... civilisations, and their eventual reciprocality. The Western Way – Greece The difference between East and West is essentially a difference of culture. Seen in this way, the “West” means the various aspects and developments of the European culture, generally thought to have originated in the city-states of ancient Greece. Although this view is still the common one, set forth in all philosophical... centuries the Western outlook on the other civilisations of the world. The revelation of the true roots of ancient Greece diminishes in no way its special distinction; on the contrary, it makes it more profoundly understandable and thereby enriches it. Few have been greater admirers of Greece than Sri Aurobindo, who was intimately familiar with its culture and civilisation, read and wrote classical Greek... humanism and individualism for which the culture of ancient Greece is so highly praised and which would run as a golden thread through the subsequent stages of the West originated with the sophists. It should however be stressed that all this concerns the Western civilisation. The irreversible acquisition of the rational mind by humanity in Greece was of primary consequence for the West and for everything ...
... ess, grave of earth's passions, Healer of wounds and the past. In a comity equal, Hellenic, Asia join with Greece, one world from the frozen rivers Trod by the hooves of the Scythian to farthest undulant Ganges. Tyndarid Helen resign, the desirable cause of your danger, Back to Greece that is empty long of her smile and her movements. Broider with riches her coming, pomp of her slaves and the... unmounted, leaving Greece unavenged, the Aegean a lake and Europe a province. Choosing from Hellas exile, from Peleus and Deidamia, Choosing the field for my chamber of sleep and the battle for hearthside Page 350 I shall go warring on till Asia enslaved to my footsteps Feels the tread of the God in my sandal pressed on her bosom. Rest shall I then when the borders of Greece are fringed with... still in her Sparta Tending an Argive loom, not the glorious prize of the Trojans, Greece would have banded her nations though Paris had drunk not Eurotas. Coast against coast I set not, nor Ilion opposite Argos. Phryx accuse who upreared Troy's domes by the azure Aegean, Curse Poseidon who fringed with Greece the blue of his waters: Then was this war first decreed and then Agamemnon was fashioned; ...
... popular form of competition in Greece, for the very name palaistra was taken from it, and many a story was told of its champions. Boxing was an ancient game, almost visibly handed down from Minoan Crete and Mycenaean Greece. The boxers practiced with punching balls hung on a level with the head and filled with fig seeds, meal, or sand. In the classic age of Greece (i.e., the fifth and fourth ... that came at stated seasons — were so important, when one was held, a truce of God was proclaimed so that all Greece might come in safety without fear. There "glorious-limbed youth" — the phrase is Pindar's, the athlete's poet — strove for an honour so coveted as hardly anything else in Greece. An Olympic victor — triumphing generals would give place to him. His crown of wild olives was set beside the... spirits and time, too, for fun. The witness Page 287 of the games is conclusive. And when Greece died and her reading of the great enigma was buried with her statues, play, too, died out of the world. The brutal, bloody Roman games had nothing to do with the spirit of play.... Play died when Greece died and many and many a century passed before it was resurrected. Such was the veneration ...
... Ancient Greece and Alexander: A brief outline A civilisation appears to have emerged on mainland Greece about 1600 B.C. This came to be known as the Mycenaean civilisation. Feudal1 warrior leaders ruled their districts from hilltop fortresses, the principal fort being Mycenae itself. Minoan Crete exercised a strong influence in these early times; but, as Mycenaean Greece gradually acquired... strife and wars in Asia Minor, Mycenae was overrun by invaders from central Asia toward the end of the 12th century B.C. After the Mycenaean period, Greece was invaded by IndoEuropean tribes from the north. The distribution of peoples in Greece before the city states made for little unity, but they all took part in the Olympic Games. 2 Greek colonies were established along much of the perimeter... sacrifices, and festivities. Page 90 The city-states of Greece continued to fight between themselves and particularly against Sparta whose rule was very harsh. All the city states were much weakened by these constant battles and, despite a last effort to unite against the invader from Macedonia, Philip, they lost and thus Greece became at last unified under Macedonian rule, just before the birth ...
... Ancient Greece and Alexander: A brief outline A civilisation appears to have emerged on mainland Greece about 1600 BC. This came to be known as the Mycenaean civilisation. Feudal warrior leaders ruled their districts from hilltop fortresses, the principal fort being Mycenae itself. Minoan Crete exercised a strong influence in these early times; but, as Mycenaean Greece gradually acquired... Alexander was born in 356 BC. His father, King Philip of Macedonia, had united Greece and had intended to free the Asiatic Greeks from Persian control. He also coveted the riches of the Persian Empire to pay for his professional army. At Philip's death, Alexander first quelled rebellions in Greece and then crossed the Dardenelles 1 to start, at the age of twenty years, his 2800 mile journey... strife and wars in Asia Minor, Mycenae was overrun by invaders from central Asia toward the end of the 12th century BC. After the Mycenaean period, Greece was invaded by Indo-European tribes from the north. The distribution of peoples in Greece before the city states made for little Page 115 unity, but they all took part in the Olympic Games. Greek colonies were ...
... different from what she was in her Vedic epoch or even in her Harappa and Mohenjo-daro Page 238 days, in the sense that modern Egypt is not the Egypt of the Pharaohs, nor the Greece of Venizelos the Greece of Pericles. It is true there were periods of decline and almost total disintegration in India, but she survived and revived. And the revival did not mean a negation of her past and... power was of outstanding importance, the economic factor being necessarily an indispensable adjunct. On the other hand, in Egypt, in Greece and in all the Eastern countries, the main stream of life ran in another channel; it was cultural and ideative. What remains of Greece or even of Egypt, what the Eastern countries carry still here and there in a living manner is that element – that which is immortal... Roman rule which again saw its end at the hand of the Barbarians. The history of Greece offers a typical picture of the destiny of these peoples. Her life-line is sundered completely at three different epochs giving us not one but three different personalities or peoples: at the outset there was the original classical Greece, then the first and milder although sufficiently serious break came with the Roman ...
... history of the world." After the defeat of the Persians 5 in 479 B.C., Athens dominated this period because she had won the allegiance of the other city-states by her leadership in saving Greece during the Persian invasions, which had threatened to destroy their civilization. To protect themselves against future Persian invasions, they formed the Delian Confederacy under Athenian leadership... with the highest genius. Cultural events such as public performances of the great plays of Aeschylus, 15 Sophocles 16 and Euripides 17 formed part of the developing Page 14 GREECE 362 BC Page 15 urban lifestyle. All citizens, rich or poor, could enjoy these events together in an atmosphere of critical appreciation. The political and social organization of the... of recitation of the poems of Homer. It is said that not only did Socrates exist at the same time as Parmenides, 20 Protagoras, 21 Gorgias, Hippias, 27 Prodicus, 23 and Thracymachus 24 in Greece but that there are accounts by Plato of his meetings with them. He is said to have enjoyed the company of many distinguished men of his times; Archelaus, 25 a pupil of Anaxagoras, who was for sometime ...
... that is new and not too common, a happy guest come from else-where. Ancient Greece, the fountainhead of European civilisation —of the world culture reigning today, one can almost say— Page 95 found itself epitomised in the Periclean Age. The light— grace, harmony, sweet reasonableness—that was Greece, reached its highest and largest, its most characteristic growth in that period... efflorescence. Not to speak of the great names associated with the age, even the common people—more than what was normally so characteristic of Greece—felt the tide that was moving high and shared in that elevated sweep of life, of thought and creative activity. Greece withdrew. The stage was made clear for Rome. Julius Caesar carried the Roman genius to its sublimest summit: hut it remained for his great... Europe once again and cast a glance at its origins, we find at the source the Greece-Roman culture. It was pre-eminently a culture based upon the powers of mind and reason: it included a strong and balanced body (both body natural and body politic) under the aegis of mens sana (a sound mind). The light that was Greece was at its zenith / a power of the higher mind and intelligence, intuitively dynamic ...
... favourite with our historians: Amitrachates wrote to Antiochus I, asking him to purchase and send him not only sweet wine and dried figs but a sophist, only to be reminded that it was not lawful in Greece to sell a sophist! Drawing upon Megasthenes or some of Alexander's generals, the Classical writers Diodorus, Strabo, Pliny, Curtius, Arrian and Aelian have left us histories chockful of facts and fables... period? The Greeks and Buddhism There is also the fact that to the whole Greek world Buddhism in any expressible form was an unknown quantity until we reach the 2nd century A.D. "Greece," says R.C. Majumdar, 1 "knew nothing of Buddhism previous to the rise of Alexandria in the Christian era. Buddha is first mentioned by Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 150-218)." Can we imagine such ignorance... Gandhāra will allow "Yāvānānī" to signify "Greek script"? Unfortunately, a dilemma blocks our path. There was no opportunity for Gandhāra to know this script until Cyrus first came into contact with Greece on defeating Croesus of Lydia in 547 B.C. and conquering that country, a portion of Ionia. If Gandhāra was conquered after that date, then as long as it had enjoyed its independence it had come into ...
... and not too common, a happy guest come from elsewhere. Ancient Greece, the fountainhead of European civilisation – of the world culture reigning today, one can almost say – Page 205 found itself epitomised in the Periclean Age. The light – grace, harmony, sweet reasonableness – that was Greece, reached its highest and largest, its most characteristic growth in that period... nce. Not to speak of the great names associated with the age, even the common people – more than what was normally so characteristic of Greece – felt the tide that was moving high and shared in that elevated sweep of life, of thought and creative activity. Greece withdrew. The stage was made clear for Rome. Julius Caesar carried the Roman genius to its sublimest summit: but it remained for his great... great nephew to consolidate and give expression to that genius in its most characteristic manner and lent his name to a characteristic high-water mark of human civilisation. Greece and Rome may be taken to represent two types of culture. And accordingly we can distinguish two types of elevation or crest-formation of human consciousness – one of light, the other of power. In certain movements ...
... Agamemnon who was the ruler of Mycenae. The two brothers decided to raise all the kings and heroes of Greece in a campaign. It was felt that the question was that of honour and that the ravisher of Helen must be punished. It was not easy to rouse the kings and heroes of the various domains of Greece, and it took ten whole years to gather the Greek army. Among those who joined were Odysseus, king... that great siege and all that followed it and how the amazing Greek civilization arose. The wonder that was Greece has been expressed by Bertrand Russell in these words: "in all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of the civilization in Greece. Much of what makes civilization had already existed for thousands of years in Egypt and in Mesopotamia, and... surprise is that even when the infrarational reigned over the earth, an extraordinary Age of Intuition flourished through the Veda and Upanishad in India and the Age of Reason flourished and culminated in Greece, particularly in Periclean Athens. How and why such amazing things should happen can perhaps be explained only if we undertake a study from the point of view of the psychological development of the ...
... Latin hexameter. English poets, however, have been haunted by the cadences of the ancient world and have often tried to transfer into their language the hexameter itself — the "heroic" blank verse of Greece and Rome. The mould which Shakespeare and Milton adopted and perfected is unlikely ever to fall into desuetude. It had its birth in the predominantly iambic nature of the English tongue and its span... his coursers. Half yet awake in light's turrets started the scouts of the morning. Hearing the jar of the wheels and the throb of the hooves' exultation, Hooves of the horses of Greece as they galloped to Phrygian Troya. Proudly they trampled through Xanthus thwarting the foam of his anger, Whinnying high as in scorn crossed Simois' tangled currents, Page... movement of the apocalypse gives us the occult reason why the siege of Troy lasted all those ten long years. Long for the human participants, not for "heaven's strengths" dividing themselves between Greece and Troy. No issue seemed forthcoming for the human fighters, since the divine forces were working out their own play: All went backwards and forwards tossed in the swing of the death-game ...
... detail. But I have said enough about it for those who know.... In the old days, I mean in the artistic ages, as for instance in Greece or even during the Italian renaissance (but much more in Greece and Egypt), buildings were made for public utility. Mostly too, in Greece and Egypt, a kind of sanctuary was built to house their Page 338 gods. Well, what they tried to do was something total... the nations of the West which conquered all sorts of countries in the world, have undergone a very strong influence of the conquered countries. In the old days, when Rome conquered Greece it came under the influence of Greece much more than if it had not conquered it. And the Americans—all that they make now is full of Japanese things, and perhaps they are not even aware of it. But since they occupied... 28 October 1953 "True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life. You see something of this intimate wholeness in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt; for there pictures and statues and all objects of art were made and arranged as part of the architectural plan of a building, each detail a portion of the whole. It is like that ...
... purification by punishment in the underworld belong to Orphism, a primitive but in some ways remarkably enlightened religion which perhaps came to Greece from Thrace and certainly inspired the "mystery cults" which were practised in various parts of Greece, especially at Eleusis in Attica. The Great King: The king of Persia, regarded as a type of worldly prosperity. Minos,... a teacher. A number of these conversations were recorded by Plato who, after 1. Plato, The Seventh Letter, 324 e . 2. Plato, Complete Works. Xenophon, Memorabilia 3. In ancient Greece, the "Gymnasion" was a public school for physical education for the adult male population. The state-owned "gymnasions" were basically rectangular sportsgrounds surrounded by colonnades containing... Assembly: The Council (of 500 members) was the supreme administrative authority;the Assembly was open to all adult male citizens. sun and moon are gods: The cult of the sun was prevalent in Greece, though it tended to be merged in the worship of Apollo. The moon (associated with Artemis and Hecate) was of especial importance in magic. The object of the question is to lead up to the doctrines ...
... n, but nevertheless intellectual in its method and aim. This is the first period of the Darshanas in India, in Greece of the early intellectual thinkers. Afterwards came the full tide of philosophic rationalism, Buddha or the Buddhists and the logical philosophers in India, in Greece the Sophists and Socrates with all their splendid progeny; with them the intellectual method did not indeed begin... as we should say in India, a Yoga, — by which they hoped to realise their ideal." 18 Yes, an India-Greece rapprochement on the spiritual plane cannot help being seen. But simply because Sri Aurobindo is Indian by birth he does not attribute to India all that bears the stamp of spirituality in Greece. He has himself mentioned some proofs of the independent growth: the Apollonian mystics, Pythagoras... may be considered Sri Aurobindo's greatest work in the context of his interchange with Greece the metaphysician, just as a modern revival of the Homeric hexameter with its Olympian pace naturalised in a new language — English — may be Page 17 counted his greatest accomplishment vis-a-vis Greece the bard. * * * True, Sri Aurobindo has not devoted a special essay to either ...
... Achilles slaying the Amazon queen Penthesilea Glossary of proper names and Greek and Latin terms & Achaians or Achaeans: the name by which the first Indo-European occupants of Greece, prior to the Dorian invasion, were collectively known; perhaps originally a specific tribe. It is the common Homeric term for the Greeks. Achilles: son of Peleus (king of Phithia and a grandson... be buried. Agamemnon: eldest son of Atreus and brother of Menelas King of Mycenae and Argos. Agamemnon was the commander in chief of the Greek forces against Troy. On his return to Greece, he was murdered by his wife Clymnestra and her paramour Aegisthus; his death was avenged by his children. Agamemnon's funeral mask Ajax: son of Telamon, he was also... birthplace of Apollo and Artemis (twin children of Zeus from Leto or Latona) and was the seat of an oracle of Apollo. Delphi: A rugged spot on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in central Greece, the site of the most important temple of Apollo, where the Pythia delivered the inspired messages of the god. Demeter: Daughter of Cronos and Rhea, sister of Zeus, Demeter was an ancient ...
... secret of the Veda”, Our second text is an excerpt from the Kena Upanishad. If Veda and Upanishads are the roots of Indian civilization and the supreme authority in Hindu religion, ancient Greece gave soil for the rich crop of religious imagination that has shaped the mind of the Western world. Our third text thus is taken out of the Iliad, one of the two famous epics written by Greece's... monograph, we have included an excerpt from Sri Aurobindo's long poem Ilion, inspired by the Iliad and in which the Olympian gods are presented in all their depth and beauty. Page 13 Greece and India both have produced a luxuriant mythology and an abundant pantheon.* If the Greek gods belong now to the past, having been dethroned by Christianity, and are more to us figures of art and... great gods of the Vedas, as well as the Olympians belonged to a much higher order. They were great powers, supporting universal laws and functions, and were not bound by life and matter. In Greece, already at the time of Homer, the gods had developed deep moral and psychological functions. Zeus, very similar in some aspects to the Vedic god Indra, Lord of the sky and Illumined Intelligence ...
... the land of the Achaeans, i.e. Greece. Two distinct territories one in southeast Thessaly and the other in the northern Peloponneus. Achaeans: They were the Greeks of the Heroic Age, who had become, by the time of the siege of Troy, the most powerful of the Greek tribes. They were probably originally central Europeans who came into Greece around 2000 BC and gradually... Achelous: river in Phyrigia (Asia Minor), east of Troy. Aegean: sea between Greece and Asia Minor. Agamemnon: eldest son of Atreus and brother of Menelaus, King of Mycenae and Argos, Agamemnon was the commander in chief of the Greek forces against Troy. On his return to Greece, he was murdered by his wife Clytemnestra and her paramour Aegisthus; his death was avenged by... alternative name for Alcimedon, a Myrmidon commander. Andromache: wife of Trojan Prince Hector. Antiphonus: Trojan, son of Priam. Argos: another name for mainland Greece. Automedon: Charioteer of Achilles; he drove the immortal horses Balius and Xanthus given Peleus by Poseidon. Barrow: a large sepulchral mound; a tumulus. Bird of omen: ...
... supply (a written work, such as an ancient text) with critical or explanatory notes. Page 23 and named it Alexandroupolis. He also took part in the battle against the combined armies of Greece at Chaeronea, and is said to have been the first to break the line of the Theban Sacred Band. Because of these achievements Philip, as was natural, became extravagantly fond of his son, so much that... and offered an amnesty 3 to all the rest if they would come over to his side. The Thebans countered by demanding the surrender of Philotas and Antipater and appealing to all who wished to liberate Greece to range themselves on their side, and at this Alexander ordered his troops to prepare for battle. The Thebans, although greatly outnumbered, fought with a superhuman courage and spirit, but when... permitting the sack 6 of Thebes was to frighten the rest of the Greeks into submission by making a terrible example. (...) ________ 1 thebes was one of the chief cities and powers of ancient Greece. 2 Athens is considered the birthplace of Western civilization to which it bequeaths the foundations of democracy; Athens has exerted a tremendous fascination on the world of antiquity. Many of ...
... ravaging her sweet France like a pest and which drove her in the end to a more than classical tragic end: Seferis too in the same manner wails "Great pain had fallen on Greece." Great pain, ruin everywhere...Greece is but a sign, a symbol of the whole earth, the whole humanity. All around ancient—sempiternal—ruins... "Walls, streets and houses stood out Fossilised muscles... tottering those breasts. Bursting like pomegranates with murder. (Contd. on P. 50) Page 49 This is terror, in excelsis. As for pity—his lines on Greece: Great pain had fallen on Greece So many bodies thrown To jaws of the sea, to jaws of the earth, So many souls Given up to millstones to be crushed like com. And the muddy... George Eliot, into modern Greek; was in diplomatic service, now retired and settled in Athens. Awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1963. An Elder, ma î tre, now in the literary world of modem Greece. References: "Poetry" (Chicago); Greek Number, June 1951; "Poetry", Greek Number, October 1964; '"Poems" translated by Rex Warner (the Bodley Head. London) Seferis is a poet of ...
... itself has come about by a powerful general movement of humanity, simultaneous throughout the world, although it most thoroughly affected Greece and through Greece extended to the general temperament & thought of modern Europe. It cannot quite be said that Greece invented the intellect or the intellectual temperament, but it is certain that the Hellenic race first began the application of reason, inexorably... An outward conquest is often the means of an inward defeat. What is happening now, has happened before on a smaller scale and under less developed conditions. When the combined intellectuality of Greece and practical materialism of the Latins, supported by the conquering military force of the Roman Republic and Empire, came into contact with the old tradition of Asia, the result was the collapse of... civilisation under the assault of an Oriental religion which in its tenets & methods not only exceeded but trampled alike on the vital force of the body & on the free play of the intellect, alike on Greece & on Rome. And it was from a part of Asia which underwent directly the Roman yoke, but persisted with the most deep-rooted perseverance in its spiritual traditions that the revanche proceeded; conquered ...
