Translation as a ‘Superhuman’ Feat: A Metrical Mahābhārata in Malayalam

Abstract

Koṭuṅṅallūr Kuññikkuṭṭan Tampurān (1864–1913) completed a verse translation of the Mahābhārata in just 874 days, reproducing the exact metres of the original text. This unique work is superior in literary merit to the earlier fourteenth- and fifteenth-century attempts to translate the Mahābhārata within Kerala’s musical song tradition known as pāṭṭu. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, when scholarly translations rather than free adaptations had become the norm, the author sought to produce an accurate mirror image of the original Sanskrit text in Malayalam, rather than a loose retelling in verse. Unlike Tuñcatt Eḷuttacchan, who employed a lucid maṇipravāḷa hybrid tilted towards Malayalam and enriched with Sanskrit vocabulary, Tampurān used a more colloquial form of Malayalam, which made his expression lively and accessible to common readers. The work also differs from the monumental English rendering by K.M. Ganguli (The Mahābhārata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa), which does not preserve the metrical structure of the original. Even more remarkable is the fact that Tampurān’s translation was produced extempore, shedding light on the literary culture that prevailed in nineteenth-century Kerala. This paper investigates both the cultural and aesthetic significance of this extraordinary translation project.