Hermann H
esse, though celebrated in the West, has remained an underrated author in India. However, there is a marked change in this trend in India in the past two decades. Several Indian and foreign publishers have chosen to reprint English translations of Hesse’s
Siddhartha,
leading to its wide presence in the market, as evident from the large number of listings on Amazon India. This signifies that
Siddhartha is being read in India in English as well as other Indian languages. This is a new development, as in the past Hesse and his work have not enjoyed the resonance that he had wished for.
1“I very much hope that Siddhartha will eventually appear in English, not for the sake of the English themselves, but for those Asians and others whom it would vindicate.” Hermann Hesse, Letter to Helen Welti from 1922, in Soul of the Age: Selected Letters, 1891–1962, ed. Theodore Ziolkowski, trans. Mark Harman (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991), 118. The reasons for this have been attributed to an overemphasis on authors from the period of German Classicism and Romanticism.
2Vridhagiri Ganeshan, “Indien,” in Hermann Hesses weltweite Wirkung, ed. Martin Pfeifer (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1977), 206. Moreover, only 0.02% of Indians speak English as their first language and only 6.38% of Indians speak English as their first or second subsidiary language.
3Kandhai Singh and R. Nakkeerar, Language Atlas of India 2011 (New Delhi: Office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner, 2011), 78. Through the medium of translation into Indian languages, Hesse’s
Siddhartha has enjoyed much wider visibility on the book stands. Translations are available in various Indian languages such as Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, Gujarati, Malayalam, Panjabi, Urdu, Bangla, and Sanskrit.
4Manasi Gopalakrishnan, “100 years of Hermann Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha,’” Deutsche Welle, accessed January 19, 2023, https://www.dw.com/en/100- years-of-hermann-hesses-siddhartha/a-63113218. Five versions in Hindi are currently available in the market and four in Marathi, which is predominantly spoken in the state of Maharashtra by approximately eighty-three million people (2011 census). The presence of four Marathi translations of
Siddhartha on the market underlines the interest of the Marathi readers in this philosophical novel.
5This view was shared by several research scholars at the international symposium titled Siddhartha turns 100 held at Department of German, University of Mumbai on December 14, 2022. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmpviWKsQZ4. However, it would create the following doubt in the mind of any student of translation: How can four translations find a market at the same time? This chapter sheds new light on two aspects of Hesse’s impact in India, namely the new-found interest in Hesse’s works in India and the existence of multiple versions of
Siddhartha in Marathi.
While researching the impact of
Siddhartha in India, the existence of four versions of the book in Marathi by four different translators motivated us to focus on their similarities and differences. We analyze these four Marathi translations, which were published in the years 2003, 2016, 2017, and 2021, respectively, deploying a close reading method.
6In this method, we are looking closely at the translated texts focusing on the specific details in order to interpret deeper and multiple meanings of various phrases, words, and sentences in the text. We are comparing the translated texts to find patterns leading us to differing impacts of the texts. Among the four versions, the
bhavanuvad (literally meaning translation with a rendering of emotion) by Tryambak Vinayak Sardeshmukh, an eminent Marathi writer and critic, is the earliest one.
7Rita Kothari and Krupa Shah, “More or less ‘translation’: Landscapes of language and communication in India,” in A World Atlas of Translation, eds. Yves Gambier and Ubaldo Stecconi (Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2019), 129. Incidentally, it predates the Bengali translation of
Siddhartha by Silabhadra, which previous research had claimed as the first translation in Indian languages.
8Ganeshan, “Indien,” 213. According to the translator’s note, Sardeshmukh read the novel in English when it was published as a series in the
Illustrated Weekly of India, one of the leading English news magazines in India at the time, and he started translating the novel into Marathi in 1950–51.
9“Advertising in Britain and Europe,” Britannica, accessed April 22, 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/publishing/Advertising-in-Britain-and- Europe#ref398432. Sardeshmukh notes that he had not even heard of Hermann Hesse until he came across this translation of
Siddhartha in
The Illustrated Weekly. The translator’s note also mentions that he translated the novel to gather courage and cope better with a personal crisis. The process of translating
Siddhartha “awakened” and motivated Sardeshmukh to start writing and express himself. In this way, it signifies his own journey towards being an author and translator. However, his version was not published until 2003, that is, about fifty years after it had been translated, for want of a publisher. The reason why a publisher could not be found for fifty years is unknown.
A translator’s note is missing in the version by Kamlesh Soman and Shriniwas Ramchandra Vaidya (hereafter called “Soman and Vaidya’s version”), which was published in 2016.
10Soman is a Marathi novelist, critic, and translator of over ninety fiction and non-fiction books. Vaidya has translated three books with Soman from English to Marathi. Soman is a Marathi author and translator. Avinash Tadphale’s
anuvad (translation literally meaning to speak after or to tell in turn) was published by the Hermann Hesse Society of India in the year 2017.
11Avinash Tadphale is a software consultant turned translator. The text was translated from English from the Gutenberg edition translated by Gunther Olesch and others.
12Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha: An Indian Tale, trans. Gunther Olesch, Anke Dreher, Amy Coulter, Stefan Langer, and Semyon Chaichenets, Project Gutenberg, February 2001, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2500/2500-h/2500-h.htm. Ulka Raut’s
anuvad published in 2021 is the most recent one on the list.
13Ulka Raut is a renowned translator of several fiction and non-fiction books from English to Marathi. A translator’s note is missing in Raut’s version, but Raut has stated that she translated from an English version provided by the publisher.
14Etymologically anuvad means “to speak after” (Purushottama Lal, Transcreation: Two essays [Kolkata: Writers Workshop, 1972]). The original meaning of anuvad in ancient Sanskrit includes utterance of a song, a mantra (a motivating chant or prayer involving repetition), a stotra (prayer or hymn with a poetic structure) that has been said by a guru. In recent times, interpretative aspects of the text find weight in anuvad. In comparison, bhashantar, which means taking (a text) from one language to another, follows a stricter word-for-word approach. Rupantar is a translation that involves changing the form of the text. It is important to understand the translators’ approach towards translating their texts. The mindset and perception of the translator will affect the end-product that is the translation as the processes involved in anuvad, bhashantar, and rupantar are different.