... Cretan Glance", we find Kimon Friar speaking of "the Apollonian or classical ordered vision of life" in one place and of "the eye of Hellenic Greece (or Apollo)" in another. 2 Sri Aurobindo's Man, which time and again brings in the Gods of Greece, throws, in passing, a shaft of new light on the real meaning of the contrasted concepts. We may prepare our vision of this shaft by noting some... Incorporate in marble, the carved and white Ideal of a young uplifted race. For these are her gifts to those who worship her. Here we have Classical Greece hit off to a nicety. But the typical spirit of the Greece of Pericles and Phidias and Sophocles— "the inspired reason and the enlightened and chastened aesthetic sense", as Sri Aurobindo's Future Poetry 1 has it—is developed... own free total flowering should be impeded. "Therefore we see," remarks Sri Aurobindo, "that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced by the philosopher-mystic, ...
... decades ago. And that the Greece-suffused hexameter we have quoted should prove suggestive of her is in the fitness of things for me to whom ancient Hellas is still alive despite the sweep of destructive ages over her history. To me, as to Shelley, Greece and her foundations are, Sunk beneath the tides of war, In Thought and its eternity. Why the Greece-ward turn was so strong from... PERSONAL STANDPOINT A line in the opening passage of Sri Aurobindo's Il on runs; Ida climbed with her god-haunted peaks into diamond lustres... A sacred mountain of ancient Greece, Ida as seen by the poet, an ever-uplifting vigil, full of secret divine presences, now emerging in the dawn-light which has the purity and transparent depth of an ethereal diamond — here is an apt... close at that time too, for Nolini has reported that two of Sri Aurobindo's incarnations in the past were Pericles and Socrates — Pericles who stood at the sovereign centre of the Classical Age of Greece which was one of the finest efflorescences of the human spirit, literary as well as political — Socrates who came at the end of this Age and initiated most brilliantly and profoundly the reign of the ...
... Aurobindo Ashram is made clear. These are like-minded wanderers in the realms of golden memories. Here is an evocation of Greece as a literary whisper from Amal Kiran: Katounia, Limni, Euboeae, Greece - how these names move me! Ever since I was at school the sense of Greece has been like a glow in my heart. Perhaps you would expect me to say "in my mind" - and indeed I have drawn a lot of joy... has been much more than intellectual. Even to get fully at her thought in its characteristic movement of beauty, shouldn't we combine the heart with the head? 6 The thought of Greece gives Amal Kiran an "imaginative thrill" and there is an adequate response from Raine for she too had "lived in imagination in Greek mythology (the mythology I knew best, as all children in England... Tyger the two correspondents experience the leap and the calm and the dangerous sweetness of the planes beyond what is seen by the naked eye as when a lovely letter from Raine about her surroundings in Greece enraptures Amal Kiran' living in the (then) sleepy town of Pondicherry with all its old-world grace: It is as if the very air, the very soil retained and conveyed, in the midst of all mod ...
... first historian of ancient Greece. Archaeologists assume that a war against Troy actually occurred, although the remains they have found of that particular Troy are trifling compared to Homer's description of Priam’s great city. The city did burn in 1184 BC which is the accepted date of its destruction. Soon after, due to the Dorian² conquest, Greece fell into a long dark age out... the acquisition of writing these Greeks lagged far behind the Mycenaeans. Politically they were less organised, and technologically they were more primitive for example chariots no longer existed in Greece at the time of Homer. However, they possessed an elaborate oral tradition. According to tradition, the goddess of memory as well as of poetry inspired the poet to tell his tales, and successive... driven the Greeks almost back to their ships, There was great rejoicing in Troy that night, but grief and despair in the Greek camp and Agamemnon himself was all for giving up and sailing back to Greece. His advisers though counseled him to apologize to Achilles, and Agamemnon finally accepted to send him back Briseis and many other splendid gifts if only he would rejoin the Greek ranks and keep Hector ...
... ravaging her sweet France like a pest and which drove her in the end to a more than classical tragic end: Seferis too in the same manner wails Great pain had fallen on Greece.! Great pain, ruin everywhere... Greece is but a sign, a symbol of the whole earth, the whole humanity. All around ancient – sempiternal – ruins... .......walls, streets and houses there stood out, ... with these tremendous lines: ...those jolting breasts Ripe as pomegranates with murder. . .² This is terror, in excelsis. As for pity-his lines on Greece: Great pain had fallen on Greece. So many bodies thrown To jaws of the sea, to jaws of the earth; So many souls Given up to the mill-stones to be crushed like corn. And the muddy beds of the... himself risen enough to glimpse and name his soul. It was not perhaps as clear a sight as that of Eliot that had a ¹ "Engomi". ² This is what exactly Seferis says about this "old man" of Greece. "He has no inclination to reform. On the contrary, he has an obvious loathing for any reformer. He writes as though he were telling us: if men are such as they are, let them go where they deserve ...
... the Eye, the wonderful weapon of the divine pathfinders Mitra and Varuna.” And we read in one of Sri Aurobindo’s letters: “The Vedic Rishis were mystics of the ancient type who everywhere, in India, Greece, Egypt and elsewhere, held the secret truths and methods of which they were in possession as very sacred and secret things, not to be disclosed to the unfit who would misunderstand, misapply, misuse... things which you are not permitted to know, though you have heard about them. So I shall communicate only what can be communicated without sacrilege to the understanding of non-initiates.” Egypt and Greece An important though forgotten or disparaged source of much of the spirituality in the ancient civilizations around the Mediterranean was Egypt. This is insufficiently realized because the minds... shown how frequent the exchanges around the eastern Mediterranean were in ancient times, and how deeply Egypt’s highly developed culture, occultism and spirituality had penetrated into pre-classical Greece. The spirit behind the Egyptian temples, the pyramids and the animal masks of the gods has surfaced around the beginning of the Common Era in writings which are called Hermetica . These hermetic ...
... Healer of wounds and the past. In a comity equal, Hellenic, Page 42 Asia join with Greece, our world from the frozen rivers Trod by the hooves of the Scythian to farthest undulant Ganges. Tyndarid Helen yield, the desirable cause of your danger, Back to Greece that is empty long of her smile and her movements. Broider with riches her coming, pomp of her slaves... there was a possibility of a more harmonious and less destructive process of a joint progression. As Will Durant points out, "It was a pity that these noble Dardans stood in the way of an expanding Greece which, despite its multitude of faults, would in the end bring to this and every other region of the Mediterranean a higher civilization than they had ever known." 2 In Sri Aurobindo's Ilion... the gods shall be stubble and earth to the tread of the Hellene. ... Page 43 Apollo (Temple of Zeus, Olympia, c. 470 BC ) Page 44 Rest shall I then when the borders of Greece are fringed with the Ganges; Thus shall the past pay its Titan ransom and, Fate her balance Changing, a continent ravished suffer the fortune of Helen. This I have sworn allying my ...
... that presented itself at the beginning was that of a huge area containing more than a hundred kingdoms, clans, peoples, tribes, races, in this respect another Greece, but a Greece on an enormous scale, almost as large as modern Europe. As in Greece, a cultural Hellenic unity was necessary to create a fundamental feeling of oneness; here too and much more imperatively, a conscious spiritual and cultural... and yet its proofs are written across the whole story of the ages. The ancient nations, contemporaries of India, and many younger born than she are dead and only their monuments left behind them. Greece and Egypt exist only on the map and in name, for it is not the soul of Hellas or the deeper nation-soul that built Memphis, which we now find at Athens or at Cairo. Rome imposed a political and a purely ...
... Parasites or mushrooms have no raison d'etre to be where they are—they are invaders, interpolators, anomalies. In ancient times, in the great ages, in Greece, for example or even during the Italian Renaissance, particularly, however, in Greece and in Egypt, they erected buildings, constructed monuments for the sake of public utility. Their buildings were meant for the most part to be temples, s... Occident near to the Orient. With the exchange of goods, there happens an exchange of ideas and even of habits and manners. In ancient days Rome conquered Greece and through that conquest was herself conquered by the Culture and Civilisation of Greece. The thing is happening today on a much greater scale and more intensely perhaps. At one time Japan was educating herself on the American pattern; now that ...
... stream and Tigris' golden sands, The Oxus and Jaxartes and these mountains Vague and enormous shouldering the moon With all their dim beyond of nations huge; This were an empire! What are Syria, Greece And the blue littoral to Gades? They are Too narrow to contain my soul, too petty To satisfy its hunger and its vastness. O pale, sweet Parthian face with liquid eyes Mid darkest masses and O... epitome of earth, You will not let me fix my eyes on Susa. I never yearned for any woman yet. While Timocles with the light Theban dames Amused his careless heart, I walked aside; Parthia and Greece became my mistresses. But now my heart is filled with one pale girl. Exult not, archer. I will quiet thee With sudden and assured possession first, Then keep thee beating an eternal strain. I... Before the Syrian hills. Antiochus' tent. Antiochus, Thoas, Leosthenes, Philoctetes. PHILOCTETES This is Phayllus' work, the Syrian mongrel. Who could have thought he'ld raise against us Greece And half this Asia? ANTIOCHUS He has a brain. THOAS We feel it. This fight's our latest and one desperate chance Still smiles upon our fate. ANTIOCHUS Nicanor yields it us ...
... that presented itself at the beginning was that of a huge area containing more than a hundred kingdoms, clans, peoples, tribes, races, in this respect another Greece, but a Greece on an enormous scale, almost as large as modern Europe. As in Greece a cultural Hellenic unity was necessary to create a fundamental feeling of oneness, here too and much more imperatively Page 429 a conscious spiritual... and yet its proofs are written across the whole story of the ages. The ancient nations, contemporaries of India, and many younger born than she are dead and only their monuments left behind them. Greece and Egypt exist only on the map and in name, for it is not the soul of Hellas or the deeper nation-soul that built Memphis which we now find at Athens or at Cairo. Rome imposed a political and a purely ...
... he had cried to his coursers. Half yet awake in light's turrets started the scouts of the morning Hearing the jar of the wheels and the throb of the hooves' exultation, Hooves of the horses of Greece as they galloped to Phrygian Troya. Proudly they trampled through Xanthus thwarting the foam of his anger, Page 387 Whinnying high as in scorn crossed Simois' tangled currents, Xanthus'... Weary of battle the Phrygians beset in their beautiful city Prayed to the gods for an end of the danger and mortal encounter. Long had the high-beached ships forgotten their measureless ocean. Greece seemed old and strange to her children camped on the beaches, Old like a life long past one remembers hardly believing But as a dream that has happened, but as the tale of another. Time with his... work in the plan of the transience, Beautiful, deathless, august, the Olympians turned from the carnage, Leaving the battle already decided, leaving the heroes Slain in their minds, Troy burned, Greece left to her glory and downfall. Into their heavens they rose up mighty like eagles ascending Fanning the world with their wings. As the great to their luminous mansions Turn from the cry and the ...
... Spain or the separate city-life of Greece. Thus psychologically the Italian city state neither died satisfied and fulfilled nor was broken up beyond recall; it revived in new incarnations. And this revival was disastrous to the nation-life of Italy, though an incalculable boon and advantage to the culture and civilisation of the world; for as the city-life of Greece had originally created, so the city-life... other divisions of humanity by a tendency towards a common civilisation and protected in that community with each other and in their diversity from others by favourable geographical circumstances. Thus Greece, Italy, Gaul, Egypt, China, Medo-Persia, India, Arabia, Israel, all began with a loose cultural and geographical aggregation which made them separate and distinct culture-units before they could become... built national unities. These empires, therefore, could not endure. Some lasted longer than others because they had laid down firmer foundations in the central nation-unity, as did Rome in Italy. In Greece Philip, the first unifier, made a rapid but imperfect sketch of unification, the celerity of which had been made possible by the previous and yet looser Spartan domination; and had he been followed ...
... national sense. The Serbian national idea attempted to recover and has recovered all territory in which the Serb exists or predominates. Greece attempted to reconstitute herself in her mainland, islands and Asiatic colonies, but could not reconstitute the old Greece because many parts had become Bulgarian, Albanian and Turk and no longer Hellenic. Italy became an external unity again after so many centuries... nations which have been full of centrifugal forces and easily overpowered by foreign intrusions, have yet always developed a centripetal force as well and arrived inevitably at organised oneness. Ancient Greece clung to her separatist tendencies, her self-sufficient city or regional states, her little mutually repellent autonomies; but the centripetal force was always there manifested in leagues, associations... Macedonian overrule, then, by a strange enough development, through the evolution of the Page 306 Eastern Roman world into a Greek and Byzantine Empire, and it has again revived in modern Greece. And we have seen in our own day Germany, constantly disunited since ancient times, develop at last to portentous issues its innate sense of oneness formidably embodied in the Empire of the Hohenzollerns ...
... That was the general aspect of the ancient worship in Greece, Rome, India and among other ancient peoples. But in all these countries these gods began to assume a higher, a psychological function; Pallas Athene who may have been originally a Dawn-Goddess springing in flames from the head of Zeus, the Sky-God, Dyaus of the Veda, has in classical Greece a higher function and was identified by the Romans... in which their psychological and their external functions co-existed and are both given a powerful emphasis; there was no such early literary record to maintain the original features of the Gods of Greece and Rome. This change was evidently due to a cultural development in these early peoples who became progressively more mentalised and less engrossed in the physical life as they advanced in civilisation... self-knowledge established their practices, significant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms in different countries; in Greece there were the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. The preoccupation of the Mystics was with ...
... flinch nor in any way draw back a step or lower its tone until it forced Greece to a satisfactory attitude and obliged the Powers to baffle the tortuous Greek methods by lowering the Greek flag in Canea. It has quietly ignored the attempt of the Powers to interfere even by a suggestion in the direct question between itself and Greece; for we read that Turkey is not going to give any formal answer to the... and intrigue. All these are signs of character and it is only character that can give freedom and greatness to nations. Page 190 Greece and Turkey It is not to be imagined, however, that this is the closing chapter. The question between Greece and Turkey will have eventually to be fought out by the sword. It is true that the immediate question is for the moment settled and the rent in ...
... departed out of their symbols, even as in Vedic India; but there took place in Greece no new and powerful movement which could, as in India, replace them by new symbols, new and more philosophic restatements of their hidden truths, new disciplines, schools of Yoga. Attempts, such as that of Pythagoras, were made; but Greece at large followed the turn given by Heraclitus, developed the cult of the reason... absent from the mind of Heraclitus: pity could never have become a powerful motive among the old Mediterranean races. But the language of Heraclitus shows us that the ancient system of sacrifice in Greece and in India was not a mere barbaric propitiation of savage deities, as modern inquiry has falsely concluded; it had a psychological significance, purification of the soul as well as propitiation of... the psychological idea of sacrifice was saved, emphasised and equipped with subtler symbols, such as the Christian Eucharist and the offerings of the devout in the Shaiva or Vaishnava temples. But Greece with its rational bent and its insufficient religious sense was unable to save its religion; it tended towards that sharp division between philosophy and science on one side and religion on the other ...
... Marching swift to the shock. It beheld the might of Achilles Helmed and armed, knew all the craft in the brain of Odysseus, Saw Deiphobus stern in his car and the fates of Aeneas, Greece of her heroes empty, Troy enringed by her slayers, Pans a setting star and the beauty of Penthesilea. These things he saw delighted; the heart that contains all our ages Blessed our... Pelion driven, Now if the earth no more must be shaken by Titan horse-hooves, Page 82 Since to a pettier framework all things are fitted consenting, Yet will I dwell not in Greece nor favour the nurslings of Pallas. I will await the sons of my loins and the teats of the she-wolf, Consuls browed like the cliffs and plebeians stern of the wolf-brood, Senates of kings... her sons and watched for by eyes in each haven. I from Tyre up to Gades trace on my billows their trade-routes And on my vast and spuming Atlantic suffer their rudders. Carthage and Greece are my children, the marts of the world are my term-posts. Who then deserves the earth if not he who enriches and fosters? But thou hast favoured thy sons, O Zeus; O Hera, earth's sceptres ...
... heart and clarifying the mind and the inner being. (4) That was the golden age of Greece and Athens, famed in history as the Age of Pericles. Pericles was the leading man in his city, the chief Archon of the state, and a man of great genius. It was largely thanks to his genius that the whole of Greece could attain its supreme point of greatness in all manner of achievement and creative ability... land, Sophocles makes a woman declare as if in retort that husbands too are to be had in plenty. (3) Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the three supreme creators of drama in ancient Greece, each of them is different from the others. Aeschylus the senior most of the three has vision and spirit and strength. He throws out the spark and lustre of inner knowledge, there is in him a swift... Besides, the Greek language itself has a power of its own, and this power has been utilised by the dramatists Page 65 as an instrument of purification. In this language of ancient Greece, there is such simple beauty and harmony, such an attractive rhythm of movement, a light and a clarity that anything expressed in this language partakes of its form and structure and temperament, acquires ...
... Parasites or mushrooms have no raison d'êlre to be where they are-they are invaders, interpolators, anomalies. In ancient times, in the great ages, in Greece, for example or even during the Italian Renaissance, particularly, however, in Greece and in Egypt, they erected buildings, constructed monuments for the sake of public utility. Their buildings were meant for the most part to be temples, s... Occident near to the Orient. With the exchange of goods, there happens an exchange of ideas and even of habits and manners. In ancient days Rome conquered Greece and through that conquest was herself conquered by the culture and civilisation of Greece. The thing is happening today on a much greater scale and more intensely perhaps. At one time Japan was educating herself on the American pattern; now that ...
... ago – themselves heirs to the Veda, which saw God everywhere in this "marvelous universe" – and the last Upanishads, a Secret was lost; it was lost not only in India but in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Greece, and in Central America. It is this Secret that Sri Aurobindo was to Page 20 rediscover, perhaps because his being combined the finest Western tradition and the profound spiritual yearning... that Nature could easily have arranged that "exit" when we were still at an early mental stage, still living as instinctively intuitive beings, open, malleable. The Vedic age, the Mysteries of ancient Greece, or even the Middle Ages, would have been more appropriate for that "exit" than as we are now. If such was the goal of evolutionary Nature, and assuming evolution does not proceed haphazardly but according... complex and universal, and increasingly useless in terms of getting out; we all know how the wonderfully intuitive efflorescence of Upanishadic India at the beginning of this story, or of NeoPlatonic Greece at the beginning of this era, was leveled to be replaced by a human intellect that was inferior and denser, to be sure, but more general. We can only raise the question without trying to answer it ...
... difference between various parts of speech? His defence of his other blunders is still more amusing. Says the Oracle: "To combat our proposition about ancient Greece an academic commonplace is trotted out, namely, that the people of Greece never developed a Pan-Hellenic sentiment." Really this is enough to take one's breath away. Mr. Ghose told us last week that the Greeks became an united nation... another? Athens and Sparta, for instance, against each other? And if not, why not?" Really, Mr. Ghose, really now! Is it possible you do not know that soon after the Persian invasion which you say made Greece an united nation, Athens and Sparta were at each other's throats and the whole of the Greek world by land and sea turned into one vast battlefield on which the Hellenic cities engaged in a murderous ...
... earlier times in countries like Greece, Greece where all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic authorities of the city state. It was Greece that made an institution of the ...
