ABSTRACT
Gopinath Nanda Sarma’s intensive study of Sarala’s Mahabharata assumes crucial significance in the context of the contempt with which Sanskrit pandits looked upon the Odia epic and the hostile indifference with which western-educated literati treated it after the advent of print culture. This unsympathetic attitude stemmed from two major sources: Sarala Das’s spirited deviations from the revered Sanskrit text, and his exuberant incorporation of folk elements in the epic. In his ground-breaking work, Gopinath perceptively compares the Sarala Mahabharata with Vyasa’s epic, studies in depth its language and literary quality, and reconstructs the life of the author from information available in the text and local legends. As one of the earliest comparatists, he extends his critical enquiry beyond Sanskrit sources and brings his knowledge of Telugu, Bengali and Hindi versions of the Mahabharata, wherever necessary, to bear upon his study of Sarala’s epic and conveys its singularity. He pays particular attention to the text getting corrupted through its scribal reproduction over centuries. His celebration of Sarala Mahabharata as a national treasure can be seen as part of an initiative to give Odia identity a firm cultural foundation by tracing its magnificent genealogy. He singles out the energetic simplicity of Sarala Das’s poetic idiom for praise which the author inventively shaped when Odia language was in its infancy. However, Gopinath’s assessment of Sarala Mahabharata is not entirely laudatory; he painstakingly points out several inconsistencies in the epic which can diminish the reader’s enjoyment. Gopinath’s work contributes immensely to the evolving critical discourse in early twentieth-century Odisha by ingeniously combining traditional modes of aesthetic interpretation with emerging modern methods of evaluating a text.
