The Difficulty of Translating Sanskrit

In one of my MA Sanskrit Studies program classes, the teacher asked us to translate the titles of a few Kāvya books (loosely translated as Indian poetry) that were mentioned in a book we were reading, An Introduction to Indian Aesthetics by Mini Chandran and V. S. Sreenath.

One of the books mentioned was ध्वन्यालोक (dhvanyāloka), written in the 9th century by Ānandavardhana. This book discusses the difference between Vedas and Kāvya. While the Vedas are more straight-forward in telling what should and shouldn’t be done. Kāvya literature is a more subtle and implicit way of conveying the same.

So the task was to translate the meaning for the book title - ध्वन्यालोक. The first step is to recognize that this word consists of two words. There is a Sandhi combining these two words.

We can break down the word into individual letters as following:

ध् + व् + अ + न् + य् + आ + ल् + ओ + क + अ

or into sounds as following:

ध् + व + न् + या + लो + क

Here we can see that the आ or या is where the Sandhi most likely is. This is where the tricky part comes in. When looking at the Sandhi chart, there are several possible combinations that would fit:

The resulting splits could be:

• अ + अ: ध्वन्य + अलोक

• अ + आ: ध्वन्य + आलोक

• आ + अ: ध्वन्या + अलोक

• आ + आ: ध्वन्या + आलोक

• इ + अ: ध्वनि + आलोक

• ई + अ: ध्वनी + आलोक

Note that it cannot be इ + अ or ई + अ in this case since the sandhi is either आ or या, NOT य.

Now checking these word combination in the Monier-Williams Dictionary, we can see that ध्वन्या and ध्वनी are not actual words, so we can discard the options that contain them. So now only the following are remaining as legitimate options:

• अ + अ: ध्वन्य + अलोक

• अ + आ: ध्वन्य + आलोक

• इ + अ: ध्वनि + आलोक

Looking up the first word, ध्वन्य or ध्वनि in the dictionary yields the following definitions:

In Sanskrit, it’s never as simple of just getting one easy definition. As we can see, the word ध्वनि can have all kinds of different meanings! And of course we still have the definition of ध्वन्य to add to all those options. So which one to choose?!!!

This is where the CONTEXT comes into play. We know that the book is about Kāvya (poetry), so we can take the most likely definition as “poetic style”. So in this case, we will choose ध्वनि as the most likely option for the Sandhi split.

We do the same for the words अलोक and आलोक (although we already know that if ध्वनि is the correct split, only आलोक is possible).

Since we’re talking about “Poetic Style”, then probably a words such as “sight, aspect, vision” are more fitting than “not the world”. We can confirm that आलोक is the most likely second word.

So the Kāvya book ध्वन्यालोक is probably split into the words ध्वनि + आलोक, meaning something like “Sight on Poetic Style”. According to Wikipedia, the translation is A Light on Suggestion.

Conclusion

Based on this simple exercise of trying to translate a title of a book that contains only two words, it is easy to see how hard it is to translate from Sanskrit texts!

In Ayurveda, the whole line could be joined together in Sandhi with multiple words that need to be split. And each word can have multiple meanings. Knowing the CONTEXT of the text is very important in choosing the appropriate meaning. So someone who is just a Sanskrit scholar with no knowledge of the Ayurveda subject can easily choose the wrong or misleading word as the translation.

This is why it is important as an Ayurveda student to learn Sanskrit and the art of splitting the sandhi and doing proper translation and understanding! At first it will be difficult and require the help of a teacher, but as we get subject-matter expertise and lots of practice, this will become easier and essential in the long-term.