After her translation of the seventh century Sanskrit classic Kadambari by Banabhatta, which also won a Sahitya Akademi award, this is a fresh venture in the same field by Padmini Rajappa. It is of a no less famous but much older Sanskrit play. Hopefully other works will follow from her, as the field for such translations still remains vast.
After those of Kalidasa, the Mrchchakatikam of Shudraka is perhaps the best known in modern times of India’s ancient dramatic works, both here and abroad. First rendered into English by HH Wilson in 1826, it gained fame in the United States with the translation of AW Ryder in 1905. This scholar’s Little Clay Cart also had acclaimed performance runs in American theaters from Los Angles to New York over the next fifty years. After her translation of the Earlier it had also been translated into French and enacted in Paris. In India it has been translated into several languages, and there have been a number of screen versions, from the early silent film Mrichchkatika starring Kamaladevi Chattopadhyaya in 1931 to the Kannada film Vasantasena in 1941, and then the Bollywood production Utsav in 1984, based by Girish Karnad on the original drama.
The present book continues this tradition. It is a translation in contemporary English that can make the original once more accessible to the modern reader. It is a long play in ten acts with a cast of sixteen main apart from several minor characters in its plot. It is not clear if its earlier performances involved any condensation. Here, the translator has divided acts into scenes ‘to avoid awkward situations’. Apart from a Prologue of conversation between the play’s director and an actress, there are fifty-three scenes. These facilitate reading and may do the same for a performance.