... lost in the lesser confident half-light of the acute but unillumined intellect or stifled within the narrow limits of the self-sufficient logical reason. That was what actually happened in the West, Greece leading the way. The old Page 204 knowledge was prolonged in a less inspired, less dynamic and more intellectual form by the Pythagoreans, by the Stoics, by Plato and the Neo-Platonists;... evolution of a vigorous and complex society, by the formation of large kingdoms and empires, by manifold formative activities of all kinds and great systems of living and thinking. Here as elsewhere, in Greece, Rome, Persia, China, this was the age of a high outburst of the Page 205 intelligence working upon life and the things of the mind to discover their reason and their right way and bring... human existence. But in India this effort never lost sight of the spiritual motive, never missed the touch of the religious sense. It was a birth time and youth of the seeking intellect and, as in Greece, philosophy was the main instrument by which it laboured to solve the problems of life and the world. Science too developed, but it came second only as an auxiliary power. It was through profound and ...
... not a proof of absence of culture, nor good fortune the sign of salvation. Greece was unfortunate; she was as much torn by internal dissensions and civil wars as India, she was finally unable to arrive at unity or preserve independence; yet Europe owes half its civilisation to those squabbling inconsequent petty peoples of Greece. Italy was unfortunate enough in all conscience, yet few nations have c... special value for humanity in the midst of its general work of culture, brought out in a high degree some potentiality of our nature and given a first large standing-ground for its future perfection. Greece developed to a high degree the intellectual reason and the sense of form and harmonious beauty, Rome founded firmly strength and power and patriotism and law and order, modern Europe has raised to ...
... Professional recognition for Sethna came from prestigious quarters. On 14 July1965, Kimon Friar, the editor of the reputed international journal Greek Heritage , while accepting Sethna's article "Greece and Sri Aurobindo" for publication, compliments the author and says: "I read your text with great interest and fascination. It is an outstanding piece of work and a most valuable addition to the... Aldous Huxley to K.D. Sethna, 29.1.1949. Sethna's Papers. 14. Letter from Kimon Friar, Editor of Greek Heritage to K.D. Sethna, 14.7.1965. Sethna's Papers. Also see the book Sri Aurobindo and Greece , Waterford, U.S.A.: The Integral Life Foundation, 1998. 15. Letter from K.D. Sethna to Sushil Mittal, 19.121993. Sethna's Papers. 16. Letter from C.P.R. Aiyar to KD. Sethna, 22.10.1964. Sethna's... Pen" is worth special mention. • Third, Sethna's volumes offer some of the best intellectual responses that the Indian mind has made to Western literature and culture. Sri Aurobindo and Greece and "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal ": An Interpretation from India are two perfect examples of this kind. • Fourth, Sethna's contribution to the understanding of the intimate relationship ...
... an explanation of the ambiguous character of the Veda. My suggestion hinged on this central idea that these hymns were written in a stage of religious culture which answered to a similar period in Greece and other ancient countries,—I do not suggest that they were contemporary or identical in cult and idea,—a stage in which there was a double face to the current religion, an outer for the people, ... justified by the history of religion or of the Vedic religion, that it was a refinement impossible to an ancient and barbaric mind. None of these objections can really stand. The Mysteries in Egypt and Greece and elsewhere were of a very ancient standing and they proceeded precisely on this symbolic principle, by which outward myth and ceremony and cult objects stood for secrets of an inward life or knowledge... knowledge. It cannot therefore be argued that this mentality was non-existent, impossible in antique times or any more impossible or improbable in India, the country of the Upanishads, than in Egypt and Greece. The history of ancient religion does show a transmutation of physical Nature-gods into representatives of psychical powers or rather an addition of psychical to physical functions; but the latter ...
... concept of integral education played a great role in lifting the civilisation and culture of India to extraordinary heights. In the West, the records that we have of the system of education in ancient Greece permits us to believe that the concept of integrality was not only recognised, but was also practised in a great measure and by very large sections of the society. It is true that while the recognition... human body was so great that the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and Poetry and the drama. It was Greece that made an institution of the Olympiad and through that institution the Greeks demonstrated some of the greatest peaks of excellence of the human body. In other ancient civilisations also, some... some kind of integral education was recognised and advocated. For the purposes of our book, we have restricted ourselves to brief expositions of Physical education in ancient India and in ancient Greece. For our object in this book is not to trace history but to underline a few aspects of the nature of the human body and its potentialities so as to generate and awaken interest and develop a few important ...
... underworld belong to Orphism, a primitive but in some ways remarkably enlightened Page 85 religion which perhaps came to Greece from Thrace and certainly inspired the "mystery cults" which were practiced in various parts of Greece, especially at Eleusis in Attica. 41 The Great King: The king of Persia, regarded as a type of worldly prosperity. ... Council (of 500 members) was the supreme administrative authority; the Assembly was open to all adult male citizens. 17 sun and moon are gods: The cult of the sun was prevalent in Greece, though it tended to be merged in the worship of Apollo. The moon (associated with Artemis and Hecate) was of especial importance in magic. The object of the question is to lead up to the doctrines ...
... times Date Place Competitors Men Women Nations 1 1896 Athens, Greece 311 0 13 2 1990 Paris, France 1319 11 22 3 1904 St.Louis, U.S.A 681 6 12 1906 Athens, Greece 877 7 20 4 1908 London, U.K 1000 36 23 5 1912 Stockholm, Sweden 2490 57 28 6 ... Seoul, South Korea 159 25 1992 Barcelona, Spain 172 26 1996 Atlanta, USA. 197 27 2000 Sydney, Australia. 199 28 2004 Athens, Greece. (scheduled) 29 2008 Beijing, China. (scheduled) Page 316 Olympic Events in each discipline (Summer Games) Track and Field ...
... us turn to the spiritual practices of the East and the West and their effects on life. What is the nature of European religion? Greece is the mother of modern Europe. The Europe of to-day is the outcome of Graeco-Roman culture. What was the conception of religion in Greece? Her religion surely consisted in all that is decent, lovely and harmonious. But the Greek people failed to discover or envisage... teacher and legislator. The virtue of the Romans lay in virility and the spirit of conquest and effective organisation of life. And the virtue of Europe has combined in itself the aesthetic sense of Greece and the military and state spirit of Rome. In Europe they want to regulate life through codes, moral and legal. Forced by circumstances and for the sake of mutual interest they have set up a mode of ...
... history of the ancient periods of the early civilizations of Chaldea, Egypt, Greece, we find that there did occur during such a critical period of their history an-eclipse of the power and hold of the knowledge of the secret Mysteries of spiritual and occult knowledge. This eclipse proved there to be total, and even in Greece, where the light of the Mysteries continued for some time, through Pythagoras... Ancient Book of Wisdom The age of Mysteries has come to be acknowledged as a common feature among some of the most ancient cultures of the world. Whether in India or in Chaldea, in Egypt or in Greece, in Atlantis or in some previously extant but now submerged islands of ancient times, there seemed to have flourished people with knowledge of secret truths. There was, undoubtedly, even a pre-Vedic ...
... their evolutionary trend, which was invisible to them. One can really say that the life horizons of the majority of men in fifteenth-century Europe were almost unchanged from what they had been in Greece in the fifth century B.C. It cannot be denied that the Indian peasant of the beginning of this century was working under the same immediate aims of life, almost the same environment, as his ancestors... after death, or of a future rebirth upon earth or of a final liberation from this apparently aimless chain of lives. There is no doubt however that the ancient civilizations of India, China, Egypt, Greece, Rome, still shining in the memories of men, produced people of the highest character and ability. In the field of pure reasoning, the works of Greek mathematicians indicate a level not below that... Progress has really cut the course of history in two: one epoch in which men were looking to the Past, another in which they turn their look to the Future. As Heilbronner notes: Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the past Asiatic civilizations, even the Renaissance, did not look ahead for the ideals and inspirations of their existence, but sought them in their origins, in their ancient glories, their ...
... after finely-wrought piece of natural magic?"' 44 "Juvenile" these poems may be, yet are they the "juvenile" poems of a truly exceptional talent that had won through a mastery of the classics of Greece and Rome the master-key that unlocked the sumless treasuries of Western culture. Page 38 Sensitive to beauty in its diverse forms and intensities, he could respond to the authentic... Critic with judgment absolute to all time, A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. 56 Admirer of Parnell and Goethe, lover of Greece and Ireland, young Sri Aurobindo wanted to lay deep the foundations of his faith, to plan and work out the details of his future course of action. Even when he was gripped by the march of events... Eden blow. 57 No more would be devote himself to Greek poetry as he had done during the past few years; no more would he exchange alexandrines and hexameters with the faded poets of ancient Greece and Rome; no more would he feel the heart-beats of European culture in their warmth and vivacity. That chapter was ended for good; and — "Tomorrow to fresh woods, and pastures new!" It is significant ...
... earlier times in countries like Greece, Greece where all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariotracing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic authorities of the City State. It was Greece that made an institution of ...
... need of uniformity among large multitudes and over vast areas which they elsewhere serve to establish and maintain. Therefore we find in Rome the monarchical regime unable to maintain itself and in Greece looked upon as an unnatural and brief usurpation, while Page 358 the oligarchical form of government, though more vigorous, could not assure to itself, except in a purely military community... democratic tendency was inborn in the spirit and inherent in the form of the city state. In Rome the tendency was equally present but could not develop so rapidly or fulfil itself so entirely as in Greece because of the necessities of a military and conquering State which needed either an absolute head, an imperator , or a small oligarchic body to direct its foreign policy and its military conduct;... and hardly granted at all in the narrow life conceded to the woman. In India the institution of slavery was practically absent and the woman had at first a freer and more dignified position than in Greece and Page 361 Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by the proletariate, called in India the Shudra, and the increasing tendency to deny the highest benefits of the common life and culture ...
... scientific inquirers, who pour out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry stimulating the thought-habit and creating even in the mass a generalised activity of the intelligence,—as happened in Greece in the age of the sophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed by reason in an infrarational society, has often a tendency to outrun at first the rational and intellectual movement. For the... basis of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced by the philosopher-mystic,... y formed and educated by its intellectually or spiritually cultured class or classes. But the exceptional nation touched on its higher levels by a developed reason or spirituality or both, as were Greece and later Rome in ancient Europe, India, China and Persia in ancient Asia, is surrounded or neighboured by enormous masses of the old infrarational humanity and endangered by this menacing proximity; ...
... invaded Greece and fought her armies at Marathon in the very heart of their country, but suffered a defeat. After his death, his son Xerxes led another attack, cut down the heroic Spartans at Ther-mopylae, conquered Athens itself and offered it to God the Fire, Page 124 yet with its blaze behind him he met with a check in the naval battle at Salamis and had to retire from Greece. If the... the tide of war had moved a little differently and Greece had fallen to the Per-sians, the rest of south-eastern Europe would have been at their mercy. Then, according to scholars like Max Muller, Zarathus-trianism rather than Judaeo-Christianity would have been pro-gressively the prevailing religion of Europe and finally also America. Fire-temples would have sprung up where now Churches abound. ...
... way-worn wanderer bore To his own native shore. On desperate seas long wont to roam, Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs have brought me home To the glory that was Greece, And the grandeur that was Rome. Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand, Ah! Psyche, from the regions which Are... remembrance becomes the gateway to a sense of the temper, both in life and art, of the ancient world. The Woman addressed is seen as the embodiment of that temper which was behind the culture of not only Greece but also Rome. The poet is felt to be a stormy nature who, after inner dangers and difficulties, has now arrived — through the vision of her shapely mass of curling hair, her finely chiselled nobility... The three diverse key-notes which throw into relief the eclecticism, the combination of qualities usually falling apart, may also be summed up in the several place-words in the poem: "Nicean" — "Greece" and "Rome" — "holy land". Each voices a distinct poetic mood. And if the whole piece is "pure poetry", "pure poetry" is shown to be many-mooded, capable of manifesting itself through either the e ...
... another plane than the creative Intelligence of Classicism or at least another region of the planeon which Classicism functions. That is why the Romantic elements we may discern in the poetry of ancient Greece and Italy are always faint and elusive. That is also why the fictions of the Middle Ages are Romantic. But these fictions are hardly typical of that period: they are a side-product and there is a certain... the Empire, Aulus Gellius contrasts classicus scriptor with proletarius - 'a first-class, standard writer' with 'one of the rabble'. At the Renaissance the fact that the 'standard' writers of Greece and Rome were read . in class at school seems to have helped by confusion to produce that other sense of 'classic', as applied to any Greek or Roman writer, whether first-class or not. Thus 'classical'... of Plutarch's Lives under tax are only a thin veneer of Classicism over his utterly non-Classical verse: they are the tinges provided by the Renaissance's exultant interest in the literature of Greece and Rome, but the exultancy is predominantly Romantic at first and the Shakespearean poetry tinged by it is entirely so. We may deem Shakespearean Romanticism "self-conscious" if we like; it is not ...
... earlier times in countries like Greece, 7 where all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic authorities of the city state. It was Greece that made an institution of the... smile, ‘No.’ After a few days, she reminded him of the urgency. Then he began dictating on the value of sports and physical gymnastics … As he was dictating, I marvelled at so much knowledge of Ancient Greece and Ancient India stored up somewhere in his superconscious memory and now pouring down at his command in a smooth flow. No notes were consulted, no books were needed, yet after a lapse of so many ...
... the time of Jesus Christ The main characteristic of these times is the overwhelming importance of the Roman Empire. It encompassed the whole of the Mediterranean World including Gaul, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor and Egypt. In India, two dynasties were ruling the larger part of the sub-continent: the Kushan Dynasty over north-western India, and the Andhra dynasty over central India. In China... Apostles it is said he was blinded); on his recovery he announced his conversion to the faith he had opposed. He took the name of Paul and began preaching Christianity in the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, and eventually in Rome itself. It was Paul who made Christianity attractive to the non-Jewish inhabitants of the Roman world. He persuaded early Christian leaders that many Jewish ritual practices... Palestine. Peter, the leader of the group, probably went to Rome; very early tradition holds that he was head of the Roman Church and was martyred there. Churches were established in Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece, and later in Gaul and in Spain. Stories of the sayings and doings of Jesus were collected and by the end of the first century began to take shape as the Gospels. To these were added the letters and ...
... earlier times in countries like Greece, Greece where all sides of human-activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic authorities of the City State. It was Greece that made an institution of the ...
... blood. (VIII) After a day of Trojan victories, Hector bids his warriors rest. (IX) Nestor, King of Elian Pylus, advises Agamemnon to restore Briseis to Achilles; he agrees and promises Achilles half of Greece if he will rejoin the siege; but Achilles continues to pout. (X) Odysseus and Diomed make a two-man sally upon the Trojan camp at night and slay a dozen chieftains. (XI) Agamemnon leads his army valiantly... to beg for the remains of his son. Achilles relents, grants a truce of twelve days, and allows the aged king to take the cleansed and anointed body back to Troy. from Will Durant — The Life of Greece Before the siege of Troy Troy's strong walls were reputedly built with the help of the gods Poseidon and Apollo. The Trojans were further favored by the gift of the Palladium, an image... capturing the women and children. Priam was stabbed to death by Achilles' son. The only Trojan hero to escape was Aeneas, who later, according to legend, went on to found Rome. The princes of Greece sailed away, each with a share of the spoils, but many did not have a joyful homecoming. Some were ship-wrecked or driven astray in stormy weather. Some came back to find themselves forgotten or supplanted ...
... in countries like Greece, Greece where all sides of human activity were equally developed and the gymnasium, chariot-racing and other sports and athletics had the same importance on the physical side as on the mental side the Arts and poetry and the drama, and were especially stimulated and attended to by the civic Page 117 authorities of the City State. It was Greece that made an institution ...
... Europeans (and the Arabs) went. It is interesting to hear Sri Aurobindo. "In India the institution of slavery was practically absent and the woman had at first a freer and more dignified position than in Greece and Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by the proletariate, called in India the Shudra, and the increasing tendency to deny the highest benefits of the common life and culture to the Shudra and... inhabitants of the earth," wrote in 1782 P. Sonnerat, an expert in Natural History. "We know ... that all the peoples came to them to draw the elements of their knowledge, and that Pythagoras went from Greece to study under the Brahmins, looked upon as the most enlightened of men." School children know Pythagoras of Samos (c. 569 B.C.) for his geometrical theorem. The Greek mathematician was also a... Upanishadic thoughts. How? Well, because Indian sages had meetings with Greek philosophers at Athens! For, it is known that exponents of literature, science and philosophy travelled regularly between Greece and India. Sonnerat, looking at the Indian with an unbiased eye, expressed in simple terms a profound truth. "The gentle and simple manners of Indians merit respect, but the more a people is happy ...
... harmony and just arrangement in the life of the adult man. This was the great importance of the universal proficiency in the arts and crafts or the appreciation of them which was prevalent in ancient Greece, in certain European ages, in Japan and in the better days of our own history. Art galleries cannot be brought into every home, but, if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are... all, its service to the growth of spirituality in the race. European critics have dwelt on the close connection of the highest developments of art with religion, and it is undoubtedly true that in Greece, in Italy, in India, the greatest efflorescence of a national Art has been associated with the employment of the artistic genius to illustrate or adorn the thoughts and fancies or the temples and ...
... Alfieri, Tasso, but not a second Dante or Boccaccio. Such men come rarely in the lapse of centuries. Greece alone has presented the world an unbroken succession of supreme geniuses. There is nothing to prevent us Hindus, a nation created for thought and literature, from repeating that wonderful example. Greece is a high name, but what man has once done, man may again strive to do. All we need is not to tie ...
... intention is its psychological significance, a question of great interest, for it is an evolution as the writer indicates from an element common to the ancient art of Asia and there were kindred things in Greece and mediaeval Europe. It is the result, I would suggest, of an imagination or an experience that has entered into the subtle worlds and found there a side of things dangerous and distorted and terrible... characteristic Indian mentality and touch; and, as for Gandharan art, it has the air of an inefficient attempt of the Hellenistic mind to absorb this spirit rather than an effort of India to imitate Greece. And in any case the great characteristic work could no more have been the creation of a foreign mind or of its influence than the sculptures of Phidias can be attributed to an Assyrian, Egyptian or ...
... exhausted; Asiatic races persist and survive. It was not so in old times. Not only Greece and Rome perished, Assyria, Chaldea, Phoenicia are also written in the book of the Dead. But the difference now seems well-established. France is a visibly dying nation, Spain seems to have lost the power of revival, Italy and Greece have been lifted up by great efforts and sacrifices but show a weak vitality, the ...
... finger to the canto's or epic's or humanity's own past or future. Out of this complex weft, we need to disentangle the line of development suited to our intention. Ancient thought, both in Greece and in India, placed the roots of our creation, like the Gita's Ashwattha tree, above, in the Transcendent. There, distant from our mire-obscured appearances, bums the Logos, the vast solar Truth... difference enters around the 5 th c. B.C. between Indian and Greek epistemological views on human access to this realm of the Ideal. This difference is closely related to the birth of Metaphysics in Greece. Metaphysics initiates a systematisation of the human location in Space and Time relative to God, Nature and Society. As a consequence it runs the danger of subjecting the Infinite to a scheme of ...
... 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). ...
... movements have arisen in the full flood of a people's life and culture or on a rising tide and they have themselves given a powerful impulse of expression and richness to its thought and Art and life; in Greece the mystics and the mysteries were there at the prehistoric beginning and in the middle (Pythagoras was one of the greatest of mystics) and not only in the ebb and decline; the mystic cults flourished... he has uttered many a sensitive appraisal of Romantic poetry qua poetry, he is Classicallyminded and finds true strength and solace in what he 7 cleverly labels as "the romantic Classicism of Greece, the romantic Realism of Iceland and of Hardy, the gaily realistic Classicism of eighteenth-century France". But the greatest classics, even while untinged by the mystic's vision and rapture, were ...
... or, in Greece itself, Sparta with Periclean Athens. For as we come down the stream of Time in its present curve of evolution, humanity in the mass, carrying in it its past collective experience, becomes more and more complex and the old distinct types do not recur or recur precariously and with difficulty. Republican Rome—before it was touched and finally taken captive by conquered Greece—stands ...
