Studies In Umasvati And His Tattvartha Sutra

Author(s): G C Tripathi, Ashokkumar Singh
Publisher: Bhogilal Laherchand Institute of Indology

Page 38

28 Studies in Umāsvāti explained in six appendices at the end of the book, e.g. on numbers in Jaina cosmology.
I have already mentioned the English glossary (with entries largely form the commentaries to the sūtras) and the index of substantial notes on the concepts.
May I add some personal after-thoughts. Professor Tatia's book is given as a translation and when I wrote a review, I treated it as such—The title page runs 'Tattvārthasūtra of Umāswātī/ Umāswāmī with the combined commentaries of SB/SBT and SS, translated with an introduction by Nathmal Tatia'.
But the meaning of the Sūtra has to be understood, by the foreign reader, to this effect: The actual translation introduces complements, borrowed from the commentaries themselves, and therefore quite legitimate. Had they not been added, only scholars, what is more, only Jaina Sanskrit scholars, might have understood the text.
So, I think we have to admit that there are many stumbling blocks which a translator has to manage. The difficulty is being solved differently by the different would-be translators, according to the audience that they have in mind, whether the general reader or the more or less specialized scholar. Strictly speaking the translation of a technical Indian text into a modern western language is an almost impossible task. We can be thankful that, in the case of Umāsvāti we have two different approaches. In fact here we rejoin the theory of translator's (one of our modern concerns) that we modestly say that the aims of the translator ought to be:
to understand the text thoroughly—in depth (not
only the literal meaning of the words), • to be understood by the reader.
Perhaps the ultimate goal would be that the reader is inspired to read the translated text in the original language.