Archer, William : (1856-1924), a Scottish critic, born in Perth. He became a leader-writer on the Edinburgh Evening News in 1875 & obtained an M.A. at University of Edinburgh in 1876. In 1879, he moved to London where he remained until 1905, working as a dramatic critic for the London Figaro & in 1884 of The World. He introduced Ibsen to the English public by his translation of The Pillars of Society, produced at the Gaiety Theatre in London in 1880. During the First European War (1914-19), he wrote a series of open letters on behalf of Wellington House, arguing Germany’s culpability in starting the conflict. He viewed the Allies (including England) as innocent bystanders, forced into defending the world against German militancy. Justifying equally effectively the same innocent bystanders having been forced into defending the civilised world against a greater peril, he wrote India & the Future [Hutchinson & Co., London, 1917]. In response, Sir John Woodroffe (q.v.) published Is India Civilised – Essays on Indian Culture, Ganesh & Co., Madras, 1918.
... hence only the more important books in English art given below, arranged in the alphabetical order of the authors' names. Acharya, K.D. A Guide to Sri Aurobindo's Philosophy (1968) Archer, William. India and the Future (1917) Argov, Daniel. Moderates and Extremists in the Indian Nationalist Movement: 1883-1920 (1967) Banerjee, Surendranath. A Nation in the Making(l927) ...
... Anandamath, 76, 194, 219, 337 Andal, 497 Andre Morrisset, 726 Andromeda, 128 Anger, Roger, 775,780 Appian, 135 Arabian Nights Entertainments, The, 129, 177 Archer, William, 490,49 1ff Archimedes, 416 Areopagitica, 200 Argov, Daniel, 228fn Arjava (J. A. Chadwick), 514, 575ff, 594, 639 Arnold, Matthew, 164, 177, 615 Arya, 398ff, 402ff, 436 ...
... sanity, measure. Mr. William Archer's well-known book on India, which on account of its very demerits I have taken as the type of the characteristic Western or anti-Indian regard on our culture, was certainly not of this character. It is not only that here we have a wholesale and unsparing condemnation, a picture all shade and no light: that is a recommendation, for Mr. Archer's professed object was... whatever is monstrous and unwholesome, one can only conclude that truth-speaking is not one of the ethical virtues which Mr. William Archer thought it necessary to practise or at least that it need be no part of a rationalist's criticism of religion. But no, after all Mr. Archer does throw a grudging tribute on the altar of truth; for he admits in the same breath that Hinduism talks much of righteousness... and dismiss it authoritatively as a mass of barbarism. It is not then for a well-informed outside view or even an instructive adverse criticism of Indian civilisation that I have turned to Mr. William Archer. In the end it is only those who possess a culture who can judge the intrinsic value of its productions, because they alone can enter entirely into its spirit. To the foreign critic we can only ...
... s book was itself a response to a book by Page 447 William Archer, India and the Future (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1917). A Defence of Indian Culture . In the issue of the Arya in which he concluded "Is India Civilised?" , Sri Aurobindo began another series dealing in more detail with William Archer's criticisms of Indian culture, taken to represent a typical Western... from Sri Aurobindo's work left unfinished in the Arya, — A Defence of Indian Page 448 Culture (1918-1921). This was undertaken as a reply to a considerable work by Mr. William Archer criticising and attacking Indian civilisation and culture in all its domains: at that time this critic's views were typical of a very general attitude of the European mind towards the Indian... mind by this hostile impact and to explain to it the meaning of its own civilisation and past achievements was the main object of Sri Aurobindo. Since then, there has been a radical change and Mr. Archer's strictures and the answer to them might have been omitted and only the positive part of the work retained in this publication but there is a historical interest in the comparison or contrast drawn ...
... felt the call of India and succumbed to the fascination of her infectious spirituality. If there have been denigrators of Indian culture like Abbe Dubois, Macaulay and William Archer, there have been stout apologists too like Sir William Jones, Max Muller and Sir John Woodroffe: negative and positive responses seem to cancel one another out; but this does not absolve Indians from the duty to gauge their... then turning the light of right understanding on India's unique cultural heritage. II William Archer was on the whole a sound dramatic critic, although some of his animadversions on the lesser Elizabethans were too harsh and needed a T.S. Eliot to put the record straight. But when Archer ventured, with more valour than discretion, to indict the culture of a sub-continent like India, he... casually assails the convert Newman's integrity, and the latter in self-defence writes a classic spiritual autobiography, Apologia pro Vita Sua, wrung from the depths; or an egregious critic, William Archer, throws random brickbats at a great country's culture, and the Yogin-Seer Sri Aurobindo turns what begins as a punishment into a richly rewarding and many-faceted study of the glory that is India's ...
... many-faceted study of the glory that is India's heritage from the past." This book was written as a rejoinder to the inveterate charges of an egregious critic, William Archer, who threw random brickbats at a great country's culture. Archer had his political axes to grind - to "prove" India barbarous "in order to destroy or damage her case for self-government." His was not any honest criticism but mere... of the Indian poetic mind. This is one example of Mr. Archer's most telling points." 12 Page 385 (2) Mr. Archer's idea of spirituality: "India, we are told, has no spirituality, - a portentous discovery; on the contrary she has succeeded, it would seem, in killing the germs of all sane and virile spirituality. Mr. Archer evidently puts his own sense, a novel and interesting and... canvas... Whether Mr. Archer's epithets and his accusations against Indian spirituality stand in the comparison, let the judicious determine." 13 Page 386 (3) The positivist's impatient arrogance: "Yoga, which Mr. Archer invites us so pressingly to abandon, is itself nothing but a well-tested means of opening up these greater realms of experience. "Mr. Archer and minds of his ...
