In this third volume of correspondence between Sri Aurobindo and Dilip Kumar Roy, Sri Aurobindo is night after night, imparting knowledge in his delightful way and keeping on encouraging Dilipda.
Sri Aurobindo : corresp.
THEME/S
pardaaashin, living behind the purdah.
2. The four sonnets are: Arpan Bahan
Arpan - Vairagya
Arpan - Nithari
Arpan - Aarhal
E. (Eli) Stanley Jones (1884-1973): A 20th Century Methodist Christian missionary and theologian, remembered for his interreligious lectures in India.
Subash Chandra Bose (23.1.1897). Dilipda's intimate from their college days; a great patriot, highly intelligent; great organizational skill; politician of no mean repute; founder of the political party "Forward Block"; during WWII he formed the Indian National Army (INA) outside India. Popularly known as 'Netaji'.
See Hark His Flute, book of poems by Dilipda, p. 145.
A Parsi lady, Amal Kiran's (K.D. Sethna) first wife.
Pharisee, a member of an ancient Jewish sect; a self- righteous person.
Sadducee, a member of a Jewish party of the time of Christ that denied the resurrection of the dead, the existence of spirits, and the obligation of the traditional oral law.
Frederick Edwin Smith, (1872-1930), 1st Earl of Birkenhead, a British Conservative statesman and lawyer, became Lord Chancellor (1919-22) and Secretary of State for India (1924- 28) and was ennobled as the first Lord Birkenhead.
Chittaranjan Das (1870-1925), later called Deshbandhu (Friend of the Country), eminent lawyer, nationalist and a visionary who defended Sri Aurobindo in the Alipore Bomb Case.
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Peroration of the famous trial in 1908: "My appeal to you is this, that long after the controversy will be hushed in silence, long after this turmoil and agitation will have ceased, long after he is dead and gone, he will be looked upon as the poet of patriotism, as the prophet of nationalism and lover of humanity. Long after he is dead and gone, his words will be echoed and re-echoed not only in India but across distant seas and lands. Therefore I say that the man in his position is not only standing before the bar of this Court, but before the bar of the High Court of History.”
Dr. Mahendranath Sarcar (1882-6.4.1954), eminent professor of Philosophy, and author of Hindu Mysticism, System of Vedantic Thought and Culture, etc.
Dr. Andre was the Director of Pondicherry's Government Medical College and Hospital.
Rajangam was a medical student in Madras when, captivated by the Arya, he went to see Sri Aurobindo in 1921. He returned to Madras, completed his medical studies, and went back to Pondicherry in 1923. It was with the money he offered that one of the four buildings that make up the main Ashram was bought (the Library House, if I remember). His work in the Ashram ? Purchases, running to the Post Office, the Treasury, etc. He passed away in 1984.
There is no exactly corresponding English word for Jshta Devata. We may express it as—a tutelary god, a personal deity.
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909), English poet.
George Duhamel (1844-1966), the eminent French author and critic, told Dilipda that Indian music was "indeed a novel but delightful experience with me. The music of India is without doubt one of the greatest proofs of the superiority of her civilization." Dilipda first met him in Lugana in the early twenties and again in Paris in 1927.
Tota Purl: A wandering monk hailing from Punjab met Sri Ramakrishna towards the end of 1864. Sri Ramakrishna
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practised sadhana of Adwaita Vedanta under his guidance. He was astonished to see that Sri Ramakrishna attained 'Nirvikalpa' Samadhi in three days only while he could not get it in forty years of sadhana.
After Herbert Henry Asquith (1852-1928), first Earl of Oxford and Asquith. British Liberal Statesman and Prime Minister (1908-1916).
Syamaprasad Mukherjee (6.7.1901-23.6.1953), was an illustrious son of an illustrious father. Sir Ashutosh (29.6.1864- 25.5.1924) was a great achiever. Among .many other things—a lawyer who became a High Court Judge, a mathematician of the first water, he published twenty valuable papers on maths in ten years, he was a double M.A. and so on—he was Calcutta University's Vice-Chancellor for four consecutive terms (1906-1914), and innovatively reorganized the University. But specifically he fought for the autonomy of the University. Later, when the British offered him again the post of Vice-chancellor, he contemptuously rejected to work under the conditionalities imposed by the Government. For that act an admiring populace called him the "Bengal Tiger".
