Early essays and other prose writings on literature, education, art and other cultural subjects including 'The Harmony of Virtue', 'The National Value of Art'...
Early essays and other prose writings on literature, education, art and other cultural subjects. The volume includes 'The Harmony of Virtue', Bankim Chandra Chatterji, essays on Kalidasa and the Mahabharata, 'The National Value of Art', 'Conversations of the Dead', the 'Chandernagore Manuscript', book reviews, 'Epistles from Abroad', Bankim – Tilak – Dayananda, and Baroda speeches and reports. Most of these pieces were written between 1890 and 1910, a few between 1910 and 1920. (Much of this material was formerly published under the title 'The Harmony of Virtue'.)
Sri Aurobindo wrote these essays and notes on the Mahabharata around 1902. He did not publish any of them during his lifetime.
Notes on the Mahabharata of Krishna Dwypaiana Vyasa prepared with a view to disengage the original epic of Krishna of the island from the enlargements, accretions and additions made by Vyshampaian, Ugrosravas & innumerable other writers.
-Aurobind Ghose
Proposita.
An epic of the Bharatas was written by Krishna of the Island called Vyasa, in 24,000 couplets or something more, less at any rate than 27,000, on the subject of the great civil war of the Bharatas and the establishment of the Dhurmarajya or universal sovereignty in that house.
This epic can be disengaged almost in its entirety from the present poem of nearly 100,000 slokas.
Page 277
Notes on the Mahabharata. Circa 1902. Sri Aurobindo wrote this essay shortly after September 1901, when the “recent article” mentioned in the first paragraph, Velandai Gopala Aiyer's “The Date of the Mahabharata War”, was published in The Indian Review of Madras. The text of Sri Aurobindo's essay consists of: (1) an elaborate title page with “proposita”; (2) an introductory passage headed “Vyasa; some Characteristics”; (3) a longer passage mostly on the same subject beginning “Vyasa is the most masculine of writers”; (4) a long passage beginning “It was hinted in a recent article in the Indian Review”, dealing, among other things, with the political story of the Mahabharata; and (5) a short incomplete passage headed “Mahabharata”, concerned mainly with linguistic matters. Passages (1) to (4) were written in that order in one notebook; passage (5) was written independently in another notebook around the same time. (Note that in passage (5) Sri Aurobindo wrote that the date given by Aiyer in the The Indian Review was “known beyond reasonable doubt”, indicating that this passage, like passages (1) to (4), was written after September 1901.) It is clear from indications in the manuscript that (4) was intended to replace (2) as the opening of the essay. Most of (2) was to be incorporated in (4), which was to be followed by (3). The present text of the essay has been printed in accordance with these guidelines. Since some interesting paragraphs of (2) were not marked for inclusion in the recast essay, all of (2) has been reproduced after the main text (4 and 3). The independent piece (5) has been placed at the end, while the title page (1) remains at the beginning. Sri Aurobindo never prepared this material for publication; this explains its unfinished appearance. There are signs that he looked at it again around 1909, but he never gave it a thorough revision. In 1932 the manuscript was uncovered by his secretary Nolini Kanta Gupta, who wrote to Sri Aurobindo of his intention to copy it out. Sri Aurobindo replied on 23 April 1932: “Is this essay still in existence; if so, you can rescue it and I will see what can be done with it.” Nolini made a transcript, but Sri Aurobindo did not work on it then or later.
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