PAPER NAME - Comparative Indian Literature And Translation Studies

1. PAPER NAME - COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE AND TRANSLATION
STUDIES
TOPIC – WHY COMPARATIVE INDIAN
LITERATURE – SISIR KUMAR DAS
PREPARED BY – NIYATI VYAS & STUTI
GOSAI
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

2. Table of contents
About Author
01
03
02
04
Comparative
Indian
Literature
Comparative
Indian
Literature By
Amiya Dev
Citation

3. ABOUT AUTHOR
1. Sisir Kumar Das (1936–2003) was a poet, playwright, translator,
comparatist and a prolific scholar of Indian literature. He is
considered by many as the "doyen of Indian literary historiographers".
2. Almost singlehandedly Das built an integrated history of Indian
literatures composed in many languages, a task that had seemed to
many important scholars of Indian literatures to be “a historian’s
despair”.
3. His three volume (among proposed ten volumes) A History of Indian
Literature (Western Impact: Indian Response 1800–1910; Struggle for
Freedom: Triumph and Tragedy 1911–1956; From Courtly to Popular
500–1399) is credited for having devised hitherto absent methods
necessary for situating diverse Indian literary cultures in history.
4. Apart from this, another monumental work in Das’ scholarly oeuvre is
the multi-volume English Writings of Rabindranath Tagore, edited by
him.

4. Despite his formal training in Bangla language and
literature, Das was amongst the few who were
instrumental in shaping the discipline of Comparative
Literature in India.
"I," Das once remarked, "have been trying to say this [that
"compartmentalized literary-education" should be
immediately done away with] for a long time.
Whether study of literature or reading of literature, call it
whatever, would remain incomplete if not approached
comparatively.
It is like that old saying: What does he know of English
who only English knows. The literature departments
have erected walls between literatures. New thoughts
would start blowing only when these walls are
shattered down."

5. COMPARATIVE
INDIAN
LITERATURE

6. In the beginning of the century some of the
scholars tried upon the idea of an Indian
Literature emphasizing the unity of themes
and forms and attitudes between the
different literatures produced in different
Indian languages during the last three
thousand years. It discovers the essential
threads of unity in two way.

7. Multilingu
al
MULTIRELIG
IOUS
CULTURE

8. Coming back to the nature of Comparative
Literature as taught in India, the epigraph
by Sisir Kumar Das states the pressing
concern of relationships that exist between
Indian literatures. It is also the
comparatist’s need to move away from
narrow geographical confines and move
towards how literatures across the
subcontinent are to be understood in their
totality (Das:96–97).

9. For a country like India which has a history of literary traditions
oscillating between script and orature, new methods of teaching
and reading were to be envisioned. While dealing with the formal
elements that go into the making of any text in India—which
shares a similarity with African situations in terms of oral,
written and indigenous sources (Thiongʼo 1993)— identification
of these methods as contours which aid in the reading of
literature would apply.
When speaking of literatures in the plural, the succeeding
questions point towards the direction in which these literatures
tend to inhabit a geopolitical location, otherwise termed a
country, which is demarcated by boundaries, social, religious
and linguistic.
When reading any text, the value-loaded term ‘national’,
‘international’ and ‘indigenous’ prop up any student pursuing
literature.

10. Subdivisions, generic differences may occur, but identifying these
differences and reading them as contours, instead of straight lines is
what Comparative Literature sets out to engage with.
While questioning the idea of an ‘Indian literature’ vis-à-vis ‘Indian
literatures’, he highlights the notions one attaches to the word ‘Indian’
which could in itself be a pluralistic outlook of life, wherein the
concept of Indian literature as inherently comparative may be
considered.
according to Das, the necessity of evolving a framework when two
distinct languages/cultures encountered was inevitable. Das states in
this regard:Arabic, Japanese with Chinese and Indians with the
literatures of Europe.
All these contacts have resulted in certain changes, at times marginal,
and at time quite profound and pervasive, in the literary activities of
the people involved, and have necessitated an enlargement of critical
perspective‖(S. K. Das 18).

11. Das states how Warren Hastings, the first governor‐general of India,
in his introduction of Charles Wilkin's translation of Gita (1785),
advocated for a comparative study of the Gita and great
European literature.
I should not fear‘ he wrote, to place, in opposition to the best French
version of the most admired passages of Iliad or Odyssey, or the
1st and 6th books of our own Milton, highly as I venerate the latter,
the English translation of the Mahabharata‘ (S. K. Das 22) .
Translation brought world-renown to a number of regional writers. In
―The Task of the Translator, Walter Benjamin argues that
translation does not conceal the original, but allows it to shine
through, for translation effectively ensures the survival of a text
(Bassnett 180).

12. Das ascertains how Indian scholars in the ancient period did not
endeavour to explore such connections between the two
languages. Das has a clear insight into this phenomenon that
may be owing to myopic tendencies and the lack of a
framework to place literatures from two linguistic roots.
Das forgets to mention that were no appropriate frameworks to
study identity politics that went beyond the frontiers of
language in a country strongly informed by caste hierarchies,
the subjugation of women and the suppression of the LGBT.
And even when literature shifted from nation bases to identity
bases it happened outside the discipline of comparative
literature

13. COMPARATIVE
LITERATURE IN
INDIA BY AMIYA
DEV

14. In his article, "Comparative Literature in India,"
Amiya Dev bases his discussion on the fact
that India has many languages and
literatures thus representing an a priori
situation and conditions of diversity. He
therefore argues that to speak of an Indian
literature in the singular is problematic.
Nonetheless, Dev also observes that to
speak of Indian literature in the plural is
equally problematic.

15. Such a characterization, he urges, either
overlooks or obscures manifest interrelations
and affinities.
His article compares the unity and the diversity
thesis, and identifies the relationship between
Indian commonality and differences as the
prime site of comparative literature in India.
He surveys the current scholarly and intellectual
positions on unity and diversity and looks into
the post-structuralist doubt of homogenization
of differences in the name of unity.

16. Dev also examines the search for common
denominators and a possible pattern of
togetherness and Dev underlines location and
located inter-Indian reception as an aspect of
interliterariness.
It is t/here Dev perceives Indian literature, that
is, not as a fixed or determinate entity but as an
ongoing and interliterary process: Indian
language and literature ever in the re/making.

17. CITATION
Sharma, Riti. (2016). Comparative Literature. Das, Sisir Kumar.
1988. ‘Muses in Isolation’, in Comparative Literature Theory and
Practice, eds.
Amiya Dev and Sisir Kumar Das. Shimla: MAS and Allied
Publishers.
Thiongʼo, Ngũgĩ wa. 1972. ‘On the Abolition of the English
Department’ in Homecoming: Essays on African and Caribbean
Literature, Culture and Politics. London: Heinemann.
Rukhaya, Mk. (2022). ‘Sisir Kumar Das’s
“Comparative Literature in India:”
Transcending Boundaries.

18. THANK YOU YOU… .