Vedant Study

More on Sanskrit Un-translatables

This is a follow up mail on why certain Sanskrit words cannot (and should
not) be translated.

As promised last time, here is a segment from Rajiv Malhotra ji's
book-*Being Different,
*further elaborating on this idea

Quote: Western Scholars and westernized Indians are accustomed to
translating and mapping Dharmic concepts and perspectives onto Western
frameworks, thereby enriching and perhaps even renewing the Western 'host'
culture into which they are assimilated. One does not say of a tiger's kill
that both tiger and prey are 'changed for the better' by digestion, or that
the two kinds of animals have 'flowed into one another' to produce a better
one. Rather, the food of the tiger becomes part of the tiger's body,
breaking down and obliterating, in the process, the digested animal.
Dharmic traditions and wisdom are compromised or even obliterated once they
can be substituted with Western equivalents which are not capable of
accurately representing the Dharma

While this problem can be a danger in all inter-civilization encounters
where the balance of political power is unequal, it is particularly acute
when it comes to translating Dharmic concepts in written Sanskrit into
Western languages. Not only does Sanskrit, like all languages, encode
specific and unique cultural experiences and traits, but the very form,
sound and manifestation of the language carry effects that cannot be
separated from their conceptual meanings.

Sanskrit provides an experiential path back to its source. It is not just a
communication tool, but also the vehicle for embodied knowing. Employed by
the spiritual leaders of India, South-East Asia and East Asia for many
centuries as a language, Sanskrit became the medium for expressing a
distinct set of cultural systems and experiences.

Sanskriti is the term for this cultural framework. It is the lore and
repository of philosophy, art, architecture, popular song, classical music,
dance, theater, sculpture, painting, literature, pilgrimage, rituals and
religious narratives, all of which embody pan-Indian cultural traits. It
also incorporates all branches of natural sciences and technology- medicine
(including veterinary), botany, mathematics, engineering, architecture,
dietetics etc.

Although the Judeo-Christian faiths also have their sacred languages-
Hebrew and Latin- and although the claims made for them are sometimes
similar to the ones made for Sanskrit, these languages have not served as
the basis for unified civilizations in quite the same way.

Furthermore, Christianity, from the beginning, was not transmitted through
a sacred language, but through vernacular- first the Aramaic that Jesus
spoke, then the everyday koine Greek of the Mediterranean Basin.

The non-translatable nature of Sanskrit and all that this implies are
compromised by cultural digestion of dharma into the West. In the course of
this digestion, crucial distinctions and understandings are lost, important
empirical experiences foreclosed, and the most fertile, productive and
visionary dimension of Dharma eradicated and relegated to antiquity.