Mahabharata

Some time ago now, there was an article, I think in the NYRB, all about the Mahabharata, mentioning in passing a modern translation (from the Sanskrit) by one Bibek Debroy, an eminent economist, living in India but sometime member of Trinity College, Cambridge.

Now when I was small, back in the swinging sixties, it was very hip to take an interest in matters Indian, an interest which might extend to actually reading a slim book called the Bhagavad Gita, just one small part of the Mahabharata. I think my own copy has only been retired, unread for many years, relatively recently - while I no longer have any memory at all of what it was about. In any event, this article, or rather this translation, caught my eye.

First stop Amazon, where I found that I could buy each of the 10 volumes, new, for between £10 and £20 each. Which seemed rather a lot, plus there was the collection bug. One likes to have boxed sets, complete collections.

So, second stop Abebooks, where I came across what appeared to be all ten volumes, with the book description starting: 'this definitive and magnificent 10-volume unabridged translation is one of the rare English translations in full of the epic'. All 10 volumes for £15 from India, including postage and packing. Not altogether convinced, but maybe out in India such stuff was a lot cheaper than it is here - with the upshot being that I gave it a punt.

A few weeks after that, some kind of tracking email, an email which appeared to have been prompted by my parcel's arrival in the domain of the Her Majesty's Post Office.

And a few weeks after that again, the parcel itself arrived, very old speak with brown paper, sticky tape, several labels & stickers and string. A very proper parcel, the sort of thing I used to get from one of my Canadian aunts as a child. But far too small to be 10 volumes, at least 10 volumes which one could read without the aid of a magnifying glass. In the event, it turned out to be just one volume, volume 10. 663 pages of text, plus wrapping of another 37 pages or so, a fat Penguin paperback printed in India. I learn that the Penguin HQ in India is intriguingly located in Infinity Tower, Cyber City, Haryana State (see reference 1).

I also learn that my bookseller is located in Medical Association Road, Darya Ganj, New Delhi. A most un-English name, so un-English that the place seems to have dropped off the world of streetview. The place exists in gmaps, but you can't inspect it on the ground, as it were. Very foreign indeed. While I could, as I recall, so inspect the wilds of France, or of Russia.

It remains to be seen whether I will actually read this book, whether it gathers dust or whether it find its way into an upcoming cull. Having just the tenth of ten is not the same as having all ten.

PS: once again impressed by the power of google search on one's mailboxes. All kinds of investigations now possible which would have been quite impractical in the days of paper, even supposing that one had kept all the paper, along with a small army of filing clerks and paperkeepers. See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://www.haryana.gov.in/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-paperkeepers-tale.html.