| Arthur W. Ryder | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 8 March 1877  |
| Died | 21 March 1938 (aged 61) |
| Language | English language |
Arthur William Ryder (March 8, 1877 – March 21, 1938)[1] was aprofessor ofSanskrit at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He is best known for translating a number of Sanskrit works into English, including thePanchatantra and theBhagavad Gita.
In the words ofG. R. Noyes,[2]
Taken as a whole, Ryder's work as a translator is probably the finest ever accomplished by an American. It is also probably the finest body of translation from the Sanskrit ever accomplished by one man, if translation be regarded as a branch of literary art, not merely as a faithful rendering of the meaning of the original text.
Ryder was born on March 8, 1877, atOberlin, Ohio, in the United States. He had his early education atAnn Arbor, Michigan, and thePhillips Academy inAndover, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in June 1894, to joinHarvard University. He got hisA.B. degree from Harvard in June 1897. After teachingLatin and literature at Andover for a year, he went toGermany for graduate studies. He studied at theUniversity of Berlin and theUniversity of Leipzig, from which he got the degree ofDoctor of Philosophy in 1901, with adissertation on theRbhus in theṚgveda. He was an instructor in Sanskrit at Harvard University from 1902 until January 1906, when he moved to the University of California at Berkeley,[1] to its linguistics department,[3] as an instructor in Sanskrit and German.[4]He became an instructor in Sanskrit alone later in the same year, became assistant professor in 1908, associate professor in 1919, and professor in 1925.[4] From his arrival at Berkeley until his death, Sanskrit was a separate department with Ryder as chairman and sole member, after which it was absorbed into the Department ofClassics.[4] When in summer 1920 Berkeley first began offering courses in religion and religious education, Ryder was among the faculty, along with Herbert Francis Evans,Walter Goodnow Everett,Morris Jastrow Jr., andWalter B. Pitkin.[5]
He was a member of theAmerican Oriental Society and theAmerican Philological Association.[6] He was also a member ofPhi Beta Kappa society, and wrote the society's annual poem for its meeting in 1912.[7][8][9] It is also said that he was at one time ranked one of the two best chess players on the Pacific Coast.[10]
In 1905, when still at Harvard, Ryder translatedŚudraka'sMṛcchakatika into English asThe Little Clay Cart, which was published as volume 9 of theHarvard Oriental Series. He translatedKālidāsa'sAbhijñānaśākuntalam,Meghadūta, and other works, as well as theBhagavad Gita[11]and several volumes of verse translated from works byBhartṛhari and others. His prose translations included thePanchatantra in 1925,[12][13][14]excerpts from which were published asGold's Gloom,[15]Daṇḍin'sDaśakumāracarita asThe Ten Princes of Dandin, andTwenty-Two Goblins,[16] a translation ofVetala Panchavimshati. He also wrote excellent original verse which he circulated privately, but did not publish.[1]
Some verses from his translations were set to music.[17][18]HisLittle Clay Cart was enacted at theHearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley in 1907,[19] a production that included a real live elephant on stage.[20]Also enacted there in 1914 wasShakuntala, which was performed by theMountain Play Association, who were invited to perform there[20] after their performance in a natural amphitheatre on top ofMount Tamalpais, California.[21]These two were the only Indian dramas performed there until 2004.[19][22]HisLittle Clay Cart was also enacted inNew York City in 1924 at theNeighborhood Playhouse,[23][24] which was then anoff-Broadway theatre, at theTheater de Lys in 1953,[25]and at the Potboiler Art Theater inLos Angeles in 1926, when it featured actors such asJames A. Marcus,Symona Boniface andGale Gordon.[26]Following his death in 1938, some of his original poems were published in a posthumous memorial volume with a biography, along with several of his translated verses.[2] This was the only book of original poetry published by theUniversity of California Press for several decades.[27]
He was known for his love of the language, preferring to publish whatever most delighted him, rather than scholarly articles.[28] In fact, he was outspoken in his contempt for such articles, holding the view that Sanskrit ought to be studied not for philological reasons, but for the great literature it opened.[29]
Scholarship is less than sense
Therefore seek intelligence.
— anepigram Ryder translated from thePanchatantra and quoted often.
He would say that "A professionalliterary critic is a man who hates literature."[30]Perhaps for this reason,Time magazine described him as the "greatest Sanskrit student of his day",[31] and an Italian Sanskritist[32] said of him: "Ten men like that would make a civilization".