... can do most and go farthest, can achieve its most native and characteristic and therefore its greatest and completest work either in philosophy or in Science. The age of developed intellectualism in Greece killed poetry; it ended in the comedy of Menander, the intellectual artificialities of Alexandrianism, the last flush of beauty in the aesthetic pseudo-naturalism of the Sicilian pastoral poetry; ... scientific and less and less poetically and aesthetically imaginative, poetry must necessarily decline and give place to science,—for much the same reason, in fact, for which philosophy replaced poetry in Greece. On the opposite side it was sometimes suggested that the poetic mind might become more positive and make use of the materials of science or might undertake a more intellectual Page 210 ...
... which may be said to be of fundamental importance and typically its own; Islamic culture was mainly borrowed from others. Their mathematics and astronomy and other subjects were derived from India and Greece. It is true they gave some of these things a new turn, but they have not created much. Their philosophy and their religion are very simple and what they call Sufism is largely the result of Gnostics... they want only clerks and the education is intended for nothing else. August 8, 1926 The Greeks had more light than the Christians who converted them; at that time there was Gnosticism in Greece, and they were developing agnosticism and so forth. The Christians brought darkness rather than light. That has always been the case with aggressive religions —they tend to overrun the earth. ...
... Ancient India I ndia has had a long history of physical education, far more ancient than Greece. But in our times When the Olympic Games occurring every four years have become probably the biggest planetary event, most people know that the Games originated more than two thousand years ago in Greece. In addition, Greeks have given the Western world through many beautiful statues a keen sense ...
... marathon champion and silver medallist Modem Olympic Games O ne and one half thousand years ago, the flame of the ancient Olympic Games was extinguished at Olympia in Greece by the Roman Emperor Theodosius. When the idea of reestablishing the Olympic Games was first brought up, it was greeted with sarcasm: "Not far removed from the ridiculous, " people said. The man... hold the first Games. Initially the date chosen was 1900, with Paris as the venue; but, feeling that six years were giving too much time to those who wanted to kill the idea, he travelled himself to Greece with an alternative date in mind: 1896. If the Olympic Games were to be revived, why not resume them at Olympia itself? Finally Athens was chosen preferably to Olympia, as the ancient site, deprived ...
... marked by volition or will. Conation, therefore, is what we normally call action. Page 135 Page 136 A FEW DATES 478-431 BC — Age of Athenian domination in Greece. 469 BC — Birth of Socrates at Athens. 431-404 BC — Peloponnesian war (between Greek cities, but mostly Athens and Sparta). Socrates earns a good reputation as a soldier in... refuses a possibility of escape and is executed. 347 BC — Death of Plato. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization: part II, The Life of Greece. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966 Hare, R.M. Plato. Oxford University Press, 1982. Plato, The Last Days of Socrates. Translated by Hugh Tredennick. Penguin Books, 1961. Russell, Bertrand ...
... the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modern conceptions, a high stage in economic evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification and organization... those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers; sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement ...
... Hitler's unification is? PURANI: By compulsion! SRI AUROBINDO: Not only compulsion but subservience to Germany! PURANI: Italy and Germany are holding out threats to Greece; it is said Germany wants to march into Greece, after Rumania! SRI AUROBINDO: But how? Through Yugoslavia? Is that why the Yugoslavian Prime Minister has gone to Turkey? They can march through Rumania too but it is difficult ...
... news that Turkey says she will resist. She is not depending on Russia. NIRODBARAN: Nothing is known about Greece. PURANI: There is no more blitzkrieg. So England can anticipate Hitler's moves now and prepare accordingly. NIRODBARAN: But what can England do in the East unless Greece and Turkey resist? SRI AUROBINDO: If they resist it will be an effective check. England can come with her ...
... 1940-contd Talks with Sri Aurobindo 28 OCTOBER 1940 EVENING Radio news came that Italy has invaded Greece. SRI AUROBINDO: It is the result of their Brenner Pass meeting. PURANI: England will now have a chance to bombard Italy from close quarters. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, if they know how to use this opportunity they can occupy the islands there... army. Unfortunately the Greeks are not good fighters. If the Turks come in, then they can put up a fight. They have their army in Thrace. PURANI: Turkey spoke some time ago about giving help to Greece, an alliance, probably. SRI AUROBINDO: Alliance or understanding? PURANI: May be understanding. SRI AUROBINDO: Turks usually keep to their undertakings. NIRODBARAN: Unless Russia beguiles ...
... presented by the huge elephant host of Porus. His strategic genius we saw from the beginning in his plan for the Asiatic campaign, according to which, on account of the difficult situation in Greece, he resolved first to win the Mediterranean coasts of the Persian empire with his land army in order to eliminate the superior Persian fleet. We saw with what tenacity and how in spite of all temptations... base of operations, yet in a few hours he carved his way out of the dangerous situation. "What proves his systematic method is that even in the Far East the drafts1 for his army from Macedonia and Greece always reached him according to his directions. This was only possible because he deliberately and most carefully built up a system of rest stages. Without such measures his successes and his triumph ...
... 198-99 Alexander was born in 356 B.C. His father. King Philip of Macedonia, had united Greece and had intended to free the Asiatic Greeks from Persian control. He also coveted the rich- es of the Persian Empire to pay for his professional army. At Philip's death, Alexander first quelled rebellions in Greece and then crossed the Dardenelles to start, at the age of twenty years, his 2800 mile journey ...
... however, that yoga developed only in the Vedas and the Upanishads. There was, indeed, yoga and yogic knowledge in ancient Egypt,¹ ancient Greece, ancient Chaldea, ancient China and ancient Persia as also elsewhere as in ancient Mayan civilization. In ancient Greece, there was a religion of which we have glimpses through the Homeric poems² where the Olympian Gods were described, and through the earlier ...
... It is instructive to observe that while both, India and ancient Greece, had had in their ancient times their respective ages of mysteries during which ancient systems of yoga 1ere developed, the historical curve of development, however took different turns. The age of the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in Greece was followed by a gradual development through Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato ...
... Egypt — Babylon — Nineveh — the old Indian civilizations — the coming of the Aryans to : India and their spreading out over Europe and Asia — the wonderful record of ; Chinese culture — Knossos and Greece — Imperial Rome and Byzantium — the I triumphant march of the Arabs across two continents — the renaissance of Indian I culture and its decay — the little-known Maya and Aztec civilizations of America... them. And yet many an idea, many a fancy, has survived and j proved stronger and more persistent than the empire. Egypt's might is tumbled down, Down a-down the deeps of thought; Greece is fallen and Troy town, Glorious Rome hath lost her crown, Venice' pride is nought. But the dreams their children dreamed, Fleeting, unsubstantial, vain, Shadowy ...
... of Central Asia have hardly any parallel in this much vaunted scientific age. The Egyptians and the Babylonians have created a tradition. But the hoary past of their source is just being revealed. Greece was considered to be the mainspring of European culture and civilisation. But that a still more civilised race had inhabited the neighbouring island of Crete can by no means be denied now. The older... genius. Hence we do not hesitate to relegate it to the level of barbarism. We have hardly any spiritual realisation. What we understand is at best morality. We highly admire the art and literature of Greece. But in respect of Greek spirituality our knowledge is confined to Socrates. In the earlier period of Greek civilisation there was a current of deep spiritual culture, and what they used to call ...
... the thing in human society which makes it valuable, worthy of humanity, gives it a place of honour and the right to live and continue to live? It is its culture and civilisation, as everyone knows. Greece or Rome, China or India did not attain, at least according to modem conceptions, a high stage in economic Page 110 evolution: the production and distribution of wealth, the classification... those creators of other values that are truly valuable. And the values are the creations of the great poets, artists, philosophers, law-givers, sages and seers. It is they who made the glory that was Greece or Rome or China or India or Egypt. Indeed they are the builders of Culture, culture which is the inner life of a civilisation. The decline of culture and civilisation means precisely the displacement ...
... dwarfed by their eminence. It is now proved that in science she went farther than any country before the modern era, and even Europe owes the beginning of her physical science to India as much as to Greece, although not directly but through the medium of the Arabs. And, even if she had only gone as far, that would have been sufficient proof of a strong intellectual life in an ancient culture. Especially... appears in other ancient cultures, but nobody Page 249 suggests that Egypt, Assyria or Persia have to be reconstructed for us by the archaeologists for an analogous reason. The genius of Greece developed the art of history, though only in the later period of her activity, and Europe has cherished and preserved the art; India and other ancient civilisations did not arrive at it or neglected ...
... is from some new movement in this inexhaustible source that every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has arisen. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the grave where dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars, with Esarhaddon* and the Chosroes**____ The result of this well-meaning bondage [to the outer forms of Hinduism] has been an increasing impoverishment of the Indian intellect... leader and the guru. 47 * * * July, 1916 In India the institution of slavery was practically absent and the woman had at first a freer and more dignified position than in Greece and Rome; but the slave was soon replaced by the proletariate, called in India the Shudra, and the increasing tendency to deny the highest benefits of the common life and culture to the Shudra and ...
... regarded this life as an occasion for the development of the rational, the ethical, the aesthetic, the spiritual being. Greece and Rome laid stress on the three first alone, Asia went farther, made these also subordinate and looked upon them as stepping-stones to a spiritual consummation. Greece and Rome were proudest of their art, poetry and philosophy and cherished these things as much as or even more than ...
... spiritual and aesthetic mind and it is a distinguishing stamp of their art and culture. The Persian had a sort of sensuous magic of the transforming aesthesis born of psychic delight and vision. Ancient Greece did all its work of founding European civilisation by a union of a subtle and active intelligence with a fine aesthetic spirit and worship of beauty. The Celtic nations again seem always to have had... later the religious poetry of the Vaishnavas, Shaivas, Shaktas has entered powerfully into the life of the nation and helped to shape its temperament and soul-type. The effect of the Homeric poems in Greece, the intimate connection of poetry and art with the public life of Athens sprang from a similar but less steep height of poetic and artistic motive. The epic poems revealed the Hellenic people to itself ...
... admitted in the future than it has been in the past or is at present. Always in times of great and passionate struggle between conflicting political ideas,—between oligarchy and democracy in ancient Greece, between the old regime and the ideas of the French Revolution in modern Europe,—the principle of political non-interference has gone to the wall. But now we see another phenomenon—the opposite principle... of a country concern, under certain conditions of disorder or insufficiency, not only itself, but its neighbours and humanity at large. A similar principle was put forward by the Allies in regard to Greece during the war. It was applied to one of the most powerful nations of the world in the refusal of the Allies to treat with Germany or, practically, to re-admit it into the comity of nations unless ...
... first and too hasty generalisation. We now know that remarkable civilisations existed in China, Egypt, Chaldea, Assyria many thousands of years ago, and it is now coming generally to be agreed that Greece and India were no exceptions to the general high culture of Asia and the Mediterranean races. If the Vedic Indians do not get the benefit Page 25 of this revised knowledge, it is due to... stamped upon them even to the present day the result of an early mystic and intuitional development which must have been of long standing and highly evolved to have produced such enduring results. In Greece it is probable that the Hellenic type was moulded in the same way by Orphic and Eleusinian influences and that Greek mythology, as it has come down to us, full of delicate psychological suggestions ...
... the clarities and widenesses of a thought which intimately perceives and understands life. As a result, his effect on the cultural consciousness of ancient Greece through his two epics was different from that of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides through their dramas. To quote Sri Aurobindo again: "The epic poems revealed the Hellenic... like the burlesque life on Olympus, or Irus the beggar, or Ajax slipping in the offal"; 24 and there is the realism of Homer's humbler folk. Not that the later mind of Greece was divorced from laughter or from depiction of low life; the Greeks of the time of Aeschylus and Sophocles "staged a burlesque after each tragic trilogy" ...
... ion, but nevertheless intellectual in its method and aim. This is the first period of the Darshanas in India, in Greece of the early intellectual thinkers. Afterwards came the full tide of philosophic rationalism, Buddha or the Buddhists and the logical philosophers in India, in Greece the Sophists and Socrates with all their splendid progeny; with them the intellectual method did not indeed begin ...
... of oceanic sound 1 Ibid., p. 212. Page 117 though it is here the surging of the Atlantic between continents, not the magic roll and wash of the Aegean around the isles of Greece. What he has not, is the unfailing poetic beauty and nobility which saves greatness from its defects—that supreme gift of Homer and Valmiki—and the self-restraint and obedience to a divine law which... carnage, 1 Pp. 4-5. 2 P. 5. 3 Ibid. Page 126 Leaving the battle already decided, leaving the heroes Slain in their minds, Troy burned, Greece left to her glory and downfall. And, while they reposed in their blissful ether, Lifted was the burden laid on our wills by their starry presence: Man was restored to his smallness, ...
... was participating in an educational system whose traditions went back to the Renaissance. To master Greek and Latin, to read Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, to absorb the culture of classical Greece and Rome — these were considered the proper training of an English gentleman. And what one learned in the classroom and lecture hall was only a part, and not the most important part, of the Cambridge... when his eyes had become too weak to continue writing himself, he dictated a series of articles to Nirodbaran. ‘As he was dictating,’ remembers Nirodbaran, ‘I marvelled at so much knowledge of Ancient Greece and Ancient India stored up somewhere in his superconscious memory and now pouring down at his command in a smooth flow. No notes were consulted, no books were needed, yet after a lapse of so many ...
... out a profuse flood of acute speculation and inquiry stimulating the thought-habit and creating even in the mass a generalised Page 266 activity of the intelligence, — as happened in Greece in the age of the sophists. The spiritual development, arising uncurbed by reason in an infrarational society, has often a tendency to outrun at first the rational and intellectual movement. For... of the developed lower nature in man, the intelligent mental being. Therefore we see that the reason in its growth either does away with the distinct spiritual tendency for a time, as in ancient Greece, or accepts it but spins out around its first data and activities a vast web of the workings of the intelligence, so that, as in India, the early mystic seer is replaced by the philosopher-mystic ...
... to Milton, was the same spirit that in Greek mythology was known as having offended Zeus and been flung earthwards from Olympus. Milton, relating that he was not unheard of and unadored in ancient Greece and that "in Ausonian land/Men called him Mulciber", writes: and how he fell From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove Sheer o'er the crystal battlements: from morn To noon... its own celestial nature shows out and then fades away. We may wonder why Milton made his picture a strange and remote beauty. Perhaps the whole artistry was set off by his recollection of ancient Greece and of the land of the Italians who were known as Ausonians, and it was further influenced by his employment of the word "fabled": his imagination passed into an atmosphere of bright serene ideality ...
... purpose that even his death would not defeat: the unification of all the eastern Mediterranean world into one cultural whole, dominated and elevated by the expanding civilization of Greece. Take n from: The Life of Greece by Will Durant (Chapt. XXII, Alexander, pp. 538-542) in Part II o/The Story of Civilization Simon and Schuster, New York Page 88 ...
... countries and periods of history, we shall find that it has passed through a wide variety of forms, each having its own appeal. Historically speaking, Archilocus of Greece was the first great master of satire. He was followed, again in Greece, by Simonides and Hipponax, the former combining with satire a strong sense of ethics, the latter a bright active fancy. Gaius Lucilius, a poet, was the initiator ...
... chance." Then he adds that in Greece and Rome during the Middle Ages women had great freedom and a superior form of instruction, yet they did nothing outstanding. In his own profession, though there have been women professors since the 17th century in famous Italian Universities—in Bologna, Naples, etc.—they have done nothing to advance their special science. In Greece woman was a domestic slave—except ...
... by which Yugoslavia is dependent on Germany economically and politically, which means everything. If the news is true, that is the beginning of the end of the Balkans, because Bulgaria won't resist. Greece will be at its wit's end without Turkey's help and what can Turkey do all alone? So Hitler comes to Asia Minor and that means India. This is what I thought, long before, that Hitler might do in the... Hitler. SRI AUROBINDO: That is what all suspect. But what will be the value of any such pact if England is defeated? Then Italy, Germany and Japan will all turn on Russia. NIRODBARAN: How, if Greece and Turkey together put up resistance to Hitler? SRI AUROBINDO: That would be an effective check. England could come in with her air and navy. PURANI: Yes, and Italy could have a little fun from ...
... science, life-styles and attitudes have changed, and one is encouraged to pursue the science of physical development. Did you know that it held an important place in the cultures of ancient India, Greece and Rome? In our Yoga too, it is essential to have a strong and healthy body." . . "Why? That is exactly what visitors to the Ashram do not understand." "There are several reasons, I shall explain... Greek and Latin, which had the place our Sanskrit has with us. If one knew these well, one could master the English tongue better. Actually, all European languages and civilisations are derived from Greece and Rome. In earlier centuries all European cultures used Latin as their written language. I was rather good at Latin as well as Greek. I wrote some poetry in them and won prizes. I remember once I ...
... of sufficient straightforward speech, the rush too of oceanic sound though it is here the surging of the Atlantic between continents, not the magic roll and wash of the Aegean around the isles of Greece. What he has not, is the unfailing poetic beauty and nobility which saves greatness from its defects - that supreme gift of Homer and Valmiki - and the self-restraint and obedience to a divine law... rail against Agamemnon and some rage against Achilles. It is left to Odysseus to show the way of prudence and calculation. Agamemnon, fallible mortal though he may be, remains the chosen leader of Greece, not "a perfect arbiter armed with impossible virtues", but "a man among men who is valiant, wise and far-seeing". Achilles' prowess is another asset that shouldn't be cast aside in a mood of petulance ...
... and lives by the principle it embodies. " Where such national consciousness awakens,.. the nation is able to regenerate itself even from adverse,. external conditions like foreign domination. Italy, Greece and Poland were under foreign domination but subsequently- freed themselves as the result of awakened national consciousness. When Ireland and India launched the movement for political freedom the... lack creative elements. The greater the State, the greater would be the complexity of the constitution and the need of multiple rules. An example may make this point clear. The small city-States of Greece have exhibited greater creative power than many great nations and some empires; so also the small republics of ancient India or Small States under Kings were more creative than extensive Indian Empires ...
... In the political philosophy of Europe you find, if they accept democracy, it is only democracy – all the rest is opposed to it. If monarchy, then it is only monarchy. That is what happened in Greece. They fought for democracy and opposed aristocracy and monarchy and in the end oligarchy came and monarchy – at last they were conquered by the Romans. Disciple : Then what is the truth in... In the political philosophy of Europe you find, if they accept democracy, it is only democracy – all the rest is opposed to it. If monarchy, then it is only monarchy. That is what happened in Greece. They fought for democracy and opposed aristocracy and monarchy and in the end oligarchy came and monarchy – at last they were conquered by the Romans. Disciple : Then what is the truth in ...
... epos, Dante's great work as the nightmare of a cruel and superstitious religious fantasy, Shakespeare as a drunken barbarian of considerable genius with an epileptic imagination, the whole drama of Greece and Spain and England as a mass of bad ethics and violent horrors, French poetry as a succession of bald or tawdry rhetorical exercises and French fiction as a tainted and immoral thing, a long sacrifice... If the India of long past ages had built on the foundation of the spiritual mind and the broad and durable framework of Dharma a great and stable civilisation and a free and noble people, ancient Greece developed to a remarkable extent intellectual reason and form and beauty, ancient Rome likewise grew on power and patriotism and law and order, and the modern Western world has been exploiting to the ...
... peaceful quiet of Delhi. On another page of the same review we have a picture by one of the greatest Masters of European Art, Raphael's "Vision of the Knight". The picture is full of that which Greece and Italy perfected as the aim of Art, beauty and such soul-expression as heightens physical beauty. It is beauty that is expressed in the robust body and feminine face of the armed youth both full ...
... or Tuscany under the Grand Duke, or Lombardy under the Austrians, or Sardinia and Piedmont under the descendants of Victor Amadeus. Then again Mr. Ghose has "observed" that the different States of Greece developed a national unity as soon as they had a common enemy in the Persian. Really? We had always thought that the one outstanding fact of Greek history was the utter inability of these states to ...