Syamaprasad was no mean achiever either. He brilliantly completed his law studies. In 1934 he became the Vice- chancellor of Calcutta University, and introduced new subjects. He left a mark as an educationist. But his imprint as a politician is deeper. He was a minister when Fazlul Huq formed his second ministry in Bengal in 1941. Became a Cabinet minister in Nehru Government in 1947 when India gained a fractured independence. He was also a member from Bengal of the Constituent Assembly. Following his bitter opposition to Nehru's Pakistan appeasement policy and the government turning a blind eye to the massacre of Hindus there, he resigned. Jawaharlal was afraid of this rival. He protested the Indian Government's Kashmir policy, was imprisoned there and died in prison in 1953 under suspicious circumstances.
At any rate it was him that Mother invited. It was under the
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Presidentship of Sri Syamaprasad Mukherjee that an all- India Convention was held on 24th and 25th April 1951 for the establishment of Sri Aurobindo International University Centre, Pondicherry.
Jaydev: an eminent poet contemporary of Lakshmana Sena, king of Bengal (c. 1180-1202 A.D.). He wrote the famous lyric Gita Govindam. Nishikanta's poem Rajhansa was in Jaydev's metre. Rabindranath Tagore also highly praised this song.
Sahana and a few other ladies used to prepare a dish for Mother and Sri Aurobindo once a week. What remained was returned and the ladies shared the offered food with a few as Guru's blessings.
Musical melody. There are thirty-six Raga-Raginis in Indian musical system.
Kirtan: a rhythmic way of reciting mantras and devotional songs in chorus popularised by the Bhakti movements in India. A distinctive style in Bengal and Manipur.
After his return from Europe in 1922, "1 toured India, hunting for music in the heart of din, learning new styles of our classical music..." to quote Dilipda himself.
At the request of the then Vice-Chancellor of Calcutta University, Dilipda wrote three text books—'Sangitik', 'Chhandasiki' and 'Geetashri'. (Notation books explaining in detail about Classical and Modern music.) Here he is writing about Geetashri—one of the finest notation books written in Bengali.
tal = rhythm, measure.
Atulprasad Sen (1871-1934). Bengali poet, lyricist and singer. Not influenced by Tagore, he evolved a distinct style of his own, and earned a special place in the world of Bengali songs—much helped by Dilip himself who brought his songs to the public. Atulprasad's experiments with lyrics, tune, measure enriched Bengali songs. He was a distant cousin of Sahana's.
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Dwijendralal Roy (19.7.1863-17.5.1913), a dramatist, com- poser, singer and nationalist.
We think some exaggeration has crept in here.
John Henry Newman (1801-90). Created a Cardinal in 1879. English theologian and author; as an Anglican clergyman he was one of the founders of the Oxford or Tractarian movement.
Sri Kumadesh Sen, nickname Badan, was a singer. He was very fond of Dilipda's music.
Chalantikā: a Bengali dictionary compiled in 1936 by Rajsekhar Bose; aka Parasuram (16.3.1880-27.4.1950).
Kanailal Ganguly: Came to Sri Aurobindo and Mother in 1923 at the age of 22. Mother, seeing his photograph, seems to have remarked, "A highly psychical personality". He was given the work of a tailor in the Ashram.
Henri Frederic Amiel (27.9.1821-11.5.1881), Swiss critic and poet.
Shailen, Anilbaran's brother.
Lofty mountain of Greece, north of Delphi; associated in classical Greece with worship of Apollo and the Muses.
Mundaka Upanishad, Chap. Ill, Section 1, 1.
A new type of metre, ayugma (open syllable), yugma (closed syllable).
Cottar or Cotter : a farm-labourer or tenant occupying a cottage in return for labour as required.
Botticelli Sandro, real name Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi (1447-1510), Florentine painter of the Renaissance
To the book. The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, edited by Aldous Huxley.
