PANDIT ANAND NARAIN MULLA AS A TRANSLATOR OF IQBAL

Jagan Nath Azad

Pandit Anand Narain Mulla needs no introduction as a leading poet of Urdu today. He is equally known as one of the top-most litterateurs of Urdu both in India and Pakistan. But many of us are perhaps not aware that he is also a poet of English. During his college days Anand Narain Mulla was as active as a ,poet of English as he is today as a poet of Urdu. In those days he translated into English verse Iqbal’s quatrains entitled “Lālah-i Tūr,” included in Iqbal’s third collection of Persian compositions, Payām-i Mashriq, the first two being Asrār-i Khudī and Rnmūz-i Bekhudī. ,

These quatrains have also been rendered in English verse by Professor Arthur J. Arberry and the translated version appeared under the title Tulip of Sinai from London in 1947.

Later in 1971, Mr Hadi Hussain brought out his book A Message From the East with a sub-title “A Selective Verse Rendering of Iqbal’s Payām-i-Mashriq”. In the words of the translator, “the rendering was selective in a quantitative rather than a qualitative sense: it was confined to those of the poems ‘in the Payām-i-Mashriq which had in the first instance appealed to me most as a translator, much as I admired the whole of that work”. A revised and enlarged edition of this book with a sub-title “A Translation of Iqbal’s Payām-i Mashriq into English Verse” appeared again from Lahore in 1977 on the occasion of Iqbal’s birth centenary celebrations.

Anand Narain Mulla’s English version of “Lālah-i Tūr,” although appearing in a book form after the two versions of those quatrains have already appeared, actually saw the light of the day long before A.J. Arberry’s translation appeared in 1947.

Iqbal, as a poet of Urdu and Persian, shot into prominence like a meteor star in the first decade of the present century when his Urdu poems entitled “Himālah,” “Mirzā Ghālib,” “Bachche Ki Du`ā,” “Khuftgān-i Khāk Se Istifsār,” “Aftāb,” “Eke Ārzu,” “Sayyid Ki Lauh-i Turbat,” “Rukhsat Ai Bazm-i Jahān,” “Tasvīr-i Dard,” “Subh Kā Sitārah,”“Tarānah-i Hindī,”“Kanār-i-Rāvī and many others appeared in prominent journals of the country, followed by the publication of Asrār-i Khudī and Rumūz-i Bekhudi, the two Persian mathnavīs, in 1914and 1918, respectvely. But actually it was two years later that he was, in a befitting manner, introduced to his Western readers by Professor R.A. Nicholson whose translation of the Asrār-i Khudī under the title Secrets of the Self brought Iqbal much closer to the Western poets, ‘writers and intellectuals. The Secrets of the Self, in spite of some flaws in it here and there, is a laudable attempt on the part of Professor Nicholson to introduce Iqbal’s poetry and philosophy to the West. Nicholson’s translation kindled a genuine desire in the minds of the Western students of literature to know more and more of what Iqbal had written, and today Iqbal’s galaxy of translators for the Western readers consists of, in addi­tion to Nicholson, luminaries like Arthur Arberry and Victor Kiernan (U.K.), Eva Vitre-Meyerovitch and Luce-Claude Maitre (France), Annemarie Schimmel and B.M. Weischer (West Germany), Prigarina Natasha, Cheleshev, Dr Abdullah Jan Ghaforov and Dr Sukhochev (U.S.S.R.), Henri Broms and Jussi Taneli biro (Finland), Allessandro Bausani and Arthur Jeffery (Italy), Wojceich Skalmowski and Dr Hiltrud Reusten (Belgium), Sheila McDonough (Canada), Jan Marek (Czechoslovakia), J.C. Burgel (Switzerland), Barbara Metcalf (U.S.A.), Shaikh Akbar Ali, Hafeez Malik, Abdullah Anwar Beg, Bashir Ahmad Dar, Sayyid Abdul Vahid, Khwajah Abdul Waheed, Dr Muiz-ud-Din and Dr Mohammad Maruf (Pakistan) and Atiya Begam Faizi, Nawwab Iftikhar Ali Khan and Dr Sichdanand Sinah (India). The latest to join this illustrious fellowship is Pandit Anand Narain Mulla,, translator of Lālah-i Tūr.

