Chapter 2 - Colonial Untranslatables

Summary

The idea of textual autonomy and singularity was secured not so much by the transparency of translation but by the opacity of what was essentially untranslatable. These untranslatables might include anything from ethnographic details of local cultures to “exotic” religious or literary practices, but the central point remained that their impermeability was a necessary guarantor of textual integrity and authenticity. Across literary and legal translations like Charles Wilkins’s The Bhăgvăt-Gēētā (1785) and The Hĕĕtōpādēs of Vĕĕshnŏŏ-Sărmā (1787), Charles Hamilton’s The Hedāya, or Guide (1791), and William Jones’s Al Shirājiyyah (1792), I argue, the untranslatable emerged as a political category, as an essential ingredient of the literary sovereign. This political character of the untranslatable was eventually ratified in the sensational impeachment trial of Hastings. Analyzing the speeches and other documents from the trial, I demonstrate how the untranslatable Indian culture became the central point of contention, and how it was the autonomy of this cultural core that determined the course of colonial governance.