Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Mahabharata by William Buck, B. A. Van Nooten, Shirley Triest ISBN: 0-520-22704-2 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (18 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: An accessible version of Mahabharata for the uninitiated
Comment: In a nutshell it is an Indian story of Cousin's War that takes place more than two to three thousand years ago. I have read and heard narrations of Mahabharata in three Indian languages; Telugu, Oriya, Hindi as well as tried reading it aloud in English to my 10 year old. It is very hard for any Indian well versed in another Indian language to relish reading it in English. To use another metaphor,may be as discomforting as it will be for a Chinese person, adept at using chopsticks, to eat noodles with fork and spoon. Hence all the panning and bad marks heaped on this book from many readers who claim Rajagopalachari or RK Narayan or some other Indian has written better versions. Yet for anyone totally uninitiated in ancient Indian mythologies and epics as many of my current friends are, this happens to be a very succintly written version that conveys the essence. Yes, there are a few inaccuracies like Arjuna, in stead of his son Abhimanyu, marrying Virata's daughter Uttara and omissions of many sub plots like Ekalavya's triumphant self taught archery and devotion to a virtual teacher. But author himself has acknowledged that it is not a scholarly transliteration, and I am glad he made it more readable in the process. Even Tolstoy is accused of historical inaccuracies while creating a masterpiece called "War and Peace". I always like to compare Mahabharata with Tolstoy's epic novel with its multitude of characters and centrality of war as a metaphor for human life for those who have not yet been familiar with either of them. Anyone who has grown up in India may have been exposed to Mahabharata in one form or another, including many movies, one of the good ones made by Peter Brooks and a popular TV series in late 1980s. Yet; I could open any page in William Buck's Mahabharata and read it to enjoy the story. His English rendition is more palatable than the Indianized idioms of many other translators. In his short lifespan of 37 years he seems to have fallen in love with the Indian epics of Mahbharata and Ramayana after discovering them in a Nebraska library and translated them for the uninitiated. However my best version happens to be what my late uncle(he would have been 90 years old now) used to narrate to us during long evenings of summer vacation get-togethers of myriads of cousins. Alas we did not have access to even a basic tape recorder to record at least one his many evenings' narration of Mahabharata(he used to break it in to 12-18 episodes);where princes in disguise were meeting their consorts in forests, getting married and begetting children instantly by only touching tongues; his simplification of the whole process for the minors in the audience. My uncle and narrators like him spanning many generations of Indians added color to the story in their native languages and in the process enriched the narrative and rendered it more enjoyable, long before writing materials and the scholars came to codify an authorised version. Hence I will strongly recommend William Buck's version of Mahabharata as the next best thing to having an audio cassette of my own uncle's narration in Telugu. Hope the publishers release an E-book version so that one can easily search for an episode for its topicality in a day's event. Wish they could also hire someone like Roshan Seth to read it as an audio book CD or audible.com for the road.
Rating: 4
Summary: A good introduction
Comment: Overall, I should say I am fairly impressed. I do not know the Mahabharata enough to say whether the translation preserves the spirit of it, but as a piece of writing it is highly satisfying. It made me want to learn more about Indian literature. Buck has written a tale accessible to us westerners who have never heard of Arjuna or the like, with characters that we can identify with. That said, the brevity of it sometimes makes some episodes impossible to understand, unless, I suppose, one has external knowledge about the epic. Some references within the text I understood only after reading a bit more about India, but on the whole it does not hamper the overall comprehension of the epic. A fine read. I would have appreciated a more detailed directory of characters and gods (especially the latter) so one could see what Buck is talking about.
Rating: 3
Summary: William Buck's Mahabharata
Comment: The Great Bharata of Vyasa, comprising over 100,000 Sanskrit stanzas organized into eighteen volumes, contains within its vast length many stories - of gods and demigods, of kings and warriors, of legend, history, ethics, philosophy, law, politics, and religion. Within all its richness lies a core story of the great civil war between the Kurus and the Pandavas, two rival branches of the Bharata lunar clan, culminating in the terrible Battle of Kurukshetra, an Armageddon which wiped out both sides in the fighting and ushered in the degenerate Fourth Age of Mankind, in which we are all living today. It is this story, lying at the very heart of the Mahabharata, which most translators into English, including William Buck, choose to tell.