At a time when the university curriculum was undergoing upheavals, Ryder was a staunch defender of the traditional system of education in theclassics. In his ideal world, the university curriculum would have been mostly limited to Latin, Greek, and mathematics, with subjects like history, philosophy, physics, and languages like Sanskrit, Hebrew, German, and French being allowed to serious students only later, as a sort of reward. The then-new disciplines like psychology and sociology were dismissed "out of hand as not worth damning."[4]
His translations were noted for their high fidelity to the originals[1][11][33]despite his practice of translating into lively and natural conversational language[34]using rhyme and modern English idiom:[28][35][36]
Your nature is a thing you cannot beat;
It serves as guide in everything you do:
Give a dog all the meat that he can eat
You can't prevent his gnawing at a shoe.
— from theHitopadesha.
In particular, his translation of the Shakuntala was regarded as the best at the time,[37] his "accurate and charming" translation of the Panchatantra remains popular and highly regarded, while his translation of the Bhagavad Gita was not so successful.[38]
Despite being described as "a loner with a caustic wit", as an educator he was encouraging and generous toward students, and consequently he found many devoted students.[29]Harold F. Cherniss described him as "a friend half divine in his great humanity".[2] WhenAnthony Boucher, who had been a student of his at Berkeley, wrote his novelThe Case of the Seven of Calvary, he based the lead character of "Dr. Ashwin", professor of Sanskrit, after Ryder. (Ashvin is a Sanskrit word meaning a "rider".)[39]
Another of his devoted students wasJ. Robert Oppenheimer. In 1933, Oppenheimer, then 29, was a young physics professor at Berkeley and studied Sanskrit under Ryder alongside enrolled students, doing assignments and recitation, and readingKalidasa.[4]: 25 Ryder introduced him to theBhagavad Gita, which they read together in the original language. Later Oppenheimer cited it as one of the most influential books to shape his philosophy of life, famously recalling the Gita at theTrinity test.[40]He described his teacher thus:[31]
"Ryder felt and thought and talked as a Stoic ... a special subclass of the people who have a tragic sense of life, in that they attribute to human actions the completely decisive role in the difference between salvation and damnation. Ryder knew that a man could commit irretrievable error, and that in the face of this fact, all others were secondary." Tartly intolerant of humbug, laziness, stupidity and deceit, Ryder thought that "Any man who does a hard thing well is automatically respectable and worthy of respect."
Ryder died on March 21, 1938, of a heart attack,[2] while teaching an advanced class with only one student.[23][29] When he died,Gilbert N. Lewis said that the greatest mind inthe university was gone.[30]
Although Ryder disdained "scholarship", he published a few scholarly papers early in his career.
{{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help).Dissertation (inGerman).Besides books, some were published in theUniversity of California Chronicle.
{{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help){{citation}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Through the efforts of PresidentBenjamin Ide Wheeler the department of linguistics at the University of California is to be enriched by the acquisition of Professor Arthur W. Ryder of Harvard University, one of the greatest authorities in the world on Sanskrit language and literature.
"The publication of my poems brought me new contacts. Above all, I think of Arthur W. Ryder. My first meeting with this professor of Sanskrit and notable writer on Hindu lore occurred before the days of my Examiner appearance, and at the cost of a brief diversion I will tell of it. One evening the members of the university chess team played a team from the faculty. As a sharer of the not highly esteemed, not greatly contested honor of belonging to the student team, I was one of the warriors who was to charge with knights and rooks against a member of the teaching staff. I arrived at the hall of combat aglow with hope— the pride of recent victory over a member of the Stanford team (in a long-drawn game, a last-ditch affair won by a single pawn). Still, the narrowness of my conquest did not make me any the less confident. Now to bring one of the professors crashing into the dust! I found myself seated opposite a quiet-looking, middle-aged man with a clear-cut virile face, who seemed placidly unaware of his impending doom. But something, alas, went wrong at the game's very start. After a mere half-dozen moves, I was hopelessly ensnarled and, after another two or three moves, I was entirely stunned by that most disheartening word, "Checkmate!" How had it happened? In my humiliation, I could not explain. But the flush on my cheeks was somewhat relieved when I learned that my opponent was ranked as one of the two best chess players on the Pacific Coast.
The 'Arrows of Love Fly True,' in the third number, is a translation from the Sanskrit made by Professor Arthur W. Ryder of the university and set to music by H. B. Pasmore.
