Translating Religion: The Battle Allegory in Nishkulanand Swami’s Manganjan

The critical introduction to and the translation of the Gujarati poem Manganjan, composed in 1814 CE by the poet Nishkulanand Swami, in the western Indian region of Kathiawad, Gujarat, is an argument to rethink translation methodologies, particularly those applied to religious literature. Through this project, I argue that while religious texts, with their significance for the community of devout, prompt translators to produce literal translations that owe fidelity to words and grammar, there are other approaches that can yield equally or more meaningful renderings of religious texts. I propose to examine the ways in which religious texts are used within religious practices in order to study how religious practitioners meaningfully engage with these texts and how sectarian traditions mediate people’s engagements with them. Through these academic exercises, a translator can make use of the much more expansive world of meaning-making that surrounds any religious text. My translation of the Manganjan is a result of such an exercise, which led me to attend to the figurative and the paralinguistic features of the poem. I focus on the acoustics of the poem, on the sonic environment comprising the presence, movement, and interaction of sounds created by the poet’s linguistic constructions of characters, landscapes, and environments. Simultaneously, this project is also one of introducing Gujarati literature to readers of English-language literature, as well as to academic community interested in learning more about or engaging with the little-known literature of this region of India.