Buck created his version in the 1960's, resolving to tell the story in his own way, which would be accessible to readers in English but remain faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of the original. He condensed, rewrote, and reinterpreted in order to make a work which he hoped would please and delight his readers while preserving the essential story. The result is very controversial, and the controversy continues to this day (Buck died in 1970).
Many readers, including me, appreciate the artistry and skill of Buck's writing. I am puzzled, however, by the changes that he made in the story. For example, Buck has Krishna kill Dushsasana prior to the battle (in Vyasa, Dushsasana is killed by Bhima at Kurukshetra). For another example, in Buck's version, it is Virata's son Uttara who breaks into the Kuru's Lotus formation during the battle (and is subsequently killed). In Vyasa, the protagonist is Abhimanyu, son of Arjuna. For a third example, Buck has Draupadi volunteer, after having been won by Arjuna, to become the wife of the other four Pandava brothers as well; in Vyasa she has no choice, since her mother-in-law, Kunti, commanded Arjuna to share "whatever he had brought" with his brothers.
These are major characters, and it seems arbitrary for Buck to change their stories in this way; it is like Paris, instead of Hector, being killed by Achilles!
It is also important, I feel, for a translator to bring across the beauty, grandeur, religious ecstasy, and sorrow of Vyasa's conception; the Battle of Kurukshetra is a Ragnarok, an Armageddon, a monumental epic, the end of an age, the banishing of gods and demigods from earth; I do not find such elevated emotions in Buck's version, although it must be admitted that I have not found it in other translations either, and probably only the original Sanskrit can do it justice. In my view, the Mahabharata is a tragedy, perhaps the greatest tragedy ever written, and the tragic viewpoint is what I find most lacking in Buck's version, in spite of its many felicities of incident and style.
For readers who are unfamiliar with the Mahabharata, it is easy to get lost in the multitude of characters and their complicated relationships. Buck makes a sincere effort, but he lapses at a few important points. For example, when Bhima cries to Drona that "Aswatthaman is slain", the reader may not realize that Aswatthaman is Drona's son, since there is no entry for Aswatthaman in the glossary.
The glossary, as in the example above, omits many crucial relationships and names. An index and a geneaology chart of the major characters would have been very helpful, but are not included in the book. There are only seven footnotes. The edition that I am reviewing (University of California paperback, 1981) was apparently typeset from the original plates, since it contains all of the original typographical errors.
Buck's version omits the Bhagavad Gita, the "Song of God" that is uttered by Krishna just before the climactic battle. The Gita, although now considered to be a relatively late interpolation to the basic story, is absolutely essential; its importance is analogous to the story of Job in the Old Testament, and any version of the Mahabharata is fundamentally incomplete without it.
In summary, I recommend that readers who are not that familiar with the Mahabharata should read first a modern version such as R. K. Narayan, which tells the basic story clearly and accurately; first-time readers should also obtain a contemporary translation of the Gita, and read it when they reach the appropriate point in the Mahabharata narrative. I do like Buck's version; the writing is very fine, and I feel a certain nostalgic connection to it (Buck and I are both children of the 60's); but I have to admit that on the whole, it really does not meet contemporary standards of scholarship or accuracy.
 |
Title: Ramayana by William Buck, B. A. Van Nooten, Shirley Triest ISBN: 0520227034 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
 |
Title: Ramayana, The: A Shortened Modern Prose Version of the Indian Epic (Penguin Classic) by R. K. Narayan, Kampar Ramayanam ISBN: 0140187006 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 03 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
 |
Title: Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization by Heinrich Robert Zimmer, Joseph Campbell ISBN: 0691017786 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 May, 1972 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
 |
Title: Oedipus Variations: Studies in Literature and Psychoanalysis (Dunquin Series, No. 19) by Karl Kerenyi, James Hillman, Jon Solomon ISBN: 0882142194 Publisher: Spring Pubns Pub. Date: February, 1991 List Price(USD): $17.50 |
 |
Title: The Bhagavad-Gita : Krishna's Counsel in Time of War by BARBARA MILLER ISBN: 0553213652 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 July, 1986 List Price(USD): $5.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