... smaller units. The whole history of national growth is the record of a long struggle to establish a central unity by subduing the tendency of smaller units to live to themselves. The ancient polity of Greece was the self-realisation of the city as an unit sufficient to itself while the deme or village was obliged to sacrifice its separate existence to the greater unity of the city-state. Because the Greeks ...
... Anglo-Saxon type she must first kill everything in her which is her own. If she is to be a province of the British Empire, part of its life, sharing its institutions, governed by its policy, the fate of Greece under Roman dominion will surely be hers. She may share the privileges and obligations of British citizenship,—though the proud Briton who excludes the Indian from his colonies and treats him as a ...
... in that of the Adesh siddhi, except in literature. Today's news show a perfect action of the Shakti in detail on events of magnitude at a distance eg. the terms given to Turkey, the separation of Greece from the allies, the signing of the armistice, the attitude of the Powers. The pronounced defect, now, is in immediate & near events concerned with the actual Adeshasiddhi itself, rather than with ...
... unjustly called Paganism,—for the Greek or Pagan intelligence had a noble thought for law and harmony and self-rule,—is alien to the Indian spirit. India has felt the call of the senses not less than Greece, Rome or modern Europe; she perceived very well the possibility of a materialistic life and its attraction worked on certain minds and gave birth to the philosophy of the Charvakas: but this could ...
... spirituality. At present it will be enough to say that culture cannot be judged by material success; still less can spirituality be brought to that touchstone. Philosophic, aesthetic, poetic, intellectual Greece failed and fell while drilled and militarist Rome triumphed and conquered, but no one dreams of crediting for that reason the victorious imperial nation with a greater civilisation and a higher culture ...
... epos, Dante's great work as the nightmare of a cruel and superstitious religious fantasy, Shakespeare as a drunken barbarian of considerable genius with an epileptic imagination, the whole drama of Greece and Spain and England as a mass of bad ethics and violent horrors, French poetry as a succession of bald or tawdry rhetorical exercises and French fiction as a tainted and immoral thing, a long sacrifice ...
... for it a first place. The art of sculpture has indeed flourished supremely only in ancient countries where it was conceived against its natural background and support, a great architecture. Egypt, Greece, India take the premier rank in this kind of creation. Mediaeval and modern Europe produced nothing of the same mastery, abundance and amplitude, while on the contrary in painting later Europe has ...
... the patrician and plebeian elements of the community, the oligarchic and the democratic idea, ending in the establishment of an absolute monarchical rule, which characterises the troubled history of Greece and Rome or that cycle of successive forms evolving by a strife of classes,—first a ruling aristocracy, then replacing it by encroachment or revolution the dominance of the moneyed and professional ...
... king could have and advise their reduction not so much by the force of arms, as that would have a very precarious chance of success, but by Machiavellian means,—similar to those actually employed in Greece by Philip of Macedon,—aimed at undermining their internal unity and the efficiency of their constitution. These republican states were already long established and in vigorous functioning in the ...
... Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes 28. Teilhard De Chardin and our Time 29. Aspects of Sri Aurobindo 30. Sri Aurobindo and Greece 31. The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo 32. Sri Aurobindo-The Poet 33. The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to it ...
... Christian Tradition 27.Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes 28.Teilhard De Chardin and our Time 29.Aspects of Sri Aurobindo 30.Sri Aurobindo and Greece 31.The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo 32.Sri Aurobindo - The Poet 33.The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to it 34.The Poetic Genius of ...
... Christian Tradition 27.Is Velikovsky's Revised Chronology Tenable? A Scrutiny of Four Fundamental Themes 28.Teilhard De Chardin and our Time 29.Aspects of Sri Aurobindo 30., Sri Aurobindo and Greece 31.The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo 32.Sri Aurobindo - The Poet 33.The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to it 34.The Poetic Genius of ...
... That is why his equality is based on the knowledge of the presence of the faultless Brahman and the spiritual beyond the sattwik, the pure mental equality, taught by the Stoic philosophers of ancient Greece to their followers and also by the Gita. The sattwik equality leads on to spiritual equality. Page 271 perfect equality is not permanent, large and concrete in the seeker, ...
... in Social Sciences, Sri Aurobindo Society. 46. 1998 Problems of Early Christianity , Waterford, U.S.A.: The Integral Life Foundation. 47. 1998. Sri Aurobindo and Greece , Waterford, U.S.A.: The Integral Life Foundation. 48. 2000 Problems of Ancient India, New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. 49. 2000 Teilhard de Chardin and our Time , Waterford ...
... Aurobindo's earlier poetry and dramas had come out as Collected Poems and Plays in 1942. Undoubtedly, one sees in them the chiselled perfection of images drawing inspiration from the master sculptors of Greece, giving ample justification to what Spieglberg had observed. "The formal purity, the restraint even in richness, the freedom from rhetorical device and verbal excess mark his poetry away ...
... universe. The existing universe is bounded in none of its dimensions; for then it must have an outside. There can be an outside of nothing, 5 Quoted in T. James Luce, ed. Ancient Writers: Greece and Rome, Vol. II, Lucretius to Ammianus Marcellinus, New York : Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982, pp. 603-AO. All the citations from De Rerum Natura are from the text found in this volume ...
... self-knowledge established their practices, significant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms in different countries: in Greece there was the Orphic and the Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. The preoccupation of the Mystics was with ...
... which either was localised in one area but had worldwide commerce, or was, in a real sense, a worldwide culture. This culture, at least in some respects, was more advanced than the civilisation of Greece and Rome. In geodesy, nautical science, and mapmaking it was more advanced than any known culture before the 18th century of the Christian Era. It was only in the 18th century that we developed practical ...
... surface if homo europaeus was to fulfil his destiny, his part in the evolution of humankind. The criticism of the medieval world view started with the reactivation of the rational mind of ancient Greece; its rediscovery created the Renaissance. The 18th century Enlightenment is also called the Age of Reason. The 19th century philosophical and sociological thinkers prided themselves on having cleared ...
... “at bay” for quite some time and its leaders really did have little else to offer to the population than “blood, toil, tears and sweat”. Military catastrophes came in quick succession: North Africa, Greece, Crete … “On the map the sum of Hitler’s conquests by September 1942 looked staggering. The Mediterranean had become practically an Axis lake, with Germany and Italy holding most of the northern shore ...
... was participating in an educational system whose traditions went back to the Renaissance. To master Greek and Latin, to read Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, to absorb the culture of classical Greece and Rome – this was considered the proper training of an English gentleman. And what one learned in the classroom and lecture hall was only part, and not the most important part, of the Cambridge ...
... is identical. It is a ‘God’ in the image of man, tribal because Eurocentric, and quite childish. Their arguments hardly differ from those already in use in the popular, exoteric religions of Egypt, Greece, and Rome. If an atom and a cell are so fantastically complex as science has discovered; if there are trillions of cells active in a human body, and trillions of planets, stars, galaxies, quasars and ...
... certain place, and in this place there develops a new civilization, or a special progress in a civilization, or a kind of effervescence, a blossoming, a flowering of beauty, like in the great ages in Greece, Egypt, India, Italy, Spain …’ 9 There is little doubt that the Impressionists were such a group. One finds this indirectly confirmed by a neutral witness like Jean-Paul Crespelle, who writes: ...
... shall be bathed in my flames and be purified gold or ashes. I, Aphrodite, shall move the world for ever and ever..." The War-God Ares, denied his free dominion, refuses to dwell in Greece and looks forward to the Greeks' successors in Europe: "Consuls browed like the cliffs and plebeians stern of the wolf-brood, Senates of kings and armies of granite that grow by disaster ...
... all the difficulties. Let me first outline to you the complex theme of the Ode. The poet takes the scenes and figures carved on a Grecian Urn and imaginatively reconstructs the life of ancient Greece through them — a life which is full of a surging activity in contrast to the stillness and immobility of the Urn itself. The first vision of that life is in the excited lines: What gods or men ...
... "crystalline" are three of Shelley's favourites and you may note that he stresses "crystalline" rather unusually in the second syllable, instead of the first as your Dictionary does. For example, Greece and her foundations are Built below the tide of war, Page 223 Rooted in the crystalline sea Of thought and its eternity — or the phrase from the Ode to the West Wind ...
... written: "My dear brother's thoughts are like those of great sages - like Plato's thinkings." How did Plato of all "sages" swim into your ken? From my boyhood I have had a strong affinity with ancient Greece. Even in my school-days 1 delved with intense joy into the Socratic dialogues of Plato - the shorter ones: Crito, Phaedo, Apologia and Symposium. In the B.A. of Bombay University 1 had the pleasure ...
... that in Savitri the Greek and Latin classics are at work along with a break-away from the nineteenth-century's defects? Or are those defects equivalent to one's being steeped in the classics of Greece and Rome as were the Europeans of the nineteenth-century whose dharma the Indians eagerly adopted? We fumble and stumble in all this crammed and mixed-up endeavour to give Sri Aurobindo something ...
... and our Time 25. The Poetic Genius of Sri Aurobindo 26. Sri Aurobindo - The Poet 27. The Vision and Work of Sri Aurobindo 28. Aspects of Sri Aurobindo 29. Sri Aurobindo and Greece 30. Sri Aurobindo on Shakespeare 31. The Passing of Sri Aurobindo: Its Inner Significance and Consequence 32. The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Co ...
... also the laying bare of a rhythmic life beyond the ranges of inspired consciousness to which we have been so far accustomed. To bring the epic surge or the lyric stream of the quantitative metres of Greece and Rome into English is not necessarily to go psychologically beyond the ranges of inspiration we find in the epic or lyric moods of England. It could very well be just an opening up of fresh movements ...
... flying Fiend. 6 Lastly, glance at the simile for the causeway built by Sin and Death between Hell and Earth: So, if great things to small may be compared, Xerxes the liberty of Greece to yoke From Susa, his Memnonian palace high, Came to the sea, and, over Hellespont Bridging his way, Europe with Asia joined, And scourged with many a stroke the indignant waves ...
... the laying bare of a rhythmic life beyond the ranges of inspired consciousness to which we have been so far accustomed. To bring the epic surge or the lyric stream of the quantitative metres of Greece and Rome in English is not necessarily to go psychologically beyond the ranges of inspiration we find in the epic or lyric moods of England. It could very well be just an opening up of fresh ...
... the Middle Ages, it had been no more than “the handmaid of faith”, whereas now it showed pretences to the throne of absolute ruler. True, Reason, after its long sleep since the heydays of classical Greece and Rome, had to regain its freedom to make the human personality, stunted without it, complete. But such fundamental changes or reorientations in the human condition do not come about easily; like ...
... associations were almost exclusively close bondings of groups of men; women had no access to these Männerbünde and were disdainfully relegated to the conventions and duties of the bourgeois world. If Greece stood as an example here, it was Sparta, not Athens. Their songs were martial ones, often those of the former Landsknechte, the drifting mercenaries who, like the Free Corps, obeyed only their captain ...
... to dig up these villages of mud huts and enthusing over every potsherd and stone axe he finds. All we prove by that is that we were still throwing stone hatchets and crouching around open fires when Greece and Rome had already reached the highest stage of culture. We really should do our best to keep quiet about this past. Instead Himmler makes a great fuss about it all. The present-day Romans must be ...
... with so much nerve of energy to speed it or so broad a wing of genius to raise it into the highest empyrean heights. The mind of this age went for its sustaining influence and its suggestive models to Greece, Rome and France. That was inevitable; for these have been the three typically intellectual nations of Europe. It is these three literatures that have achieved, each following its own different way ...
... seeking sometimes for irregularity, sometimes for greater plasticity of verse-movement? Originally, Anglo-Saxon verse depended, if I remember right, on alliteration and rhythm, not on measured feet; Greece and Rome through France and Italy imposed the foot measure on English; perhaps the hidden seeking for freedom, for elbow-room, for the possibility of a varied rhythmic expression necessitated by the ...
... mysterious and abnormal as to the occidental mentality; they are nearer to us and the veil between our normal material life and this larger life is much thinner. In India, 1 Egypt, Chaldea, China, Greece, the Celtic countries they have formed part of various Yogic systems and disciplines which had once a great hold everywhere, but to the modern mind have seemed mere superstition and mysticism, although ...
... with Carranza. 4) Progress of events in China—eg subsidence of White Wolf, strength of central government, successful collection of the Provincial revenues. 5) Progress towards peace between Greece & Turkey. Samadhi The force of organised vision & experience has increased. Dream is always more firm, vivid & coherent, but still haunted by the confusions of present sanskara and personality ...
... That. Vaishnava philosophy saw Page 230 existence as eternally one in the Being, God, eternally many by His nature or conscious-energy in the souls whom He becomes or who exist in her. In Greece also Anaximander denied the multiple reality of the Becoming. Empedocles affirmed that the All is eternally one and many; all is one which becomes many and then again goes back to oneness. But Heraclitus ...
... and culture which will last for centuries or even for one or more thousands of years; but that too will exhaust itself in time; if it throws itself into a brilliant or rapid movement as in ancient Greece or in modern Europe a few centuries are likely to see the end of this flaming up as of a new star. Afterwards there must be stagnation, decline and a renewal of the mental circle. This is because ...
... psychological experiences which are the natural results, still attainable & repeatable in our own experience, of an ancient type of Yoga practised certainly in India, practised probably in ancient Greece, Asia Minor & Egypt in prehistoric times. Finally, the language of the Vedas is an ambiguous tongue, with an ambiguity possible only to the looser fluidity belonging to the youth of human speech & ...
... by some at the expense of others. It has amounted usually to the rule of the majority by a minority, and many strange things have been done in its name. Ancient liberty and democracy meant in Greece the self-rule—variegated by periodical orgies of mutual throat-cutting—of a smaller number of freemen of all ranks who lived by the labour of a great mass of slaves. In recent times liberty and democracy ...
... country, or even a naval blockade leading, if long maintained, to industrial ruin or to national starvation. The blockade is a weapon used originally only in a state of war, but it was employed against Greece as a substitute for war, and this use may easily be extended in the future. There is always too the weapon of prohibitive tariffs. It is clear that these weapons need not be employed for commercial ...
... crushing out of clan life by a foreign rule and culture, overcome only at the last moment in Wales. We see the failure of the city states and small regional peoples to fuse themselves in the history of Greece, the signal success of a similar struggle of Nature in the development of Roman Italy. The whole past of India for the last two thousand years and more has been the attempt, unavailing in spite of ...
... not only for themselves, for their freedom and very existence, but for the existence, freedom, maintenance of natural rights of other nations, Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Belgians, Dutch, French, Greece, Yugoslavia and a vast number of others not yet directly threatened; they too claim to be fighting for a Dharma, for civilised values, for the preservation of great ideals and in view of what Hitler ...
... walls, but is put there only because it is an "object of art". True art is a whole and an ensemble; it is one and of one piece with life. You see something of this intimate wholeness in ancient Greece and ancient Egypt; for there pictures and statues and all objects of art were made and arranged as part of the architectural plan of a building, each detail a portion of the whole. It is like that ...
... written by the poets of India to tell of all the affection shown by children to their fathers and mothers. Here I shall tell you only of one of these countless examples. It is a story from ancient Greece. Old King Oedipus was blind. He had offended the gods and had to lead the life of a traveller wandering from village to village, from town to town. Kind folk would give him shelter and food, but ...
... reunite at a certain place, and in this place there is a new civilisation or a special progress in a civilisation or a kind of effervescence, blossoming, flowering of beauty, as in the great ages in Greece, Egypt, India, Italy, Spain.... Everywhere, Page 310 in all the countries of the world, there have been more or less beautiful periods. If you put the question to astrologers, they will ...
... Synthesis of Yoga, p. 128 What does Sri Aurobindo mean by "an aestheticised Paganism"? That is how Sri Aurobindo describes the different pantheons of different countries, specially of Greece or India. That is to say, it is an aesthetic and intellectual way of transforming all things into divine creatures, divine beings: all the forces of Nature, all the elements, all spiritual forces, ...
... them. But there were fine periods in human history when these schools were recognised and much appreciated and respected, as in ancient Egypt, ancient Chaldea, ancient India, and even partially in Greece and Rome. There were always schools of initiation, even in mediaeval Europe, but there they had to be very carefully hidden, for they were pursued and persecuted by the official Christian religion ...
... gait is remarkable, supple, rhythmic, elegant, harmonious. It catches your attention and you are full of wonder. Then, this body moving along so gracefully reminds you of all the splendours of ancient Greece and the unparalleled lesson in beauty which its culture gave to the whole world, and you live an unforgettable moment—all that just because of a woman who knows how to walk! The second example is ...
... outside the threshold of the sheer first class how can we admit Wordsworth or Shelley or Keats? A Frenchman, of course, would not easily accept the non-inclusion of any French poet at all when India and Greece get three, Italy and England two, and even Germany One. Perhaps what keeps France out in poetry of the supreme order is just the fact that France is supreme in prose: the prose-mind has reached in ...
... 420, 421, 506, 548 Cottrell, Leonard, 332 Cretans, 247 Croesus of Lydia, 252, 465, 482-3 Cumont, 445 Cunningham, A., 84, 105, 132, 133, 165, 425, 447 Curtius: History of Greece, 258 Curtius, 100, 112, 114, 115, 117, 155, 156, 175, 177, 181, 184, 238, 245, 271 Cyprus, 258 Cyrus, 55, 56, 225, 251, 252, 331, 464, 465, 467, 468, 482-3, 594, 595 ...
... unreposeful light of effort burned. And the reason of his discontent and sense of frustration was that he missed a practical method to realise, to incarnate, the high serenity which the mind of Greece had in its theoretic flights conceived. Greek Art and Philosophy, in spite of the transcendental ideal they envisaged, were directed more towards moral and aesthetic ends than towards strictly spiritual ...
... 198 the emergence of systematic and discursive thought. The Veda is to him the full articulate scripture of an epoch resembling the one whose failing remnants survived in Greece in practices like the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. In the Age of the Mysteries, "the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine ...
... land that the Swaraj movement took on the aspect of Fate: the Shakti who had sustained Indian culture through millenniums and endowed it with a living continuity from a past beyond that of Egypt or Greece or Rome to a present in which Memphis is but a wonderful momory, Periclean Athens no more than a mass of magnificent ruins and the Rome of the Caesars only the windswept and grass-covered Coliseum ...
... is not good because the gods approve of it, but that the gods approve of it because it is good. It is obvious that the orthodox would find him a threat because, as Will Durant says in the Life of Greece, Socrates dared 'to subject every rule to the scrutiny of reason' and encouraged people to determine for themselves, individually, matters relating to ethics and morality, which hitherto had been ...
... need it. NIRODBARAN: What about Italy? She doesn't want Russian influence in the Balkans. SRI AUROBINDO: If the Allies are clever enough, they can win over Italy. If Italy gets Yugoslavia and Greece, she will come round. If Russia is clever enough, she may attack Rumania first. Turkey has reserved the right of peace with Russia. But if she does keep peaceful she will be swallowed up next. ...
... their very bones. Judging from what is left to us, it seems that all people had once a keen perception of beauty. For example, take pottery or Indian wood-carving which, I am afraid, is dying out now. Greece and ancient Italy had a wonderful sense of beauty. Japan, you know, is remarkable. Even the poorest people have that sense. If the Japanese produce anything ugly, they export it to other countries ...
... these things wouldn't have happened. SRI AUROBINDO: No, then their entente would have been formidable. Turkey tried her best for it. Turkey, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia are fighting races; Armenia and Greece are not. EVENING Purani started a talk on art and on Coomaraswamy's criticism on art, saying that he had written very well. PURANI: Coomaraswamy says the artist expresses his individuality ...
... SRI AUROBINDO: What Gandhara representations I have seen seem to me to be spoiled by Central Asian influence and then bungled by Indian. It is more Central Asian than Greek—it is an imitation of Greece without its mastery, as is the case with all imitation. ...
... lot was the article "The Divine Body". It was a long piece and took more than a week, since we daily had just about an hour to spare. As he was dictating, I marvelled at so much knowledge of Ancient Greece and Ancient India stored up somewhere in his superconscious memory and now pouring down at his command in a smooth flow. No notes were consulted, no books were needed, yet after a lapse of so many ...