Bilwamangal: The Sanskrit poet and author of Krishna Karnamrita. He is supposed to have been passionately attracted to Chintamani, a woman of ill repute but who nourished a deep devotion to Lord Krishna. She shows Bilwamangal the
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path of devotion and turns him into a saint. This story has been given a dramatic turn in plays of the same name by Girish Chandra Ghosh (1844-1914) etc.
The passages within brackets have been omitted from the version published in the Centenary Edition (1972).
Purnananda and Yogananda were both sannyasins from Bengal who settled in the Ashram in 1938 and 1932 res- pectively. Yogananda's former guru, Bharat Brahmachari, was a great Yogi known to Mother and Sri Aurobindo.
Dilip's English translation of this song is published in Hark! His Flute (p. 93), under the title "The Agressor":
"Onward, onward, all to the front
With vibrant songs of victory...."
This can be sung in the same tune as Bengali.
Edmund Spencer (1552-1599): English poet. The Faerie Queene is his major contribution to English Poetry. It is a long dense allegory in the epic form of Christian virtues, tied into England's mythology of King Arthur.
Anacreon (563-478 BCE): Greek poet, noted for his lyrics on love and wine. Only fragments of his poetry exist.
O.C. Ganguly (Ordhendra Kumar (1.8.1881-9.2.1974): General Secretary of Indian Society of Oriental Art. Rupam edited by O. C. Ganguly was reviewed by Sri Aurobindo in The Arya. [See note Volume 2]
Kallol: literally, 'billow', here it might have been used to indicate resonance.
Roerich Nicholas (9.10.1874-13.12.1947), the Russian artist, settled in India. He ceaselessly pursued refinement and beauty.
It was to "Kalyaniya Dilipkumar Roy" that Rabindranath dedicated his book Chhanda. The quote is from the very first letter to J.D. Anderson, I. C. S., Professor of Bengali at King's College, Cambridge, where they met on 14 July 1912. Anderson passed away on 24 October 1920, at the age of 67.
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Their correspondence—in Bengali and English—throws much light on the nature of Bengali prosody. Indeed, this "foreigner" was a lover of Bengali language. He loved French too. "Bengali rythmn is a different kind of rythmn from that of all other languages, so far as I know, except French." "... my claim on behalf of French and Bengali verse is that— verse in these languages is the greatest and finest and most supple invention in the way of metre yet accomplished by man!"
Yatra—an open air village opera, or theatre without any stage. Katbakata—religious discourses (professional practice of narrating scriptural and mythological stories).
Professor Parabodh Chandra Sen (1897-1986): An eminent Prosodist of Bengal. The first person to develop a systematic metrical theory of Bengali and one of the luminaries of the University that Tagore conceptualized in Santiniketan.
Meghnad Badh: by Michael Madhusudan Dutt (1824-1873). It is an epic poem in Bengali, taken from the Ramayana, on how Ravana's son Meghanad was killed.
Here are the lines from Robert Browning's (1812-1889) How
They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix.
"\ turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,
Then shortened each stirrup and set the pique right,
Rebuckled the check-strap, chained slacker the bit,
Nor galloped less steadily Roland a whit."
It is indeed a fiery song. And when sung by the powerful voice of Dilipda... it becomes Fire itself, (editor's note)
I believe that when there was no electricity Sri Aurobindo just had a wick-lamp as "substitute'.
Premendra Mitra (1904-1988), born in Banaras of Bengali origin. A poet of eminence in post-era Tagore, a journalist and writer of children's' stories. He received all the major regional and national literary awards as well as awards from Russia and the United States.
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Dewas, a small kingdom in Madhya Pradesh.
Prasanta and Rene were Dara's younger brothers. They were from an aristocratic family from Hyderabad. Prasanta, meaning pacific, was a devout Muslim and wanted to impose his will on his brothers and beautiful sisters, Chinmayi and Sudhira.
This is a line from AE's poem "Krisna".
sanskrita totaka: a poetical metre in Sanskrit.
Tukaram: famous poet and saint of Maharashtra. He was a senior contemporary of Shivaji I on whom his poems and teaching had a great influence.
