Dr. Mahavir Raj Gelra
Having born and brought up in a staunch and dedicated Jain family, my spirit is trenched in the Jainism. The eternal truth embedded in the Arhat-Vandana, which I used to recite as a young boy had inspired me throughout my life's voyage. My association with the Hindi version brought me nearer to the Jain philosophy. In the book - Jain Vidhya Aur Vigyan -I found a rare triveni confluence of three pristine streams -
- Mahavira - Super Human Intelligence
- Mahapragya - Super Intelligent Human
- Mahavir-Erudite Philosopher and Humble Scientist
When I saw my father's (Dr. Mahavir Raj Gelra) predicament of finding a suitable translator who not only has command on English language, but has the clarity of Jain ideology too, I decided to take a holy dip in this triveni-sangam. The experience not only turned out to be soul satisfying but has left some indelible marks of their intelligence on my psyche.
Hindi and English languages have a subtle difference in their narration. So, before commencing the task of translation, 1 had two options - either to do it verbatim or to rewrite it retaining the soul and true meaning of the original text. As the text under translation was neither poetry nor a biography, I adopted the latter approach. The work involved the historical and philosophical tenets of Jainism and their interpretations, so I used simple syntax, at the same time taken the due caution not to divert from the underlying concepts and facts. No sooner I started than faced another challenge of conveying the true meaning of classical Jain terminology to the English reader. There was constant influx of typical Jain canonical words like, dwisparshi andchatursparshi pudgals, dravya, Dharmastikaya etc. All these words and a host of other such words bear very special meanings and have no equivalence in English vocabulary. This led us (me and father) to arrive at a landmark decision to employ new epithets which are comprehended easily by those who are comfortable with the English language.
As we studied deeply the hierarchy of constituent particles culminating into matter, the new glossary developed meticulously. For instance, 'dion' for dwisparshi, quadon for chatursparshi, mattereal for dravya and dynaon for Dharmastikaya convey the inherent meaning with clarity. This experiment is path breaking and essential in the present global-village scenario. New generation, particularly one born and brought up outside India will find this newly christened vocabulary more palatable.
We took one more decision to cut upon some mythological portions which were alright in the Hindi version but were lacking suitability in the translated form. As a net result, this endeavour is not truly a translation but a concise translated version of the original.
Author and myself held a firm belief that the tenets of Jainism are scientific and only differ in presentation, vocabulary and interpretation.
Piyush Jain
