Question about Hindi translations (and Karaniya Metta Sutta especially)

Translations
1

Hello friends,

I am having trouble pulling up on the search function all the EBTs available in Hindi translation. I can see that it says that 0.6% of the suttas available on Sutta Central are translated into Hindi, but the link to to the translator (Ven. Sankrityayan) is not hyper linked.

While I have a more general interest in this matter, I am also looking for a good translation in Hindi of the Karaniya Metta Sutta specifcally. Any tips would be welcome. When I pull up the sutta here, I do not see a Hindi option, unless I missed something?

In gratitude,
Upayadhi

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Yes, we don’t have the Metta Sutta unfortunately.

We have nearly 200 legacy translations, and a few translations made by user @trusolo in Bilara, but they remain unpublished and he seems to have not added any recently.

But I would dearly love to add more, expanding coverage of Indic languages is a long-term priority.

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3

Hi @Upayadhi,
I have about ten of MN suttas translated but not published yet. Getting them proofread is a bit of slow process because it depends on finding someone to volunteer their time and effort.
If you would like to read these newer Hindi translations or better yet, proofread them, please let me know.
It should be easier now because @Snowbird has a tool to create a nice document out of Bilara translations.
Thanks for the reminder though. I have been meaning to push the ones completed to published branch.
:pray:t5:

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And for any visitors from the future, plans are underway for proofreading to be built into Bilara itself which will be much better than this tool.

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Thanks @Snowbird. This tool is a gem! and a huge convenience. I have tried it out and have sent out my translations for proofreading and comments to friends using this tool.
Let us hope the Bilara upgrade project goes smoothly and the necessary donations are received in timely fashion!
:pray:t5:

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Thank you all! I am afraid I don’t really understand what Bilara is (other than a town). I can’t imagine that Sankrityayan would not have translated this famous sutta, just trying to track it down. I do have a version distributed in my community, but the Hindi translation (second page) is not attributed. Perhaps someone here will recognize it? I have attached it.
Sadly, I am not fluent enough in Hindi to be able to proof it.
06 Metta Sutta in Pali Hindi and English.pdf (150.0 KB)

Thank you all – I am so immensely grateful to this helpful and friendly forum.

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As far as I know, there are very limited number of translations by Pandit Sankritayan and all of them are here on SuttaCentral. Mostly they are in the three principal nikayas.

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Sorry, we can get a bit jargony. Bilara is software written by the SuttaCentral team headed by Bhante Sujato, that allows for computer aided translation (C.A.T → bilara).

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Oh I am intrigued. You are not fluent enough in Hindi, but want a Hindi translation (though you already have the one you’ve shared). If you want to understand the meaning and you are fluent in English, why not use the English translation? Not sure what exactly you are looking for in another Hindi translation (and why only in Hindi)?

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I am learning Hindi. People do learn new languages. It’s a thing. Especially when they are planning to spend time in a new country and their sangha speaks that language in question, and little English. I appreciate curiosity. I have found that it’s helpful to ask open-ended questions before making assumptions or offering advice. Especially with strangers on the web :wink: If you go back and read me, you will see that I was not asking for explanations about the meaning. I was asking for resources in Hindi.

I wish you well.

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Yes, apologies, thanks for clarifying. There are somewhat different translations of this discourse narrated on youtube -

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Thank you @srkris –much appreciated! This is very helpful. Audio makes a big difference to learning correct pronunciation.

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The translation of the Karaniya Metta sutta given is good, though difficult as it uses sanskritized Hindi, which is not in common usage. It is sourced from an earlier Hindi translation of the suttas from the '50s/ 60’s … scanned copies of which can be found on the internet archive. (I will try and dig up the link)

A fresher version using common everyday Hindi can be found on pages 37 -35 of this book - it is still a draft, under preparation by Dhammarama (the Delhi chapter of the Ajahn Chah tradition).

chanting book Hindi p 1-107.pdf (2.1 MB)

(I’m a Native Hindi and English speaker) :grin:

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This link will take you to the entire tipitaka in Hindi.

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Indo-Aryan (Sanskritic/Prakritic) Hindi is Hindi.
Adding Farsi (Iranic) loanwords to pure-Hindi makes it Urdu. The more Farsi loanwords used, the closer the language gets to Urdu and the less Hindi it becomes.
Using Indo-Aryan (sanskritic/prakritic) vocabulary instead of Farsi vocabulary may be less comprehensible for people of Pakistani heritage (or Urdu-speakers in India) but they may perhaps use an Urdu translation rather than a Hindi translation.

My suggestion is to avoid Farsi expressions if possible when translating (or reading) Pali texts to Hindi - simply for the reason that both Sanskrit and Pali vocabulary have etymological connections to Hindi (non-Farsi) vocabulary, and meanings thus flow undistorted for the most part.

About comprehensibility of Hindi & Urdu, i found this example sentence on Quora:

To start off, in certain contexts, Hindi and Urdu can already be pretty unintelligible.

For example, consider the English sentence, “The spokesman for New Age party provided an elaborate explanation for their opposition to the proposals.”

In Hindi, this would translate as, “Nav Yug dal ke prastav-virodh ko unke pravakta ne vistaar se samjhaya.”

In Urdu, “Naya Daur tehreek ki tajveez se mukhalifat ko unke tarjuman ne tafseel se samjhaya.”

All the words in the Hindi sentence originate from Sanskrit or Prakrit. Whereas in the Urdu sentence, the words naya, ki, ko, unke, ne, se and samjhaya (i.e basic verbs and propositions) are from Sanskrit, whereas Daur, siyaasi, tehreek, tajveez, mukhalifat, tarjuman, tafseel (more complex ideas) come from Perso-Arabic.

In Sanskrit & Pali, the above Hindi sentence can perhaps be translated as:
Sanskrit : nava-yuga-pakṣasya pravaktā prastāva-virodhasya vistāra-vyākhyānam akarot
Pali: nava-yuga-pakkhassa pavattā pavāda-virodhassa vitthāra-byākaraṇaṃ akari

When you compare these to the Hindi - you can see how etymologically, syntactically & semantically close the words and sentences are - while the Farsi vocabulary in Urdu would make the translation effectively opaque.

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