Missing Shadows, Moving Shadows. The Process of Translating Prakrit in an Indian Drama Manuscript
Résumé
One well-known and striking particularity of theatre from ancient India is that it is
written in several languages, Sanskrit being assigned to male characters of higher status while men of lower status and most women speak various Prakrits specific to the stage. These artificial languages being very diferent from the actual vernaculars, the Prakrit lines came to be associated with Sanskrit renderings called chāyās or ‘shadows’ in many manuscripts and most modern editions.
However, there is a great deal of uncertainty about who authored these chāyās, under which circumstances. In order to provide some clues, this paper analyses how chāyās appearing the only extant manuscript of a hitherto unpublished drama from the twelfth century, Devabodha’s Satyavratarukmāṅgada. Indeed, an examination of the document reveals that the elaboration of chāyās was an ongoing process at the moment it was copied down: some Prakrit lines are totally deprived of any Sanskrit rendering, while in other places the translation is left incomplete. Besides, chāyās can be more or less integrated into the dramatic text: here, they appear in the margins, there, they stand
in the body of the text immediately after the lines they translate. These variations are considered with regard to the types of Prakrit spoken by the characters and in relation with the commentarial techniques.