Translation is a difficult art, and all those scholars of various languages who have undertaken this task have referred to the difficulties involved in the art-of translation. Iqbal himself, while referring to his translation of “Gayatri Mantra” into Urdu verse entitled “Aftāb,” says that “the difficulties of translation from one language into another are well known to the scholars”. Professor A.J. Arberry, who has translated Lālah-i Tūr and some other works by Iqbal, namely, Jāvīd Nāmah, Zabūr-i ‘A jam, Shikwah and Jāwab-i Shikwah, is fully conscious of the difficulties of translation from the poetry of one language into the poetry or the prose of another language. Dilating on this issue, Professor Arberry says in the Introduction to the Tulip of Sinai: “I have sought to be as faithful to the letter of original as pos­sible and have imitated the stanzas used by Iqbal. ... Iqbal is not an easy writer to understand, as Professor Nicholson him-self confessed, and the form of quatrains he uses in the `Tulip of Sinai’ further augments the difficulty of grasping his full mean­ing. But I think 1 have made out his intention and have endeavored to compress it into the version.” In the words of the late Justice S.A. Rahman, an Iqbal scholar of Pakistan, “a competent translator has to be fully conversant with the two languages he seeks to work in”. Professor Arberry’s command over the two languages, English and Persian, is an established fact, but in addition to having a thorough grasp of English and Persian, Anand Narain Mulla is a poet himself, and that makes all the difference in so far as translation of Persian poetry into English verse is concerned.

Discussing the issue of translation from one language’ into another, Professor Arberry says in the Introduction to his translation of the Jāvīd Nāmah: “It has been said that the ideal at which the translator should aim is to produce a version as near as possible to what his original would have written, had he been composing in the translator’s language and not his own.” In this discussion Arberry quotes instances of translation by two translators of a few couplets of the Jāvīd Nāmah. One is, of course, Iqbal himself and the other Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad. The original couplets are:

Iqbal himself translates these lines as:

“Art thou in the stage of ‘life’, ‘death’, or ‘death-in-life’?

Invoke the aid of three witnesses to verify thy ‘Station’.

The first witness is thine own consciousness

See thyself, then, with thine own light.

The second witness is the consciousness of another ego—

See thyself, then, with the light of an ego other than thee.

The third witness is God’s consciousness

See thyself, then, with God’s light.

If thou standest unshaken in front of this light,

Consider thyself as living and eternal as He!

That man alone is real who dares

Dares to see God face to face!

What is ‘Ascension’? Only a search for a witness

Who may finally confirm thy reality?

A witness whose confirmation alone makes thee eternal

No one can stand unshaken in His Presence;

And he who can, verily, he is pure gold.

Art thou a mere particle of dust?

Tighten the knot of thy ego;

And hold fast to thy tiny being!

How glorious to burnish one’s ego

And to test its luster in the presence of the Sun!

Re-chisel, then, thine ancient frame;

And build up a new being.

Such being is real being;

Or else thy ego is a mere ring of smoke!”[1]

And Shaikh Mahmud Ahmad:

“Art thou alive or dead or dying fast?

Three witnesses should testify thy state.

The first as witness is the consciousness

Of self, to see thyself by thine own light

The second is another’s consciousness

That thou may’st kindle thus to see-thyself.

And thy third witness is God’s consciousness,

A light in which thou may’st see thyself.

Before the Lord’s effulgence if thou stand’st

Thou art alive like him. For life is but

To reach thy destined end, that is to see

The Lord unveiled. One who believes

Shall never lose himself in Attributes

For Mustafa insisted on the Sight.

The flight to heaven means a longing for

A witness who may testify thyself

Unless it be confirmed by Him, our life

Is nothing but a play of tint and smell

No one can stand against His beauty bright,

Except the one who has perfection reached.

O grain of sand! thy lustre do not lose,

Thy ego’s knot but tighten up. Thy gleam

Increase, then test thyself against the sun,

If thou canst thus reshape thyself and pass

The test, thou art alive and praised or else

The fire of life is smoke and naught beside.”[2]

In order to have a fuller comparative study, I would like-to reproduce here one more translation of the same lines and that is by Arthur J. Arberry. He writes:

“Whether you be alive, or dead, or dying—for this seek witness from three witnesses.

The first witness is self-consciousness,

to behold oneself in one’s own light;

the second witness is the consciousness of another,

to behold oneself in another’s light ;

the third witness is the consciousness of God’s essence,

to behold oneself in the light of God’s essence.

If you remain fast before this light,

count yourself living and abiding as God!

Life is to attain one’s own station,

Life is to see the Essence without a veil;

the true believer will not make do with Attributes—.

the Prophet was not content save with the Essence.

What is Ascension? The desire for a witness,

an examination face-to-face of a witness

a competent witness without whose confirmation

life to us is like colour and scent to a rose.

In that Presence no man remains firm,

or if he remains, he is of perfect assay.

Give not away one particle of the glow you have,

knot tightly together the glow within you :

fairer it is to increase one’s glow,

fairer it is to test oneself before the sun;

then chisel anew the crumbled form ;

make proof of yourself; be a true being!

