Encounter with Divinity
Publisher: Roopa pulications, bangalore
Published: 2006
Place of publication: Bangalore
Language: eng
Format: [translation]
Table of contents: title: A unique socio- cultural Revolution was heralded by Basavanna, a unique thinker and humanist, as long back as the twelfth century which professed that man, born free as he is, should be in no kind of shackles. Being created next to God, he, irrespective of his status in society, should not be denied the right to seek and understand the meaning of life and ultimately realize that he has sparks of divinity in him and could be God himself. At the same time, he rejected the age-old belief that woman is just a beauty, a tantalizer, who brought about the Fall of Man from the grace of God and boldly raised her status, stating that she too is blessed with all faculties like man and can be in her own right a Goddess’. So we have Akka Mahadevi the first woman-saint of the world. This kind of message was unheard of so far. Basavanna was a revolutionary in thinking, and at the same time very humble and determined in practising what he preached. What he achieved was a miracle and what he expressed- his thoughts, experienced and appeals to the masses – became vacanas, the rich heritage of mankind.; title: The rich heritage for long remained unknown to all those who had no access to the Kannada language.; title: Most unfortunately, Kannada with limited vision did not realize the importance of the message contained in the vacanas, in the sense that that did nit realize the need of spreading it among the non-kannada knowing people!; title: The idea that the world is one big family- Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam- voiced by India is coming into reality due to the advancement of science. The world is gradually shrinking into a village. It is a global village. As such geography, politics, languages and religions no longer can play the role of barriers to divide the human race. Translation, transcreation are building bridges between one language and another making knowledge one and indivisible for the benefit of all. As part of this trend various scholars in various languages are translating vacanas. English being an international language and also in a way an “Indian language”, too, a rich crop of translations of the vacanas has appeared. There is nothing like finality in translation; in each translation one can savour the flavour of the translator’s creativity and original perception.; title: Though many experts - some well-known names among them Kannada saints into English, there is still some room for creative experimentation. Translation is not just a matter of substituting one word of the target language for another of the original text. It is a critical and creative effort operating in two languages, at once critical about the given text and creative in the target language. The translator may not be a poet, but he should be able to catch the nuanced of the original poetic next, must be sensitive to the imagery, and to the linguistic and ideological “ore”. He has to be a savyasachin.; title: I have with great interest gone through these translations. They have not been fastidious in selecting vacanas by any hard and fast rule. A creative genius facing two language patterns cannot be bound stroke of imagination or linguistic creativity. But to follow up the spark of linguistic creativity in the matter of translation is to take up a formidable challenge. For, at the linguistic level there may not be many parallelisms available. Culturally, however, a balance of equivalence or near – equivalence has to be struck.; title: I do not believe in translating every vacana into other languages. I should be satisfied if the best of the vacamkaras are given an alternative creative version in English or other languages. And the readers, rather than going by established reputations, should read several versions and compare and come to their own judgment as to the best translations, conveying the feel of a poetic progression in each translation. The upshot should be the establishment of canon of translated works.; title: Prof. G.B. Sajjan and Dr. Basavaraj Donur had a long ‘encounter’ with both vacanas and English language and literature. So the result has been the best. I do hope that many more such translations will come forth from their pens in due course. We have worked together. And it is with great pleasure that I am writing a foreword to the book.; title: * *