Book cover of Early Modern Literatures in North India. The image on the cover shows Balwant Singh seated writing on a camp-bed. It is attributed to Nainsukh, c. 1760.

##submission.howToCite##

Pastore, Rosina: ‘For the Benefit of People’: Bhuvdev Dube’s (Nineteenth-Century) Hindi Translation of Brajvāsīdās’ Braj Bhasha Prabodhacandrodaya nāṭaka (1760) , 收入 Nagasaki, Hiroko, Horstmann, Monika 和 Okita, Kiyokazu (编): Early Modern Literatures in North India: Current Research 2022–2024, Heidelberg: Heidelberg Asian Studies Publishing, 2025, 页 113–128. https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1553.c22777

##submission.license## (##submission.chapter##)

##submission.license.cc.by-sa4.footer##

##submission.identifiers## (##rt.metadata.pkp.dctype##)

https://doi.org/10.11588/hasp.1553
ISBN 978-3-98887-025-4 (PDF)
ISBN 978-3-98887-024-7 (Softcover)

##catalog.published##

11/18/2025

##submission.downloads##

##plugins.themes.ubOmpTheme01.chapterDownload## (PDF/526KB)
##plugins.generic.hdOmpStatistic.statistic.button##

##submission.authors##

Rosina Pastore

‘For the Benefit of People’

Bhuvdev Dube’s (Nineteenth-Century) Hindi Translation of Brajvāsīdās’ Braj Bhasha Prabodhacandrodaya nāṭaka (1760)

The late nineteenth century saw a proliferation of translations of earlier literature into Hindi, Urdu, and Persian, published, among others, by the notable Lucknow publisher Naval Kishore Press. This chapter examines the Prabodhacandrodaya drama translated by Bhuvdev Dube (abbreviated below as ‘DPC’) and published in 1893 by the Lucknow house. Bhuvdev Dube did not translate from the Sanskrit Prabodhacandrodaya, composed by Kr̥ṣṇamiśra in the eleventh century, but rather from Brajvāsīdās’ Prabodhacandrodaya nāṭaka, written in 1760 in Braj Bhasha. My analysis places the text in the Prabodhacandrodaya tradition; then in the debates concerning Hindi language and script by considering the preface attached to the translation. Subsequently, the chapter investigates the ways Dube reworked his source. It identifies the main translation strategies adopted by the author as selection and abridgement of the subject matter. It shows that Dube’s preoccupations and goals were distinct from those of Bhāratendu Hariścandra, who had also adapted the third act of the nāṭaka slightly earlier. These elements demonstrate the multiplicity of ‘modern needs’ (Dalmia 2015) that almost contemporary authors were addressing by retellingthe same story in the form of drama.

Rosina Pastore is currently FWO postdoctoral fellow at Ghent University, Belgium. Her main domain of research is vernacular philosophical literature, which seh investigates through primary sources in Classical and Modern Hindi, Rajasthani, and its interactions with Sanskrit knowledge systems.