... may have kept off Russia by guaranteeing that Italy wouldn't go to the Balkans. SRI AUROBINDO: Quite possible. But for how long? It will come later on. If the Allies could attack Germany through Greece, then some pressure would be relieved. That is the only way. NIRODBARAN: But it is not possible at present. SRI AUROBINDO: No, this neutrality stands in the way. PURANI: Turkey will be for ...
... said, "Yugoslavia is now dependent on Germany economically and politically which means everything. If the news is true, that is the beginning of the end of the Balkans, because Bulgaria won't resist. Greece will be at her wits' end without the help of Turkey and what can Turkey do alone? So Hitler comes to Asia Minor and that means India. That was what I thought long before Hitler's intention about the ...
... On Communism COMMUNISM is the synthesis of collectivism and individualism. The past ages of society were characterised more or less by a severe collectivism. In ancient Greece, more so in Sparta and in Rome, the individual had, properly speaking, no separate existence of his own; he was merged in the State or Nation. The individual was considered only as a limb of the collective ...
... 161, 163,188-9, 276, 280, 328, 340, 363, 369, 371, 381, 394 Goethe, 88, 197 Goncourts, 145 Gondwanaland, 223 Govind Singh, 396 Gray, Thomas, 115n Greece, 16, 25, 119, 159, 205-6, 211,2H, 238-41, 244-6 HADAMARD, PROF., 302 Haeckel, 140 Hamlet, 186-90 Harappa,238,243 Heard, Gerald, 260 Hegel, 318 ...
... consciousness to allow of a complete spiritual illumination has often been cited as one of the most potent and pertinent grounds for the disparagement and denigration of the physical body. In ancient Greece and Rome, in the Dionysian cult and in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Plotinus, such mystical-psychical experiences as men obtained in rare moments of exaltation described as ekstasis led to the ...
... dwarfed by their eminence. It is now proved that in science she went farther than any country before the modern era, and even Europe owes the beginning of her physical science to India as much as to Greece, although not directly but through the medium of the Arabs. And, even if she had only gone as far, that would have been sufficient proof of a strong intellectual life in an ancient culture. Especially ...
... education all over the world. As the subject of physical education is very important, we have presented in the first place, two texts, dealing with physical education in ancient India and ancient Greece. Next is a text on the modem Olympic Games, where, in the notes, we have also provided a list of Olympics held in recent times and of the events in each discipline. We have also added a note on the ...
... the treatment. Explaining my need for really ripe and sweet berries, he kindly permitted me to choose especially ripe bunches from his trays, Then, quite casually, he told me of a relation of his in Greece who was chair-ridden for forty years with chronic rheumatism and was completely cured by eating nothing but grapes and water-melon for a given period. What a tremendous fillip this heartening news ...
... and equality that comes with resignation. It is here that we come to appreciate the rationale Page 104 and usefulness of the stoics, particularly the Stoics of ancient philosophers of Greece and Rome, such as Zeno, Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. The attitudes and experiences which they have described refer in varying degrees to these three stages. In the first stage, Stoic equality ...
... This period was again the period of Intuition. It is well-known that in many ancient civilizations, there was the age of mystery such as that of Orphic beliefs and Eleusinian mysteries in ancient Greece. But when that period of mysteries declined, the age of Reason began to develop. There was no parallel movement such as the one that developed in the period of intuition of the Upanishads. To use the ...
... write to me. X says that I should support her at least on the basis of old family relation. What a wonderful principle of conduct for an Asram! It might serve in Arabia. Corsica or ancient Greece. About X's novel-affair, you said it is her individual concern True, but poets and artists have to take their occupation as sadhana. There is no objection to that, but an egoistic quarrel is ...
... very bones. Judging from what is left to us, it seems that all people had once a keen perception of beauty. For example, take pottery or Indian woodcarving, which, I am afraid, is dying out now. Greece and ancient Italy had a wonderful sense of beauty. Page 54 Japan, you know, is remarkable. Even the poorest people there have that sense. If the Japanese produce ...
... of a vigorous and complex society, by the formation of large kingdoms and empires and, by manifold formative activities of all kinds and great systems of living and thinking. Here, as elsewhere in Greece, Rome, Persia, China, this was the age of a high outburst of the intelligence working upon life and the things of the mind to discover their reason and their right way and bring out a road to fulfill ...
... —a serene and yet vigorous and organized rational mind, coupled with a wonderful felicity of expression in speech, —that one turns when one thinks of the special gift that modern France and ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of mankind. Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life and living. No other people ...
... 166, 180, 235, 239n., 274 Gloucester, 171-3 Goethe, 71, 88, 135-6, 138-9 Graves, Robert, 180, 182,218 -New Poems 1962, l80n -"The Ambrosia of Dionysus & Semele", 180n., 183n Greece, 73, 193-4, 196n., 281 Gupta, Atul, 234 Page 372 HALL, JOHN, 68n -"To His Tutor", 68n Hamlet, 185 Hardy, Thomas, 71, 88 Hegel, 246 Hilton, Walter, 114 ...
... Franck, Cesar, 393, 424 GANDHARVA,47 Ganges, 383 Germany, 133, 199 Gita, the, 6n., 9, 21-2, 58, 76-7, 83, 93, 105, 108, 112n., 125n., 143, 157,160-1 Great War, the, 323, 355 Greece, 199,214,419,421 HAMLET, 79 Heard, Gerald, 135 Heraclitus, 305 Homer, 209 Horace, 210 Huxley, Aldous, 136 INDIA, 3, 17,21,96,118,137,141,191-2, 199,209,285-6,419-20 Indo-China ...
... DANTE is known as a great poet and also as a great seer: Sri Aurobindo mentions him as one of the very greatest. He names three as the supreme poets of Europe, of the very first rank: Homer of ancient Greece, Dante in the Middle Ages, and nearer to us, Shakespeare. Along with these Sri Aurobindo mentions also Valmiki of India. However I shall speak of Dante not so much as a poet but as a seer: as such ...
... time perhaps. There seems to be no other way. But a change of dress is inevitable and should be welcome, for kept on too long it would stink. A dip in the Vaitarni or Acheron (if we happen to be in Greece ) would be wholesome. There is however always the possibility of a miracle happening: to this Mother was referring very often. In that case you might learn to change, to renew yourselves in the inner ...
... at its best in its own sphere, still it had and was a limitation, acted as a deterrent to a further leap and progress of the consciousness. It is the humanistic cycle that has reigned, from ancient Greece down to modern America. Is it not time that another consciousness should intervene, other gods make their appearance? Page 214 And yet if the civilisation really goes, it will not ...
... energy.³ The Sankhyan theory of Prakriti and of the evolution of the universe that we see and experience is adapted in several other systems of Indian philosophy, including the Vedanta. In ancient Greece also there were important ideas of evolution. But subsequently, the creation of the world was largely set aside by the account of creation that is to be found in the story of the Genesis as narrated ...
... It is now proved that India had gone farther than any other country before the modern era in the field of science, and even Europe owes the beginning of her physical science to India as much as to Greece, although not directly but through the medium of the Arabs. Specially in mathematics, astronomy and Page 319 chemistry, the chief elements of ancient science, India discovered and formulated ...
... of His light and purity and wisdom and power. These were their gods, as great and deep conceptions as ever informed the esoteric doctrine of the Egyptians or inspired the men of an older primitive Greece, the fathers of knowledge who founded the mystic rites of Orpheus or the secret initiation of Eleusis. But over it all there was the "Aryan light", a confidence and joy and a happy, equal friendliness ...
... went on discoursing on the need and utility of all that bloodshed of the French Revolution. Another who came introduced himself thus, "I am Theramenes." Theramenes was a political leader of ancient Greece. He spoke in a calm and subdued tone and gave us a lesson in political matters. So many others came like this, day after day, and taught us many things on various subjects. Someone even raised the ...
... progress has really cut the course of history in two: one epoch in which men Page 170 were looking at the past, another in which they turn their look to the future. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the past Asiatic civilizations, even the Renaissance, did not look ahead for the ideals and origins, in their ancient glories, their fabled heroes, their pristine virtues real or fancied. Unlike ...
... told me that once she saw in a vision that the princess' body was still lying in that faraway cave. (23) M other saw me in one of my previous births in a vision. It was in ancient Greece. I was playing marbles by the Acropolis on the street. (24) O nce Mother told me of a vision she had when she had visited Venice. She was in a gondola in one of the deep canals ...
... somebody came and introduced himself thus: 'I 184. Sri Aurobindo on Himself and on The Mother, pp. 108-10. Page 143 am Theramenes.' Theramenes was a political leader in ancient Greece. In a quiet, mellow voice, he gave us a lecture on politics...." It would interest the readers to learn that the book, Yogic Sadhana (now out of print), though an apparent product of Sri ...
... spiritual. It unveils the mystic import of the Vedic symbols on the basis of internal evidence. Sri Aurobindo argues that corresponding to the school of Vedic mysteries there were such schools in Egypt, Greece and Asia Minor. That Sayana's Bhashya-commentary-is not the sole undisputed authority on the meaning of the Vedic hymns is amply proved by Yaska's Nirukta, the first attempt at preserving the Vedic ...
... to Art Exhibition that is now on at the Jehangir Art Gallery has let loose forms of beauty from all over the world—not only from the present, but from the long forgotten past. Forms have rushed from Greece, from Italy of the Renaissance, from France of the 19th Century, from the East; memory has awakened sleeping forms of China, Japan and India. From this drab world of everyday I am transported to another ...
... sufficient straight-forward speech, the rush too of oceanic sound though it is here the surging of the Atlantic between continents, not the magic roll and wash of the Aegean around the isles of Greece." 28 The magic, the disciplined grace, the unfailing beauty of Homer are absent, but there is energy, there is mass and amplitude. Whitman's Song of Myself is an attempt to "embody a universe ...
... beauty in their very bones. Judging from what is left to us, it seems our people once had a keen sense of beauty. For example, take poetry, or Indian wood-carving, which, I am afraid, is dying now. Greece and ancient Italy had the perception of beauty. The Japanese are a remarkable people – even the poorest have got the aesthetic sense. If they produce ugly things, it is only for export to other ...
... world war was unprecedented in human history, so far as the military history of the world is concerned. Such a front there never was and never so many people participated in war. What took place in Greece in Troy - the Trojan War between the Greeks and the Trojans - was in a tiny corner. It was nothing, materially speaking, and externally it took place in a corner of the world. Nobody even knew about ...
... But I persisted – First time when the Allies attached they were only 30 thousand against 3 lakhs Italians. If Wavell had gone to Tripoli at that time he would have succeeded. But they went to help Greece and naturally they had to retreat. But I went on and at last they took Tunisia. If you depend upon reason then you can't know what is Truth. Germany fought Russia on her reason and won and now ...
... civilization after so many others, which seems to be completing its cycle with a devouring marvel, as did Thebes before with a marvel of occult knowledge in the midst of its ochre cliffs, as did Greece and Rome with other, more gracious but not less mortal marvels, as did India earlier with stagnant spiritual marvels. But no one caught the Marvel, because it is the only thing one cannot die ...
... Already its vanguard is upon us. ... Let it only be true to itself and we shall do yet more marvellous things in the future than we have done in the past. 4 Even the grand achievement of ancient Greece where once occurred "an unbroken succession of supreme geniuses" might now be repeated in India, and for this to happen "all we need is not to tie ourselves down to a false ideal, not to load our ...
... realisation were mostly replaced by tamasic religious worship and observance of rajasic ceremonies to gain worldly ends.... Such an extinction of the national dharma had brought about the death of Greece, Rome, Egypt and Assyria; but the Aryan race... was saved by the rejuvenating flow of heavenly nectar which gushed from time to time from the ancient source. Shankara, Ramanuja, Chaitanya, Nanak ...
... happen — I who have always believed in the miracle.... Yes, to write is a way of pounding against the Wall. I pound and pound.... Satprem December 12, 1979 (Personal letter) Good news: Greece is going to open up. Please find Page 118 enclosed the letter of this "Victoria." I've had a very good impression and answered with all the force, so that the Movement could be triggered ...
... could see the total picture, we would see the same story unfolding from one age to another, with different cloaks, different apparent circumstances. But behind all those appearances (whether in Egypt, Greece, Rome, Europe, India), behind that setting we would see the same constant seeking – the same crying out for something. And then, from time to time, in that setting, in those particular clothes, we ...
... than very partial and precarious, though often spectacular, results. The Al- chemists, at their very best, worked on these lines in- Egypt and Chaldea, and later, with a less intensity of vision, in Greece and medieval Europe. They sought to turn the base metal of human nature into the Prima Materia from which it is derived; so that its original purity and power could be restored to it. But all these ...
... necessity and justification of bloodshed in the French Revolution. Yet another day somebody came and introduced himself thus: 'I am Theramenes.'" Adds Nolini, "Theramenes was a political leader in ancient Greece. In a quiet mellow voice, he gave us a lecture on politics...." Years later, during a talk with the attendant disciples, Sri Aurobindo gave several additional details of sittings at Baroda. "Barin ...
... been connected with it. These Mysteries, however, were so strictly guarded, complete silence being enjoined on penalty of death, that we know practically nothing about them. Most of the great men of Greece and later many Romans like Cicero, were initiates, and some of them have spoken about the inner peace and realisation they experienced when participating in the rituals of these mysteries. We have ...
... piece out her existence. Yet even the little that was done afterwards, proved to be much; for it saved her from gradually petrifying and perishing as almost all the old civilisations, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, petrified and perished, as the material civilisation of Europe, unless spiritualised, must before long petrify and perish. That there is still an unexhausted vitality in her, that she yet nourishes ...
... that would naturally suggest itself to an average European mind in search of an origin for Hindu drama is a Greek parentage. The one great body of original drama prior to the Hindu is the Greek; from Greece Europe derives the beginnings of her civilization in almost all its parts; and especially in poetry, art and philosophy. And there was the alluring fact that Alexander of Macedon had entered India ...
... a foundation largely taken from the East, from Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, India, but turned in a new direction and another life-idea by the native spirit and temperament, mind and social genius of Greece and Rome, lost and then recovered it, in part from the Arabs with fresh borrowings from the near East and from India and more widely by the Renaissance, but then too gave it a new turn and direction ...
... the Greek and the Hindu, were losing themselves in the grand harmony, there was a gradual but perceptible swerve, and the forces of convention which had guided, began to misguide, and the Sophists in Greece, in India the Brahmans availed themselves of these mighty forces to compass their own supremacy, and once at the helm of thought gave permanence to the power by which they stood, until two religions ...
... a short season. The French were ignorant of this practical principle; they made liberty the basis, brotherhood the superstructure, founding the triangle upon its apex. For owing to the dominance of Greece & Rome in their imagination they were saturated with the idea of liberty and Page 512 only formally admitted the Christian and Asiatic principle of brotherhood. They built according to ...
... reflective critical faculty, that there is "something in the German artistic and philosophical temperament that is at variance with social good", "strangely hostile to the ethical and artistic ideal of Greece or the administrative and harmonising genius of Rome". Germany is entirely instinctive, at the mercy of her temperament, unable to liberate herself from it, instinctive in her music, her philosophy ...
... have been native to Greek religious sentiment; it may have been imported from the East through the Aryan races or cultures of Asia Minor; but it may also have been common to the ancient systems of Greece & India. An original community or a general diffusion is at least possible. The double aspect of exoteric practice and esoteric symbolism may have already been a fundamental characteristic of the Vedic ...
... philosophical thought would be appropriated by its culture, the disappearance of her antique spirit and personal self-expression need be no absolute loss. Ancient India would have passed like ancient Greece, leaving its contribution to a new and more largely progressive life of the race. But the absorption of the Graeco-Roman culture by the later European world, even though many of its elements still ...
... b) Pg. 27- Dobelis Edmunds (USSR) c) Pg. 35 - Yu-Chiu Cheung (Hong Kong) d) Pg. 37 - Koulatsoglou Constan tin (Greece) e) Pg. 47 -Alois H. Bernkopf (Austria) j) Pg. 57 - Karl Vock Junior (Austria) g) Pg. 58 - ...
... beauty; their life was beautiful. The one thing that modern Europe has not taken from the Greeks is beauty. You can't say modern Europe is beautiful —in fact, it is ugly. What can be said of ancient Greece can be said also of ancient India. She had beauty, much of which she has since Page 217 lost. The Japanese are the only race that can be said to have preserved beauty in their life ...
... Barindra Kumar , 13, 17, 47, 150 Gita , see under Bhagavat Gila Goethe , 77 , 88 Gounod ajar, 203 Go swami, Bijoy, 76 government, 217, 236 controls, 213 systems of, 165, 172 , 177,178 ,214,215 Greece (ancient), 86 , 119, 168 , 183 ,217 Greek (language), 109 Greeks , 158, 179, 183,213,217 Griffith, Ralph T. H., 97(11) guru, 119 H Haeckel , 87 Hardpans civilisation, 1oo (fn) hell ...
... on a foundation largely taken from the East, from Egypt, Chaldea, Phoenicia, India, but turned in a new direction and another lifeidea by the native spirit and temperament, mind and social genius of Greece and Rome, lost and then recovered it, in part from the Arabs with fresh borrowings from the near East and from India and more widely by the Renaissance, but then too gave it a new turn and direction ...
... periods in human history when recognised schools of initiation were established and were highly esteemed and respected, as in ancient Egypt, ancient Chaldea, ancient India, and even to some extent in Greece and Rome. Even in Europe, in the Middle Ages, there were institutions that taught occult science, but they had to conceal themselves very carefully, for they were pursued and persecuted by the official ...
... and largely second-hand culture; Asia supports three civilisations, each of them original and of the soil. Everything in Europe is small, rapid and short-lived; she has not the secret of immortality. Greece, the chief source of her civilisation, matured in two or three centuries, flourished for another two, and two more were sufficient for her decline and death. How few in years are the modern European ...
... and enlightenment to which alone liberal philosophy is applicable and in which alone liberal institutions can flourish, is the world of Europe and America which has inherited the legacy of Rome and Greece, of Christianity and rationalistic thought and science. Asia stands outside that charmed enclosure. That this is the mental attitude of Mr. John Morley is shown by the use which he has made of a ...
... inform them with the spirit of human brotherhood and unity. It was greatly hampered in this work by the fact that the European races were in a state of transition from the old Aryan civilization of Greece and Rome to one less advanced and enlightened. The German nations were wedded to a military civilisation which was wholly inconsistent with the ideals of Christianity, and the new religion in their ...
... straightforward Page 165 speech, the rush too of oceanic sound though it is here the surging of the Atlantic between continents, not the magic roll and wash of the Aegean around the isles of Greece. What he has not, is the unfailing poetic beauty and nobility which saves greatness from its defects—that supreme gift of Homer and Valmiki—and the self-restraint and obedience to a divine law which ...
... and Michael Angelo, architecture more utterly beautiful than the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon or Borobudur or St. Peter's or of the great Gothic cathedrals? The same may be said of the crafts of ancient Greece and Japan in the Middle Ages or structural feats like the Pyramids or engineering feats like the Dnieper Dam or inventions and manufactures like the great modern steamships and the motor car. The mind ...
... song-writers as such or the writers of the librettos of the great operas are not classed among poets. In Asia the attempt to combine song-quality with poetic value has been more common; in ancient Greece also lyric poetry was often composed with a view to being set to music. But still poetry and song-writing, though they can be combined, are two different arts, because the aim and the principle of ...
... but allow movements of a rajasic or tamasic nature on the surface, holding that these will fall off with the body. The Vedic Rishis were mystics of the ancient type who everywhere, in India, Greece, Egypt and elsewhere, held the secret Page 417 truths and methods of which they were in possession as very sacred and secret things not to be disclosed to the unfit who would misunderstand ...
