The world's largest publisher of Hindu religion books- the Gita Press in Gorakhpur - has decided to publish the Mahabharata in Telugu to benefit
non-Hindi and non-Sanskrit speaking people.
"The process (of bringing out Telugu version) is underway and most probably the book will be in the market within 15 days," Production Manager, Gita Press, Lal Mani Tripathi said.
The Gita Press is already publishing 1,800 types of books in 15 languages including Urdu.
"For the last 6-7 years two scholars were translating the Mahabharata in Telugu voluntarily and it was completed a few years back. But due to high work pressure, we were not able to publish it. Now the press has decided to finally publish the Mahabharata in Telugu.
"There will be 7 khands (part) of the book in the form of separate books and 800 copies of first part is complete. Most probably the first part of the book will be in market in 15 days. The people who know Telugu will be able to read it," Tripathi said.
The shlokas in Sanskrit will be in Telugu script and tika (meaning) of the shloka written below the sholka will be in Telugu language. We will publish 2,000 copies of each part of the book so there will be total 14,000 copies initially. Each part will have eight pictures based on the stories described in the book," he said.
The price of each part will be Rs 400 and there will be 1,072 pages in first part, 960 in second, 832 in third, 1,168 in fourth, 800 in fifth, 1,184 in sixth and 1,232 pages in seventh part," he said.
In 1955 Gita Press published Mahabharata in Hindi in six parts and since then 4.75 lakh books have been published.
The Gita Press also publishes the Gita in Urdu and 10,000 copies have been published since 2002 and 4-5 days before the pious month of Ramzan the press published 2,000 more copies of Gita in Urdu with Devnagri script, Tripathi said.
Asked if there was any demand from any quarter for publishing the Mahabharata in Telugu of if some donation was given to the press, he said, "We don't publish books keeping in view their demand. We are conserving our great books and we publish it. We don't take donations and we aim to provide books at lowest price and we balance the losses with revenue generation by selling clothes and Aryuvedic medicines at Gita Vastra Vibhag at the Gita Press building."
50 books are uploaded at Gita press official website and the press is planning to upload more.
"We have uploaded 50 books at present on our website http://gitapress.org in Hindi, English, Gujarati, Telugu, Odia, Bangla, Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, Asamiya and Malyalam and we are planning to upload in Urdu language too. Our magazine online Kalyan has now two lakh subscribers. We started publishing translation of Gita and Ramcharitmanas in Urdu language eight years ago and we have published 10,000 books so far," he said.
Three years ago, the press was locked for some days when employees went on a strike demanding hike in salary and other issues and there were rumours that the press is at the verge of closure.
The manager of the press ruled out any such possibility.
"Yes there were some issues in the press related to staff two years back but it is resolved now and there is no chance of closure of the press, we are rather planning to expand it," he said.
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