Mirabai (1498-1547) was the daughter of Raja Ratan Singh, married to Bhoj Raj Rana, ruler of Mewar. She became a mendicant in the name of Lord Krishna and went to Vrind- avan to her Guru. She left her body at Dwarka. She composed songs which have become very popular and are sung every- where in India.
Tulsidas (1532-1623): a Hindi poet and saint who lived in Benares. He wrote the famous Ramacharitamanasa which is a Hindi version of the Ramayana. Surdas (1478-1581): A medieval poet and singer who was born blind and whose descriptions of the life of the child Krishna are the highlights of his collection of poetry called the Sursagar.
Alvars: South Indian saints who in the 7th to 10th century wandered from temple to temple singing ecstatic hymns in adoration of Vishnu. The songs of the Alvars rank among the world's greatest devotional literature. Shaiva poets composed hymns to Shiva.
Charu Chandra Dutt (16.6.1876 - 22.1.1952) served as judge at several places in Western India. He was a revolutionary and met Sri Aurobindo in 1904 in Baroda and was then in contact with him until 1910.In 1940, Charu Dutt met again Sri Aurobindo in Pondicherry and then he and his wife, Lilabati, settled in the Ashram where they spent the last years of their life.
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Wife of Tulsi, a Gujarati sadhak. First death in the Ashram had shaken a lot of sadhaks. For further details the reader may see Nirodbaran's "Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo".
Khagendranath Mitra, Raibahadur (1880-1961). Author. Professor and Head of the department of Bengali, Calcutta University, which he represented at the International Linguistic Congress held in Norway (1936). He was an eminent exponent of kirtan music.
Comments on the poem: Astik. (Madhu Murali, 1st ed. p. 155)
For the uninitiated reader: Nilkantha is another name of Shiva; because when he drank the world-anihilating poison his throat (kantha) became blue.
[We suppose the reference is to the letters of 10 and 11 November 1936. We quote the relevant parts (Correspondence with Sri Aurobindo, vol. 2, pp. 744 and 745):]
I have been furiously thinking what is the use of blessed
literature after all, if the nature remains just the same ?
Good heavens! Where did you get this idea that literature can transform people ? Literary people are often the most impossible on the face of the earth.
Is literature ever going to transform the nature ?
I don't suppose so. Never did it yet.
I didn't mean that literature can transform people. We may have progressed in literature, but the outer human nature remains almost the same.
Outer human nature can only change either by an intense psychic development or a strong and all-pervading influence from above. It is the inner being that has to change first—a change which is not always visible outside. That has nothing to do with the development of the faculties which is another side of the personality.
Sir Akbar's (the Dewan of the Nizam of Hyderabad) family.
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Ali was the son, Alys was the daughter-in-law. Ali-Alys' children, Bilkis and Adil came later.
Jatindra Prasad Bhattacharya (20.5.1890-14.3.1975). Poet who contributed regularly to top Bengali magazines such as Bharatbarsha, Prabasi, Manasi, Bharati, etc.
"It knows that this active state of love should be constant and impersonal, that is to say, altogether independent of circumstances and persons, since it cannot and should not be concentrated on any of them in particular." (Mother's Prayers and Meditations, 21 December 1916.)
"... (for) love is sufficient unto itself and has no need of any reciprocity"...
punarmusika: a Sanskrit idiom which literally means, "going back to the state of being a mouse", signifying a lapse into one's original state. The expression is derived from a story in the Panchatantra about a mouse that sought a boon from a Rishi to be able to take any form as desired to overcome the limitations of its puny existence but runs into life- threatening situations in every other higher form of life it assumes. Finally it decides to return to its original form.
The Lord is stationed in the heart of all existences, 0 Arjuna, and turns them all round and round mounted on a machine by his Maya. [Gita, 18.61 / Essays on the Gita p. 522, Cent. Ed.].
Title of a poem: "Conversations between S/iuk and Sārī (a parrot couple).
The three sisters were overwhelmed, excited, talkative, etc., in great joy while eating the puffed rice (murij + mustard oil.
Jean Herbert (1897-1980)—a Swiss national working in the League of Nations. He was translating Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine into French with a team of translators.
My heart is far from overflowing compassion for people who approach the Divine only when they are sick.
Katha Upanishad, 1.3.14.