... a time, are foredoomed to failure, failure by revolt of the oppressed social being or failure by its decay, weakness and death or life in death. Stagnation and weakness such as in the end overtook Greece, Rome, the Mussulman nations, China, India, or else a saving spiritual, social and political revolution are the only issues of absolutism. Still it was an inevitable stage of human development, an ...
... small groups into a larger unit among Page 521 many similar large units. The old richness of small units which gave such splendid cultural, but such unsatisfactory political results in Greece, Italy and India was lost, but the principle of life made vivid by variative diversity was preserved with nations for the diverse units and the cultural life of a continent for the common background ...
... everywhere—and most suddenly in countries where its tradition was once the strongest. Even in these days it has fallen in Germany and Austria, in China, in Portugal, in Russia; it has been in peril in Greece and Italy; 1 and it has been cast out of Spain. In no continental country is it really safe except in some of the smaller States. In most of them it exists for reasons that already belong to the ...
... the independent nation itself, there might be with advantage a tendency towards greater local freedom of development and variation, a sort of return to the vivid local and regional life of ancient Greece and India and mediaeval Italy; for the disadvantages of strife, political weakness and precariousness of the nation's independence would no longer exist in a condition of things from which the old ...
... interpretative poem of the human soul, lives only as a beautiful series of romantic descriptions and incidents. We can see where the defect is if we make a comparison with the two greater poems of Greece and India which had an intention not altogether unsimilar, the Ramayana fusing something like a vast faery-tale with the story of an immense struggle between Page 85 world-powers of good ...
... date before they produced any potent effect and even then their direct influence was limited and not always durable. A glance will show how considerable has been this limitation. The poetic mind of Greece and Rome has pervaded and largely shaped the whole artistic production of Europe; Italian poetry of the great age has thrown on some part of it at least a stamp only less profound; French prose and ...
... supposed to be the Greek surinx . We cannot therefore argue that the Greeks & Indians possessed the common art of tunnel-making before their dispersion or even that the Indians who borrowed the word from Greece, never knew what an underground excavation might be till they learned it fromMacedonian engineers. The Bengali term for telescope is dūrbīn , a word not of European origin. We cannot conclude that ...
... movements have arisen in the full flood of a people's life and culture or on a rising tide and they have themselves given a powerful impulse of expansion and richness to its thought and art and life; in Greece the mystics and the mysteries were there at the prehistoric beginning and in the middle (Pythagoras was one of the greatest of mystics) and not only in the ebb and decline; the mystic cults flourished ...
... know, liberty, equality & fraternity; the spirit it professed but could not attain we know, humanity. In liberty the union of the individual moral liberty of Christianity with the civic liberty of Greece; in equality, the democratic spiritual equality of Christianity applied to society; fraternity, the aspiration to universal brotherhood, which is the peculiar and distinguishing idea of Christianity; ...
... and drew her back. Even so, the deposition of the cunning and skilful diplomatist of Yildiz Palace might have been the signal for a general spoliation of Turkey. Austria began a rush for the Balkans, Greece tried to hurry a crisis in Crete. The shaking of the Turkish sword in the face of the Greek and the rapid and efficient reorganisation of army and navy against Europe were both vitally necessary to ...
... is from some new movement in this inexhaustible source that every fresh impulse and rejuvenated strength has arisen. Otherwise we should long ago have been in the grave where dead nations lie, with Greece and Rome of the Caesars, with Esarhaddon and the Chosroes. You will often hear it said that it was the forms of Hinduism which have given us so much national vitality. I think rather it was its spirit ...
... wisdom through the thought of the Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato and the Neo-Platonists; the result was Page 141 the brilliantly intellectual and unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism filtered through the Semitic temperament entered Europe in the form of Christianity. Christianity came within ...
... 392 But he remains as Christian as before, doesn't he? I don't know... He doesn't want to go back to France, because he says he would be "troubled" there! He will go to a monastery in Greece, then he says he would come back here.... But he's changed a lot. A lot. And the other... [the healer], the other is very amusing! Is he? He's very amusing! ( Mother laughs ) If it were ...
... suggest that in Savitri the Greek and Latin classics are at work along with a break-away from the nineteenth-century's defects? Or are those defects equivalent to one's being steeped in the classics of Greece and Rome as were the Europeans of the nineteenth-century whose dharma the Indians eagerly adopted? We fumble and stumble in all this crammed and mixed-up endeavour to give Sri Aurobindo something with ...
... dactylic line starting the theme with a greater number of syllables proper to the quantitative hexameter — a number which Pope is obliged to match by a full heroic couplet: Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly Goddess, sing! Virgil's Aeneid has two hexameters and an extra foot for the initial grammatical unit. C, Day Lewis represents them by: ...
... Theories of Evolution and Sri Aurobindo's Concept of Supramental Manifestation THE process of evolution was detected in ancient times. Both in India and in Greece, there were important ideas of evolution. In modern times, the theory of evolution is mainly the work of Linnaeus (1707-78), Buffon (1707-88), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Lamarck (1744-1829), Charles ...
... the Videvdat's geographical suggestions would hold for both the immigrant streams from Airiyānam vaējo. There is nothing inherently improbable about two streams. Do we not hear of an entry into Greece by Indo-Europeans in about 2000 B.C. and then of a second (Dorian) intrusion about 800 years after? In Parpola's own theory we have two entries into India by the Aryans divided by three or four centuries ...
... dissolution or a fusion . into other races instead of achieving their assimilation into its own communal consciousness. This has happened to several great collectivities of old: Egypt, Sumer, Crete, Greece, Persia, the Celtic culture, Rome, the Incas, the Aztecs and the civilisations of ancient America before them. The nations that exist today where these were at one time are no real continuations of ...
... concept of pralaya , the cyclic origin and extinction of the universe. This was even recently thought to belong to the old Hindu lore, just like the cycles of time were part of the mythology of ancient Greece. But see, not only is the universe now supposed to have evolved from a magic primeval particle, the question “what came before the Big Bang” has become scientifically legitimate, as has the question ...
... their lives, of the individuals who contribute to the transition consciously. The enthusiasm of such individuals, animated by the spirit of a new time, has always been admirable – e.g. the sophists in Greece, the Christian Church Fathers and martyrs, the Renaissance men of the New Learning, the philosophers of the Enlightenment. To switch from one God, who is supposed to be non-existent or to have ...
... eternal process of manifestation. This concept was even less than a century ago thought of as part of the old mythical Hindu lore, just like the cycles of time were part of the mythology of ancient Greece. Now, amazingly, not only is the universe supposed to have burst forth from a magic primordial particle, the question “what came before the Big Bang?” has become scientifically legitimate, as has the ...
... Chaldean and Indian wisdom through the thought of the Greek philosophers from Pythagoras to Plato and the Neo-Platonists; the result was the brilliantly intellectual and unspiritual civilisation of Greece and Rome. But it prepared the way for the second attempt when Buddhism and Vaishnavism, filtered through the Semitic temperament, entered Europe in the form of Christianity. Christianity came within ...
... not only for themselves, for their freedom and very existence, but for the existence, freedom, maintenance of natural rights of other nations, Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Belgians, Dutch, French, Greece, Yugoslavia and a vast number of others not yet directly threatened; they too claim to be fighting for a Dharma, for civilized values, for the preservation of ideals and in view of what Hitler ...
... As mentioned in passing above, an integral and usually overlooked factor in the thinking of modern science is its Judeo-Christian background. The science of the so-called Hellenistic period in Greece and Alexandria had reached a high level of development with figures of genius like Archimedes, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus of Samos, Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Marvin Minsky regrets the course history has ...
... through the countless millenniums of its history.” 21 The recent decades in the history of humanity must of course be seen in the perspective of “a cycle of progression” which started in ancient Greece and the cultures around the eastern Mediterranean. Christianity played an important role in this cycle, as did the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Then – “war being the ...
... a protocol with made it completely dependent on Germany, Sri Aurobindo remarked: “If the news is true [it was true], that is the beginning of the end of the Balkans, because Bulgaria won’t resist. Greece will be at its wits’ end without Turkey’s help, and what can Turkey do alone? So Hitler comes to Asia Minor and that means India. The Asura is up to his tricks again. Now Hitler’s moves are quite clear ...
... 23 . Professor Gilbert Murray (1866-1957) was a British scholar and intellectual with connections in many spheres. He authored numerous books and was an outstanding scholar on Ancient Greece. Page 267 24 . Jayantilai Parekh was an artist of Santiniketan who studied under Nandanlal Bose, the famous artist and director of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. He was a sadhak ...
... worthwhile pointing out that many of the prominent Greeks – Solon, Pythagoras, Herodotus, Plato – found the sources of their knowledge in Egypt (which means that European culture has its roots deeper than Greece, in the Kingdom of the Two Lands). 96 All of these Greeks were instructed by representatives of the Egyptian priesthood, but as the latter were bound by their vows, the knowledge they shared was ...
... better, was of the same opinion. “By the Greeks he meant the Dorians. Naturally his view was affected by the theory, fostered by the scientists of his period, that the Dorian tribe which migrated into Greece from the north had been of Germanic origin and that, therefore, its culture had not belonged to the Mediterranean world.” 475 When one asks who were our forefathers, we must always point back to the ...
... also the laying bare of a rhythmic life beyond the ranges of inspired consciousness to which we have been so far accustomed. To bring the epic surge or the lyric stream of the quantitative metres of Greece and Rome in English is not necessarily to go psychologically beyond the ranges of inspiration we find in the epic or lyric moods of England. It could very well be just an opening up of fresh movements ...
... was participating in an educational system whose traditions went back to the Renaissance. To master Greek and Latin, to read Homer and Sophocles, Virgil and Horace, to absorb the culture of classical Greece and Rome – these were considered the proper training of an English gentleman. And what one learned in the classroom and lecture hall was only part, and not the most important part, of the Cambridge ...
... his countless writings about Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and their yoga, he has published books on comparative religion, Christianity, the origin of the Aryans, science and the scientific paradigms, Greece and its culture, and on many other subjects. He is also considered the primus inter pares among the Ashram poets and was on this account held in high esteem by Sri Aurobindo. Sethna became the editor ...
... Rome is nothing! I don't know why in Europe they attach so much importance to this whole affair.... The world begins with them. Even from the standpoint of culture, Rome was far inferior to Greece.... I don't know why—but it's the case of all the Latin countries, I think. They put everything upside down. That's what always stops me, because you feel you pour on them or give them some ...
... dactylic line starting the theme with a greater number of syllables proper to the quantitative hexameter - a number which Pope is obliged to match by a full heroic couplet: Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring Of woes unnumbered, heavenly Goddess sing! Virgil's Aeneid has two hexameters and an extra foot for the initial grammatical unit. C. Day Lewis represents them by: ...
... Sri Aurobindo's Savitri 18.Our Light and Delight: Recollections of Life with the Mother 19.Problems of Early Christianity 20.Science, Materialism, Mysticism 21.Sri Aurobindo and Greece 22.Teilhard De Chardin and our Time 23.The Beginning of History for Israel 24.The Development of Sri Aurobindo's Spiritual System and the Mother's Contribution to it 25.The Inspiration ...
... self-sufficiency, specially of the later and greater works, his poetry is comparable to the greatest Greek poets. The chiselled perfection of his images draws its inspiration from the master sculptors of Greece. The formal purity, the restraint even in richness, the freedom from rhetorical device and verbal excess mark his poetry away from Sanskrit poetry specially in its latter stages when artistic and literary ...
... "Classical" and "Romantic": An Approach through Sri Aurobindo 8. "A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal": An Interpretation from India 9. Adventures in Criticism 10. Sri Aurobindo and Greece 11. Science, Materialism, Mysticism: A Scrutiny of Scientific Thought 12. The Thinking Corner 13. The Virgin Birth and the Earliest Christian Tradition 14. The Development ...
... Grassmann, 296 Greater Iran, 204, 205, 211, 221, 228, 230, 235, 311 Bronze Age culture of (see also Namazga V), 205, 207, 209, 215, 223, 224, 227, 229, 293, 295, 305-6, 308, 311 Greece, 271 Greek, 160, 270, 273-4, 292, 294, 295, 347, 400 Greppin, A.C., 243, 262, 264-6, 272, 275, 276 Griffith, Ralph T.H., 243, 256-8, 285, 289, 293, 301, 303-5, 328, 332-3, 337 ...
... Kings and the loose life of the Royal Court, he shared nothing of the Puritans' contempt for culture or their repressive intolerance towards other sects or their recoil from the pagan glories of old Greece and Rome. He dissented even from many of their dogmas and embraced the "heresies" known as Arianism and Mortalism. He scared them by demanding vehemently the abolition of censorship. He shocked them ...
... profound prayer that he might be perfected some day for the achievement of a master-work. No other poet was born with so intense a sense of mission to do for England what Homer and Virgil had done for Greece and Italy, no other poet worked throughout his life with so deeply felt a direction towards a God-given poetic fulfilment. Well might his life be crowned with that extraordinary creative sleep. ...
... the Contemporary Man The Process of Evolution Charles Darwin (1809-82) The process of evolution was detected in ancient times. Both in India and in Greece, there were important ideas of evolution. In modern times, the theory of evolution is mainly the work of Linnaeus (1707-78), Buffon (1707-88), Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Lamarck (1744-1829), Charles ...
... Veda Introduction There is no ascertainable history of the ancient beginnings of yoga. We are aware of traditions of esoteric practices in ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, Persia, India and of other similar traditions. There was no doubt an age of Mysteries; there was, undoubtedly, even a pre-Vedic age and a pre-Chaldean age, during which there seemed to have developed ...
... were of course many other traditions in ancient times, and there was certainly a great tradition of knowledge. There were traditions which you find in ancient Chaldea, in ancient Persia, in Egypt, in Greece, but all these traditions have been lost. There is hardly anything available in the form of any text. There are ideas; there are mythologies. Even Greek mythology which is available is a later statement ...
... far and wide in the then known world. They laid the foundations of modern world by acquiring knowledge from different parts of the world. They learnt sciences and mathematics of India, philosophy of Greece, jurisprudence of the Romans and the Jewish traditions of morality. Like the ancient Hindus, the Arab Muslims also could not continue with the Islamic spirit of acquiring knowledge from all the sources ...
... and we do not know what thoughts and aspirations they might have expressed. Considering, however, that there was, in the earlier stages, a remarkable tradition of mysteries, Orphic and Eleusinian in Greece, of occult lore and magic in Egypt and Chaldea, of Magi in Persia, and of the Rishis in India, there might have been in them something common but what could have been their contents, can probably be ...
... ashes in the flames. Another phoenix would then arise from the marrow of its bones. It came to symbolize destruction and recreation. 5. "Under many names": When the agricultural communities in Greece worshipped Mother Earth they called the Great Goddess or the Mother Goddess by many names, (Gaea, Rhea, Demeter). Most of the female divinities in Greek mythology were originally Great Mother Goddesses; ...
... why Alexander had chosen it to be the centre of his military administration. He had built a gigantic camp which served as a depot, arsenal and war machine storage. Here the young recruits coming from Greece were enrolled; and from here they set off to join their garrison located on the borders of the Empire. When Alexander reached there in July 324, he found the army in turmoil. The officers were ...
... be maintained. But all these hopes were doomed to disappointment - the reason, the terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Sevres in August 1920, after the end of the war. Thrace was presented to Greece, and the Asiatic portions of the Turkish Empire were put under the control of England and France in the guise of Mandates. While Turkey was dispossessed of her homelands, her ruler, the Sultan, was ...
... projects of treaty on European political cooperation. 1973 — Denmark, Great Britain and Ireland join Europe. 1979 — First election of the European parliament by direct universal franchise. 1981 — Greece joins Europe. 1992 — Signature of the Maastricht Treaty which led to the creation of the European Union. It was the result of separate rate negociations on monetary union and political union ...
... and haunt the places he has held dear. The prototypical picture of the heroic hero dying in ripe old age full of honour and years! But this is not how Nikos Kazantzakis, the great poet of modern Greece (and Crete), conceived the last years of Odysseus in The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, the immense epic which has lately appeared, twenty-one years after its first publication in Greek, in an English ...
... The exemplar of the manner is the Gita. Valmiki's represented a more ancient and primary inspiration, of a vast vital sensibility, something of the kind that was at the basis of Homer's genius. In Greece it was Socrates who initiated the movement of speculative philosophy and the emphasis of intellectual power slowly began to find expression in the later poets, Sophocles and Euripides. But all these ...
... Genoese 50 Page 103 George Seferis 47, 48, 49, 52, 54 Gethsemane 38 Gita 3, 13, 104 Gloucester 20, 21 Graves, Robert 31, 33, 77 Greece 48, 50, 52 Greek 32, 47, 53 Greek legend 4 H Hades 56, 77 Hamlet 10, 23, 38 Hebrides 103 Hecate 77 Homer 27 Horatio 23 I Ind 92 India ...
... times perhaps. There seems to be no other way. But a change of dress is inevitable and should be welcome, for kept on too long it would stink. A dip in the Vaitarni or Acheron (if we happen to be in Greece) would be wholesome. There is however always the possibility of a miracle happening: to this Mother was referring very often. In that case we might learn to change, to renew ourselves in the inner ...
... its best in its own sphere, still it had and was a limitation, acted as a deterrent to a further leap and progress of the consciousness. It is the humanistic cycle that has reigned, from ancient Greece down to modern America. Is it not time that Page 3 another consciousness should intervene, other gods make their appearance? * * * And yet if the civilisation really ...
... ancient nation will assert itself and through whatever vicissitudes re-establish health and harmony: for that soul's mission is yet to be done. Like the individual a nation too dies. Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Babylon and Chaldea are no more. What has happened to their souls, it may be asked. Well, what happens to the soul of the individual when Page 58 the body falls ...
... GANDHARVAS,the,50 Ganges , the, 106, 150, 266,268, 286 Gargi,50 Gautama. 2.36 Page 311 Gita, the, 5, 38, 68, 112 Greece , 103 Gundari, 258 Gupta, Robi, 192 HAMLET, 72 Heruka, 268 Himalaya , 237, 281n. Hiranyagarbha, 143, 256 Hugo, Victor, 191 ...
... wrong to say that it is the Hellenic culture which has been moulding humanity for ages; at least, it is this which has been the predominating factor, the vital and dynamic element in man's nature. Greece when it died was reborn in Rome; Rome, in its return, found new life in France; and France means Europe. What Europe has been and still is for the world and humanity one knows only too much. And yet ...
... countries at different times, starting with tribal life (Red Indians, present day aborigines, Eskimos, nomads of Arabia), then proceeding with ancient Egypt, India, China, Pre-Colombian civilizations, Greece, Rome, Japan and other countries at various epochs. The heuristic work of the work-sheets will be carried out with the help of pictures, and a book or two (encyclopedias). The documentation may also ...
... (Laughter) (After a pause) Ayurveda is the first system of medicine; it originated in India. Medicine, mathematical notation and astrology all went from India to Arabia, and from there they travelled to Greece. There three humours of which Hippocrates and Galen speak are an Indian idea. Disciple : At Calcutta and other places they are trying to start Ayurvedic schools. I think it is good. It will ...
... of teaching was to send him out driving the cows. How does Seal reconcile that with any modern method ? The main basis 'in India was spiritual in contrast to the Greek ideal of education. In Greece it was intellectual and aesthetic. The Greeks tried to give intellectual training but not through giving information and teaching different subjects. They rather allowed the intellect to grow freely ...
... to him. SRI AUROBINDO (smiling) : He was the physician of the Gods; so that is nothing unnatural for him. Ayurveda was the first system of medicine. It was from India that this science went to Greece and then to Arabia. Indian physicians used to go to Arabia. What Hippocrates and Galen speak of as the three humours is an Indian idea. India also discovered the use of the zero with mathematical notations ...
... perhaps some "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought". Such an age of Reason and Ratiocination and pure brain power was ushered in by Buddha in India, and almost contemporaneously by Socrates in Greece and Confucius in China. The rational, that is to say, the scientific or analytical attitude to things appeared in the human consciousness for the first time in its fullness and almost exclusive sway ...