... under this rather startling title was published some years ago by Sir John Woodroffe, the well-known scholar and writer on Tantric philosophy, in answer to an extravagant jeu d'esprit by Mr. William Archer. That well-known dramatic critic lemankind and he believed it toaving his safe natural sphere for fields in which his chief claim to speak was a sublime and confident ignorance, assailed the whole... concert; otherwise Europe may become culturally a province of Asia, Asiaticised by the dominant influence of wealthy, enormous, powerful Asiatic peoples in the new world-system. The motive of Mr. Archer's attack is frankly a political Page 60 motive. This is the burden of all his song that the reconstruction of the world must take place in the forms and follow the canons of a rationalistic ...
... seen them? You know, Gangooly wanted me to recast the chapters on Architecture and Sculpture² cut out the strictures on William Archer and give the remainder serially in the Rupam . Disciple : Why cut the strictures out? Sri Aurobindo : Because, he said, Archer need not be answered. Of all the chapters on Indian art I think those on Architecture and Sculpture are the best. While ...
... and violated in France. She is sent hither by God to restore the blood royal. She is very ready to make peace if you will do her right by giving up France and paying for what you have held. And you archers, companions of war, noble and otherwise, who are before the good city of Orleans, begone into your own land in God's name, or expect news from the Maid who will shortly go to see you to your very great... at the enemy; so, without orders from anybody, a few hundred soldiers and citizens had plunged out at Page 57 The armament of the horse at the time of Joan of Arc An archer at the time of A crossbowman at the time of Joan of Arc Joan of Arc Page 58 the Burgundy gate on a sudden impulse and made a charge on one of Lord Talbot's most formidable fortresses—St... then his artillery; then his battle corps a good way in the rear. He was now out of the bush and in a fair open country. He at once posted his artillery, his advance-guard, and five hundred picked archers along some hedges where the French would be obliged to pass, and hoped to hold this position till his battle corps could come up. Sir John Fastolfe urged the battle corps into a gallop. Joan saw her ...
... guna of the seed sound dh . On the other hand the sense of hurting, injuring, killing, giving pain, is sufficiently common. We have dhakk , to destroy, annihilate; dhanus ( dhanu ), a bow or an archer (Nb dharma also occurs in this sense, but this does not prove that the idea of bow is “the thing held”, for dhṛ has other senses, “to drink, to flow”, & its secondary roots mean to hurt, kill,... the fall of Constantinople. But these expectations have remained unfulfilled. European knowledge has followed other paths and the seed of the nineteenth century has been Newton’s apple and not Sir William Jones’ Shakuntala or the first edition of the Vedas. The discovery of Sanscrit has, it is true, had a considerable effect on the so-called Sciences of Comparative Philology, Comparative Mythology, ...
... Ibid., p. 623 63. Ibid., p. 632, 635 64. Ibid., p. 636 65. Ibid., p. 654 Chapter 21: Global Comprehension 1. India and the Future by William Archer (1917). It is about 300 pages in bulk and carries 36 illustrations. 2. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 14, pp. 44, 45 3. Ibid., p. 2 Page 802 ... 7. Ibid., Vol. 17, pp. 399-400 8. Aldous Huxley, Text and Pretext (Phoenix edn.), p. 75 9. Elizabeth Barren Browning 10. Gerald Manley Hopkins 11. William Blake 12. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 18, p. 1 13. Keats' Ode to a Nightingale 14. Sri Aurobindo, Vol. 18, pp. 10,24 15. Ibid., Vol. 17, p. 133 16. Ibid., ...
... as possible; they will receive my first attention. The Defence of Indian Culture is an unfinished book and also I had intended to alter much of it and to omit all but brief references to William Archer's criticisms. That was why its publication has been so long delayed. Even if it is reprinted as it is, considerable alterations will have to be made and there must be some completion and an end ...
... Page 298 literature of the later Vedic period 221 are similar to this one. In the Taittirīya Saṁhitā (6,2,3,1-2), Śiva in the form of Rudra makes his appearance as the divine archer who demolishes the forts with a single arrow. In these early versions, the word tripura does not occur. In most of them, as in the above quotation, even the number "three" is not explicitly mentioned... in a different manner from the Scythians. The latter were light horse- 291.P. 235. 292. Op. cit., p. 188. 293. Ibid., pp. 189-90. Page 323 men, primarily mounted archers, while the Sarmatians were knights in armour with the long sword rather than the bow as their principal weapon. It is possible that the Sarmatians invented the stirrup, for its history cannot be traced... (1970) of The Oxford History of India by the late Vincent A. Smith, edited by Perceval Spear, p. 516. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid. 69. A History of Sanskrit Literature (New impression, William Heinemann Ltd.. London, 1928), p. 151. Page 234 No scholar of India's most ancient scripture breathes a word about silver. On this score the Rigveda goes out of the chronological ...
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