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Marcus Porcius Cato (234-149 BCE): Roman statesman surnamed "The Censor". His speeches were principally directed against the young free-thinking and loose-principled nobles of the day. He often ended his speeches thus: 'Carthage must be destroyed', before the 3rd Punic War in which Carthage was actually destroyed.
H.W. Nevinson (1856-1941). War correspondent and novelist—for further details see Mother's Chronicles, Book V, Mirra Meets the Revolutionary.
Francois Charles Baron (1900). Administrator of Chandernagore. Later after WWII, he came as the Governor of French India. In his book Le chemin de bonheur Baron speaks of his quest.
Gabriel Monod-Herzen (1899), Doctores-Science.
Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-67), French lyric poet, author of Les fleurs du mal.
Paul Valery (1871-1945).
Stephane Mallarme (1842-98), French symbolist poet; author of Uapres-midi d'un faune.
Paul Verlaine (1844-96), French lyric poet belonging to the Symbolist movement.
Arthur Rimbaud (1854-91), French symbolist poet.
Dadaists : Post-World War I cultural movement in visual arts and literature.
Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936), English classical scholar and lyric poet; author of A Shropshire Lad, etc.
Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande (1860-1936): Most important Hindustani musicologist and composer of the 20th Century. Born into a cultured Maharastrian family in Balukeshwar, Bombay, Bhatkhande acquired his sweet voice and initial training from his mother. He learnt the flute, sitar and vocal music from some very eminent gurus. Along with his academic studies, he devoted nearly 15 years to the study of all the available ancient music-treatises in Sanskrit, Telugu,
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Bengali, Gujarati, Urdu, German, Greek and English with the help of scholars and interpreters. He also became proficient in Sanskrit.
Esculap Dayashankar: Dr. Dayashankar came from a place near Pattan in Gujarat. He was a qualified Ayurvedic doctor, at one time in charge of the Ashram Dispensary.
Rishabhchand (3.12.1900-25.4.1970) was born in West Bengal and had a brilliant academic career in Berhampur and at Presidency College, Calcutta. He then turned to the non-co- operation movement and founded the renowned Indian SilkHouse in Calcutta in 1926. He came in contact with Sri Aurobindo and settled in Pondicherry in 1931. He was in charge of Furniture Service of the Ashram. He wrote many books on Sri Aurobindo's and Mother's work, notable among them Sri Aurobindo—His Life Unique
Khirod, in charge of Building Service. He was an ex- Headmaster.
Suvrata: Mme Yvonne Gæbelé, a French lady from Pondicherry who used to visit the Ashram and give French lessons. She was the Mayor's wife. She was also the Director of Archaeological Dept. of Pondy for several terms.
Madame Lafargue: a French lady who came to the Ashram and stayed for more or less long periods from 1937 to 1941. She taught French and the violin. Mother called her Suryakumari.
Amal Kiran's first wife
Charu Battacharya, aka Bengal, aka Motakaka. Later they became residents of the Ashram
R.R. Diwarkar: Author of Mahayogi Sri Aurobindo. Minister of Information and Broadcasting under Nehru (1948-52) and then Governor of Bihar (1952-57).
Maurice Magre (1877-1941): A French poet and intellectual came to the Ashram in 1933. His impressions are recorded in his book A la poursuite de la sagesse [In Pursuit of Wisdom].
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It was in answer to his question that Sri Aurobindo wrote The Riddle of This World.
Vishnu Prasad Doctor. A Gujarati disciple, Puraniji's student and secretary. He was a good gymnast and later taught malkhamb to young boys.
Rambai: A Marwari lady disciple.
Luchi: a kind of small and thin saucer-shaped bread fried in ghee.
Hasi or Uma Bose (22.1.1921-22.1.1942): A 'lovely singer', sang like a nightingale.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-83). Celebrated German composer of operas: "The Ring of the Nibelungen', Tristan and Isolde7, 'Parsifal', etc.
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco (1813-1901), Italian composer of operas and church music.
AK Fazlul Huq. (1873-1962), statesman, public leader and holder of many high political posts including Chief Minister of undivided Bengal (1937-43).
The Director of State Education.
END OF VOLUME THREE
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