Only such an existent is praiseworthy,

otherwise the fire of life is mere smoke.”[3]

Judged by any standard Iqbal’s translation is the best. It is faithful, as near as possible to the original and full of poetic fervour. The reason is not far to seek. Let Iqbal’s superb trans­lation not misconstrue us to conclude that his translation is the best because it is his own piece of poetry which he has rendered into English. No. This is not the reason. The reason of Iqbal’s amazing success in this field is that he is a poet and it is his poetic genius that has lent superiority to his translation over the two other specimens. This very difference is visible in a comparative study of the English rendering of Arthur Arberry and that of Anand Narain Mulla. Another reason is that Anand Narain Mulla being one of the major poets of Urdu in India is closer to Iqbal’s Persian idiom than Arthur Arberry. Professor Arberry is correct in saying that “Iqbal is not an easy writer to understand.” Ac­tually, Iqbal is a more difficult writer to understand for his trans­lators outside the Urdu- and Persian-speaking regions of the world, namely, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Tajikistan, than those in these regions for the obvious reason that in poetry, whether it is Urdu or Persian, Iqbal uses old and conventional idiom and symbolic expressions only to impart new meanings to them. Sayyid Abdul Vahid, dealing with this point, says: “The remarkable point about Iqbal’s poetry is the sense of newness and the main reason for this is that, although Iqbal was not actually anti traditionalist, he uses certain words and combination of words to express his visions which are entirely original. Some of these words are coined by him; others represent old words used in an entirely new sense. . . . He is also a superb phrase-maker and has wonderful felicity of phrasing by which language acquires meanings beyond those formally assigned by the lexicographer. These words and phrases act as the keystone for the entire arch of the poetic inspiration. As the removal of the keystone is sure to cause the downfall of the entire arch, so if we try to substitute some-thing else for the master word or phrase, the whole artistic expression is marred… The use of those words and phrases gives to Iqbal’s poetry not only a sense of newness found in very few Urdu and Persian poets, but also the quality of surprise which ‘characterizes all great poetry.”[4] One notices a further elucidation of this point in Reyazul Hasan’s review of Arberry’s Tulip of Sinai wherein he gives a few quatrains of Iqbal in original along with Professor Arberry’s translation and tries to show “how a literal translation has deviated from the meaning of the verse’ and may cause confusion in the mind of English readers. He further says: “Such readers may even find Iqbal an extravagant poet.” In this context the first quatrain that Reyazul Hasan quotes along with Arberry’s translation is:

A spent scent in the garden I surprise,

I know not what I seek, that I require,

But be my passion satisfied, or no,

Yet here I burn, a martyr to Desire.

Commenting on this translation Reyazul Hasan says: “The word parishān-has been translated as spent and the idea behind the word, spent, is `consumed or exhausted,’ while the proper idea of parīshān here is scatteredness like the spread of the fragrance in the garden.” It is difficult to disagree with Reyazul Hasan on the point he has made. I would, therefore, like to quote here Anand Narain’, Mulla’s rendering of the same quatrain to highlight the importance of the point made by Reyazul Hasan. He says:

Breeze like I wander aimless in this bow's

The, scheme of things is hid from me entire,

I live in constant Hope and Fear, a harp

Played on by changing moods of my desire.

Another quatrain with Professor Arberry’s translation and Reyazul Hasan’s comments :

A hand of dust a body fortified

Firmer than rocky rampart shall abide,

Yet beats there in a sorrow-conscious Heart,

A river flowing by a mountain side.

“The phrase dil-i-dard ashnā’i” has been translated as sorrow-conscious Heart which does not convey the complete idea of the phrase. Properly it is a tendency to share another person’s emo­tion or mental participation in another’s trouble, i.e. a sort of sympathy with another person’s misfortune. This is what Heine has called ‘Heiligheint der Schmerzen’ (holiness or sanctity of pain).”

Anand Narain Mulla’s translation is :

From thy frail dust a massive body forms,

As hard as rock to face the fiercest storms;

Within, a heart that knows the pangs of pain,

A rivulet singing in a mountain arms.

The difference of expression does not require any clarification. Such instances are quite a few in number. This variation in the rendering can be easily attributed to the two causes: firstly, the Mulla’s affinity with the classical Persian as used by Iqbal and, secondly, in so far as the translation of poetry is concerned he himself has the gift of poetic expression which a non-poet does not have.

Those conversant with Iqbal’s Payām-i Mashriq and particularly its first chapter entitled “Lālah-i Tūr” would realize that the task before the Mulla wasan arduous one—translation of Iqbal’s Persian poetry into English poetry—but Pandit Anand Narain Mulla being an acknowledged litterateur with a grasp of both Persian and English has acquitted himself admirably well in this challenging task. His version is distinguished both for its literary qualities and faithfulness to the original. This translation, which is neither literal to the extent of being prosaic, nor free to the limit of drifting away from the original, is a commendable attempt to present Iqbal to his Western readers. I am sure those studying Iqbal through English will find this translation not only an , interesting and a pleasant reading but also enjoy through it Iqbal’s flights of imagination, his depths of philosophical thoughts, the beauty of his imagery and language and his astonishing freshness of ideas.

NOTES