Phiroze Vasunia is Professor of Greek at University College London and the author, most recently, of 'The Classics and Colonial India' (Oxford, 2013).
In order to understand the importance of the Murty Classical Library of India, we should look to the success of the Loeb Classical Library. In the Anglophone world, without the Loeb Classical Library, and without series such as the Penguin Classics, the popularity of Homer and Virgil in schools and universities would be a fraction of what it is today. The Loeb Classical Library, in particular, is consulted by students and teachers, scholars and laypersons; it has opened up the field of Greek and Roman antiquity to thousands if not millions of readers. For many ancient Greek and Roman authors, the standard edition is the edition that appears in the Loeb series; in many cases, the definitive English translation can be found in the Loeb version. As early as 1917, Virginia Woolf referred to the Loebs as "a gift of freedom". The difficulty of classical Greek was so great, she added, that "we shall do well to recognize the fact and to make up our minds that we shall never be independent of our Loeb". To the delight of students, the early practice of bowdlerizing obscene passages or turning them into French or Italian, rather than English, has long since been discarded, and Loebs now contain accurate English translations of Sappho, Catullus, and the erotic poets of the Greek Anthology.
The texts are in the original script (not in transliteration, as in the Clay series); the translations are accompanied by introductions and notes. A whole new generation of readers is going to discover the historical literature of South Asia.
While the understanding of classical Indian languages and literatures is in a relatively frail condition in South Asia, the study of classical Greek and Latin is flourishing in Europe and North America. We could spend hours discussing why this is so, and talk about the lure of filthy lucre, long histories of colonialism, and differences in educational systems and in cultural priorities. But the lack of good translations and scholarly resources is among the factors responsible for this melancholy state of affairs in India. And one reason for the current vitality of the Greek and Latin 'Classics' outside India is that the basic texts of the discipline are widely distributed, edited to a high standard, and readily available in translation. If the MCLI establishes itself, more students and scholars than ever before will gain access to the written literary traditions of South Asia in their linguistic and regional diversity. If that happens, MCLI actually will help turn around the declining fortunes of classical Indian literature in India.
I have also heard commentators say that those who make claims about spaceships and medical cures in Indian antiquity are likely to find their views challenged once these texts are widely disseminated. No amount of evidence, however rigorously presented, is going to alter the beliefs of "experts" who want to find every conceivable scientific achievement in ancient India.
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