The Bhagavad Gita in English : A Transformative Dialogue through Reception and Translations

Dsouza, Jean and Ram-Prasad, Chakravarthi and Kawanami, Hiroko (2024) The Bhagavad Gita in English : A Transformative Dialogue through Reception and Translations. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.

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Abstract

Considering the English Bhagavad Gita as an embodiment of reception that is not limited to Hinduism or India, this thesis examines connotative, circumstantial, and suggestive transformations that emerge in the processes of textual transfer. Hence, this study brings into comparison three translations and four transcreations of the Gita. It is divided into three parts, with two chapters each. Part 1 contextualizes the thesis with a theoretical framework and scholarship background. Parts 2 and 3 present a lens to view the English Gita: the dialectic of intimacy. Part 2 looks at three English translations of the Gita in juxtaposition through the lens of that dialectic. I first build up the dialectic of intimacy wherein I use the constructs of the Self and the Other to talk about the reader-translators’ approaches to, and interpretations of, the text. Then, I use the three translations to illustrate that dialectic, comparing the way particular verses are presented and how the Self-Other model reveals itself in the reader-translators’ closeness to the text, and their distance from it. Part 3 outlines the dialectic of intimacy in other textual transfers, i.e., transcreations. Dissimilar from translations, transcreations move further away from the “original” text, re-forming it, and indicating a divergence in the dialectic of intimacy. Following this, I examine four selected transcreations. Thus, the study explores reception to the Gita through its English translations and transcreations, marking its transformation in transferred texts that look back to an “original” and look forward to a global, stand-alone text, notwithstanding the “original”.