalkya Smriti, etc. Contemporary Hindu customs derive majorly from Smriti texts. Within this set, Geeta, a chapter of Mahabharat, stands out and is the subject matter of my initial interest.
3. Other texts: These include poetry by Kalidas and philosophical treatise by Badarayan. Then, there are the commentaries (bhaashya) on various Shruti and Smriti texts. There is this entire post- Budhha period where scholars explainer their ideas not by writing independent books but by writing bhaashya on existing works. Older bhaashya are lost. So for us, this phase starts with 8th century philosopher Shankar [i.e. Aadi Shankaracharya] who commented on Geeta, Upanishads and Badarayan's Brahm Sutra, interpreting each to push forward his ideas of Advait Vedant. (Shankar is also the author of a remarkable short poem 'Aatma Shatakam'.) Other major commentators on Geeta and Upanishads include Ramanuj, Madhav, Abhinavgupt and Madhusudan Saraswati, each heartily disagreeing with Shankar and also with each other. There is also an interesting work called 'Sarva Darshana Sangraha' by Maadhav or Vidyaranya, which summarizes the ideas of all the major schools of philosophies into one place. On the Samhita, the only major surviving bhaashya is by the 14th century Sayan.
We were forced to study Sanskrit for 3 years in school. I gave it up once we had the option to choose between Hindi and Sanskrit. So, my knowledge of Sanskrit is limited to a rudimentary familiarity of its grammar. So, I turned to books containing Sanskrit texts with Hindi translation. I tried to.
There are many people in India who try to force Hindi upon the non-Hindi speaking population. Such people also have a penchant for giving speeches about preserving India's rich cultural heritage. You would think they would have done something to ensure availability of Hindi translations for notable works in Sanskrit. You would be wrong.
Only a handful of Smriti have easily available translations. The position of Shruti is far worse. This is not because nobody translated these works into Hindi. It is just that in the Hindi-speaking world, there is no market for such works. Books went out of print, now lying in inaccessible corners of old libraries. Some of these books survive now on archive.org as scanned pages.
Publishers who sold such works either changed tack or went out of business. The big exception is Gorakhpur-based Gita Press: they been churning out Hindi translations of major Smriti texts. Apparently, the founders knew this was not sustainable and tied funding to revenues from other properties. If you take books by Gita Press out of the mix, you are left with practically no content in Hindi.
Gita Press has also done half-translations of Shankar's bhaashya on Geeta and Upanishads, as well as Ramanuj's bhaashya on Geeta. I call them half-translations because they just repeat the Sanskrit words in Hindi grammar. Still, it is great that Gita Press published them, else I would be forced to read English texts to access Shankar and Ramanuj.
You wouldn't find Hindi translations of bhaashya by philosophers like Madhav, Abhinavgupt, etc. This is a problem. If these commentaries are inaccessible, entire schools of philosophy gets inaccessible.
Meanwhile, the pandits are happy reciting crammed up mantra, no pandit will bother to find out the meaning of the verses, so there is no need for a Hindi translations of Sayan's bhaashya explaining each mantra.
I strongly prefer Hindi texts, nuances are lost in translations from Sanskrit to English. But except for a handful of Smriti, translations of Sanskrit texts are much more easily available in English. Bloody colonials!