... ancient nation will assert itself and I through whatever vicissitudes re-establish health and harmony: for that soul's mission is yet to be done. Like the individual a nation too dies. Ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Babylon and Chaldea are no more. What I has happened to their souls, it may be asked. Well, what happens to the soul of the individual when the body falls away? The soul returns ...
... beauty. Their life was beautiful. The one thing that modern Europe has not taken from the Greeks is beauty. You can't say modern Europe is beautiful. In fact, it is ugly. What can be said of ancient Greece can be said also of ancient India. She had beauty, which she has since lost. The Japanese are the only race that can be said to have preserved beauty in their life. But now even they are fast losing ...
... a serene and yet vigorous and organized rational mind, coupled with a wonderful felicity of expression in speech, – that one turns when one thinks of the special gift that modern France and ancient Greece have brought to the heritage of mankind. Again, the Japanese, as a people, have developed to a consummate degree the sense of beauty, especially as applied to life and living. No other ...
... seems. Do they anticipate a British invasion through it? SRI AUROBINDO: No, it is more a move towards the Balkans by Germany, if it is also true that Italy has concentrated troops in Albania against Greece. PURANI: But war on two fronts will be costly for Germany. SRI AUROBINDO: But how can the British help there? They have no army to spare unless Turkey joins and brings her troops. PURANI: ...
... of the West you find that if they accept democracy, it is democracy alone; all the rest is set against it. If they take to monarchy, then monarchy is all in all. The same thing happened in ancient Greece. They fought for democracy, aristocracy, monarchy—and in the end they were conquered by the Romans. SATYENDRA: Then what is the truth in all these attempts at political organisation? SRI AUROBINDO: ...
... Spain to join him so that the English army in Africa will be caught between two forces. . PURANI: Yes, that is why England is trying to hurry up the Libyan campaign so that it can move its forces to Greece. EVENING Dara has reported that Roosevelt in his speech mentioned three things, one of which was freedom from care. SRI AUROBINDO: Freedom from care? Is it material or spiritual freedom? Take ...
... 1940-contd Talks with Sri Aurobindo 17 AUGUST 1940 PURANI: Italy is trying to foment trouble in Greece. SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, and she says it is for the sake of the Albanians. Wonderful people these! NIRODBARAN: I asked Ajit Chakravarty his opinion about Dilip's poetry and why Dilip is not appreciated in Bengal. He says that Dilip has not been able ...
... Would you say that the Sannyasi who committed suicide in the story about Alexander engaged in an act of sin? DR. MANILAL: I don't know the story. SRI AUROBINDO: When Alexander was returning to Greece he wanted to take with him two Sannyasis. One refused, the other accompanied him. But after some time the latter had a severe attack of colic. He said his body was betraying him. So he decided to give ...
... spoken on Sunday mornings redolent of 'the holy hush of ancient sacrifice' before less than a dozen attentive listeners in a quiet room in remote Pondicherry. The Socratic dialogues in ancient Greece had a like seminal quality, but there the accent was on enlightened reason, whereas with the Mother the inspiration was spiritual. Again, at Pondicherry, it was a select but representative group ...
... illumination, because there was a woman walking in front of me and truly she knew how to walk. How lovely it was! Her movement was magnificent!" And Mirra was reminded of the splendours of ancient Greece.41 Wasn't it one of the archetypes of Beauty materialised below? A vestige of the Divine incarnated in a woman? A fresh affirmation of the Divine omnipresence? It was as though Mirra had been surprised ...
... at night. Disciple : What medicine has been given to him for his perennial sickness? Disciple : That is a secret. Sri Aurobindo : That reminds me of the science of Augurs in Greece. There used to be Government Augurs who used to be called in to interpret omens and signs; and from that a college of Augurs came into existence. There – in the college the professors used to be quite ...
... the writers of the librettos of the great operas are not classed among poets. In Asia the attempt to combine song-quality with poetic value has been more common, but this is not essential. In ancient Greece also lyric poetry was often composed with a view to being set to music. But still poetry and song-writing, though they can be combined, are two different arts. “The difference is not that poetry ...
... machine gun attacks in Khartoum, Athens, Fiumi- cino. There was a coup d'etat in Afghanistan, a coup d'etat in Chile, terrorism in Ireland. Students were demonstrating in Barcelona, in Bangkok, in Greece. There was the Cultural Revolution in Libya, the Cultural Revolution in China. There were droughts in the Sahel, the devaluation of the dollar, Watergate. It was the fifteenth Chinese nuclear explosion ...
... even more of a fragment than The Maid in the Mill, for a ! solitary scene (II.i) alone has survived. The legendary Brutus (Aeneas' grandson) delivered the displaced Trojans from their captivity in Greece, and took them to Page 153 the far-off island, named after him Britain, to establish a new Troy there. Sri Aurobindo's play was meant to present the struggle between the descendants ...
... of the Veda. ..." This Hinduism was so deep-rooted in the peoples of the subcontinent that in the 1880s, James Rutledge 1 wrote a long article from which we quote a little: "The Mythology of Greece 1. A correspondent of The Times, and the editor of the Friend of India (The Statesman). Page 55 and Rome is nowhere. The bloody religious rites of our own forefathers ...
... local young woman who their ancient gods were. She shuddered. "Oh, they are not 'gods'! they are 'devils.' " That is how the Church Fathers converted the old 'pagan' gods into demons and devils, from Greece to the remotest island in the Pacific. Thereby erasing their cultural past. Thereby cutting off peoples from their roots. Thereby obliterating from the converts' consciousness any attachment to their ...
... no such practice in the Indian society, although there was no official bar. In the Egyptian society woman had a remarkable status, almost equal to that of man and far more advanced than in Rome or Greece. It was with the advent of Muslims and their barbaric ways that women in India were shackled. For to the Mussulmans woman is the property of man. A few centuries of habit built up a multi-storied ...
... which are the natural results, still attainable & Page 343 repeatable in our own experience, of an ancient type of Yoga practised certainly in India, practised probably in ancient Greece, Asia Minor & Egypt in prehistoric times." For those who cared to follow "the clue I have myself received, the path and its principal turnings," the signposts were clearly indicated. It was ...
... thing happened with the Greek and Roman civilisations. PURANI: Could it be that some higher beings took birth and built the Greek civilisation? SRI AUROBINDO: How? The Greek civilisation was not spiritual. It was intellectual and aesthetic; it was more subtle and delicate than the Roman civilisation, which was more massive and had more strength and discipline than the Greek. That is why it lasted... lasted longer than the Greek civilisation. EVENING Purani spoke of some healer with occult power somewhere in Uttar Pradesh—an educated man. He had performed many miraculous cures, even cures of mad people. The cases had been verified by Abhay. But one thing peculiar was that he didn't have that descent of power after food, so there was no cure after eating. SRI AUROBINDO: The physical may not ...
... Evolution THE appearance of the Greeks on the stage of human civilisation is a mystery to historians. They are so different from all that preceded them. There does not seem to exist any logical link between them and the races from whom they are supposed to have descended or whose successors they were. The Minoan or Cretan civilisation is said to be cradle of the Greek, but where is the parallel or ... Page 219 mythopoeic, clairvoyant, clairaudient (although not very clear, in the modern and Greek sense), bringing into this world things of the other world and pushing this world as much as possible into the other, maintaining a kind of direct connection and communion between the two. The Greeks are of another mould. They are a rational people; they do not 'I move and act simply or mainly by... philosophy, the age of pure and abstract ideas, of the analytic language. A significant point to note is that it was in the Greek language that the pre-position, the backbone almost of the analytical language, started to have an independent and autonomous status. With the Greeks dawned the spirit of Science. In India we meet a characteristic movement. As I said the Vedas represented the Mythic Age ...
... digamma in Greek in the time of Alexander. But since the Greeks are always called Page 343 Yavanas in Buddhist writings we will waive the demand for strict philological intelligibility and suppose that Yavana answers to 'Iάων. The question yet remains when did the Hindus become acquainted with the existence of the Greeks. Now here the first consideration is why did they call the Greeks Ionians... took the word Yavana from, it must have been through the Persians and not direct from the Greek language. But the connection of the Persians with India was as old as Darius Hystaspes who had certainly reason to know the Greeks. It is therefore impossible to say that the Indians had not heard about the Greeks as long ago as 500 B.C. Even if they had not, the mention of Yavanas & Yavan kings does not... identical with the Greek σῦριγξ that the account in the Adi Purva of the Pandavas' escape from the burning house of Purochana through an underground tunnel must be later than another account in the Vana Purva which represents Bhema as carrying his brothers & mother out of the flames; for the Page 342 former they say, must have been composed after the Indians had learned the Greek language & culture ...
... whether we find these significances in Greek. I have said that the consonants m and l do not change; on the other hand, the vowel a is subject to several modifications in Greek, indeed to almost all possible modifications. It appears sometimes as a , sometimes as o , sometimes as e , and each of these vowels may be lengthened by a common tendency in Greek to the corresponding diphthong αɩ,oν... lengthening of the a , eg mālā , mālya etc which would reappear in Greek either as long α or ω. These modifications I now take for granted, but I shall prove each of them by numerous Page 596 examples when I come to deal with the phenomena of phonetic change in the development of the Greek Prakrits. We find, then, in Greek the following derivatives of mal —μάλα ( mala ), much, very, e... The Root ‘Mal’ in Greek The first root I shall take, not at random but for the ease and generosity with which it assists our investigation, is the root mal , to flourish, bloom, etc. I choose this root for two strong reasons,—first, because it is common in full plentifulness of its derivatives to the three languages, Greek, Tamil and Latin, as well as to Sanscrit ...
... accomplished Latin scholar; he did not teach him Greek, but grounded him so well in Latin that the headmaster of St. Paul's school took up Aurobindo himself to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school. [At St. Paul's Aurobindo made the discovery of Homer.] The Head Master only taught him the elements of Greek grammar and then pushed him up into the Upper... It was my two brothers who studied there. I was taught privately by the Drewetts. Mr Drewett who was a scholar in Latin (he had been a Senior Classic at Oxford) 1 taught me that language (but not Greek, which I began at Saint Paul's, London), and English History etc.; Mṛṣ Drewett taught me French, Geography and Arithmetic. No Science; it was not in fashion at that time. Page 26 Aurobindo... with Mr and Mrs Drewett. Mr Drewett was a very fine classical scholar and taught him Latin and grounded him so firmly that the Head Master of St. Paul's after teaching him personally the elements of Greek which he had not yet begun to learn, put him at once from the lower into the higher school. There was no admiration expressed about his character. [ Another version: ] Sri Aurobindo never went ...
... India even in the pre-Buddhistic period, before the Greek influence. SRI AUROBINDO: What proof is there? It may be that they have shaken off the Greek influence and taken up a new line. Greek art had Egyptian influence, so why not Indian art? PURANI: Gandhara art may be Greek. SRI AUROBINDO: No, it is mixed. No scholar claims it to be pure Greek art. ...
... man's humanity is to be preserved and fostered, that is to say, his true humanity, that which distinguishes him from mere animality. The Greek ideal, according to Kahler, was an advance upon the animal man; it brought in the ideal of the rational man. And yet the Greek ideal, in spite of its acceptance of the whole man – mens sana in corpore sano – embracing as it did his physical, ethical and æ sthetic... , that is, ordering life according to a rational pattern. And then the Greek ideal was more for the individual; it was for the culture and growth of the individuality in man. Society was considered as composed of such individualised units. The degree of personal choice, of individual liberty, of free understanding that a Greek citizen enjoyed marked the evolution secured by man out of the primitive... individualisation of the self – given by the Greek culture – was the first step; the next step in evolution is the "collectivisation" of the self. It is not in the Nazi or Bolshevic sense that we have to understand the word: it does not equate with totalitarianism. The peril is there, no doubt. But there was danger in individualism too: and the Greek polity suffered from it. For individualism ...
... interesting are the parallel between Greek and Vedic accents and the rearrangement of Greek conjugations according to the Sanskrit classification. The common origin of Greek and Sanskrit is apparent enough, but like other philologists Mr. Ranade is far too sure of the conclusion he draws from it. I believe him to be right in thinking that the Indian Aryans and the Greeks came from one stock, but when he... represents them, correspondent equally with the dentals to the Greek tau, theta , and delta . Page 608 In the comparison of the declensions Mr. Ranade asserts that Greek feminine nouns in long a like chōrā correspond in their endings to Sanskrit nouns of the type of bhāryā and Greek nouns in long e like tīmē to Sanskrit nouns of the type of dāsī . Surely this is an error. The... us that there are no such compounds in Greek as in Sanskrit and again that there are no dvandva, karmadhāraya and bahuvrīhi compounds in Greek, Page 609 although there are verbs compounded with prepositions. I am at a loss to understand how so sound a scholar can have come to make a statement so contrary to all the facts. The power of the Greek language to make compounds is one of its ...
... five successive principles. Ether, not fire, is the first principle, ignored by the Greeks, but rediscovered by modern Science; 1 there follow air, fire, the igneous, radiant and electric energy, water, earth, the fluid and solid. The Sankhya, like Anaximenes, puts Air first of the four principles admitted by the Greeks, though it does not like him make it the original substance, and it thus differs... of the world by some kind of evolutionary change out of the original substance or energy, by pariṇāma , is common to the early Greek and the Indian systems, however they may differ about the nature of the original phusis . The distinction of Heraclitus among the early Greek sages is his conception of the upward and downward road, one and the same in the descent and the return. It corresponds to the... by the importance it gives to electricity and radio-active forces—Heraclitus' fire and thunderbolt, the Indian triple Agni—in the formation of atoms and in the transmutation of energy. But the Greeks failed to go forward to that final discrimination which India attributed to Kapila, the supreme analytical thinker,—the discrimination between Prakriti and her cosmic principles, her twenty-four tattwas ...
... see first that though the root is the same, nowhere do the form & sense entirely agree. The Greek has kept the form ana which the Sanscrit has lost, lost the form anu which the Sanscrit has kept. Both are without the form ani which must, logically, have existed (cf apa , api , Greek άπó & ἐπί). Greek has also the form ἄνω which corresponds to an OA [Old Aryan] anā and suggests at once long... which it has kept. We turn to the cognate Greek & Latin languages for a clue. We find in Latin a brief list of vocables obviously derived from the same root AN . anima , breath, wind, life, soul animal animus , mind anas , a duck annus , year ānulus , a ring anus , an old woman ānus , the fundament In Greek:— άνά up, above, upon, over, beyond;... preferring the significance “above & before” to that of “after & behind”& by adding a few significances which the Sanscrit has lost. But in both there is the same idea of extension & contiguity; the Greek fixes on extension in contact from above upward or in front, the Sanscrit on the same idea of extended contact from behind or downwards. The difference is eloquent of the real origins & processes of ...
... remember: a puritan virtue, a self-torturing ethicism, a bigoted and persecuting morality was never what the Greeks meant by Goodness. Greek Goodness had a grace about it, a wideness about it, a balance and harmony about it. The Greek ethical sense was fused with the Greek aesthetic sense just as the Greek sense of truth was always charged with a sense of proportion and symmetry and a lucid shapeliness as... attribution of thinking to the heart provides us with an insight into the Greek nature. The Greeks are often regarded as intellectuals out and out, but when we closely examine the character of their intellectuality we see a certain instinctive trend in it, a fine feeling for truth. It is not without significance that the Greeks identified the highest Truth with the highest Beauty and defined Virtue itself... as if truth could never be true unless it came living either in visible loveliness or in loveliness of moral nature and action. All this complexity-in-unity of the Greek mind expressed itself in Greek poetry which, according to Sri Aurobindo, dealt with life from one large viewpoint, that of the inspired reason and the enlightened and chastened aesthetic sense. Mark the epithet "inspired" affixed ...
... the prizes in King's College in one year for Greek and Latin verse etc. Young Aurobindo had thus achieved rare academic distinctions at a very early age. He had mastered Greek and Latin and English, and he had also acquired sufficient familiarity with continental languages like German, French and Italian.... [ Altered to: ] He had mastered Greek and Latin, English and French, and he had also ...
... and Greek and Latin have words of greater length than French. It is natural then that the staple line in Greek and Latin should have the hexameter's fifteen syllables, and that French should have the twelve-syllabled alexandrine as the staple line and English the ten-syllabled iambic pentameter. Homer has an average of five words to his hexameter, which means that the average length of a Greek word... called the alexandrine. The hexameter has Greek and Latin associations and is based on the ancient model of five dactyls and a closing spondee (or trochee): Tumtiti tumtiti tumtiti tumtiti tumtiti tumtum (or tumti). Of all the line-lengths the pentameter is the staple one in English, whereas the staple in French is the alexandrine and that in Latin or Greek the hexameter. This difference has its... monosyllables: "grey Greek" can substitute "Argive", "loud sea" replace "Ocean", "deep heart" stand instead of "bosom". Yes, English can give fine effects by monosyllables and uniquely wonderful ones in a pentameter. But the monosyllabic character of much of English, plus its Teutonic base, has its disadvantages too. Sometimes the combined simplicity and splendour that are natural to Greek and Latin, even ...
... It was the High Master, Dr. Walker, who examined Sri Aurobindo and elected him. He found the boy so well grounded in Latin and other subjects that he "took up Aurobindo himself to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school." Dr. Walker was "a heavy and formidable figure, with bushy white beard, gleaming eyes, resonant voice, a strong smell of Havannah... 138 their work being too easy for them; and it brought them quickly to the top classes, where the work done had an interest of its own." Thus A. A. Ghose, who had not been taught any Greek by Rev. Drewett, was coached in it in the 'special' class, and as he was found to be exceptionally intelligent, he was pushed up rapidly into the upper forms. The most formative years of Sri A... on Sri Aurobindo, asked, "How was that?" Sri Aurobindo replied, "Because I was reading novels and poetry. Only at the examination time I used to prepare a little. But when now and then I wrote Greek and Latin verses my teachers would lament that I was not utilizing my remarkable gifts because of laziness." Even a cursory glance at some of his class reports will bear out Sri Aurobindo's own ...
... hears both sides and seems to decide partly on his own responsibility, partly according to the general sense of the assembly. The opinion of the Council was not decided by votes, an invention of the Greeks, but as in the older Aryan systems, was taken individually from each Councillor. The King was the final arbiter and responsible for the decision, except in nations like the Yadavas where he seems to... the times, for we find that the Buddhist records preserve to us the true form of ancient Indian polity. The nations among whom Buddha lived were free communities in which the people assembled as in Greek and Italian States to decide their own affairs. A still more striking instance of the political existence of the Commons is to be found in the Ramayana. We are told that on the occasion of the association... continuance of the democratic element in the constitution. The idea of representation had not yet been developed, and without the principle of representation democracy is impossible in a large State. The Greeks were obliged to part with their cherished liberty as soon as large States began to enter into the Hellenic world; the Romans were obliged to change their august and cherished institutions for the most ...
... Alexander the great Notes Plutarch Plutarch was one of the last classical Greek historians. He was born around AD 46 at Chaeronea in Boetia, and died sometime after AD 120. He was a student in the School of Athens, became a philosopher, and wrote a large number of essays and dialogues on philosophical, scientific and literary subjects (the Moralia)... Moralia). We know that he traveled widely in Egypt and went to Rome. Plutarch wrote his historical works relatively late in life, and his Parallel Lives of eminent Greeks and Romans is probably his best known and most influential work. As he states, his intention in the Lives was to write biography, not history as such, and this is reflected in the choice of his sources. He drew upon a very wide range of ...
... . There is an inter-relation, an inter-dependence; they all start logically from his fundamental view of existence itself and go back to it for their constant justification. As in Indian, so in Greek philosophy the first question for thought was the problem of the One and the Many. We see everywhere a multiplicity of things and beings; is it real or only phenomenal or practical, māyā, vyavahāra... Matter, Soul? or, since Matter has many principles, is it some one principle of Matter which has evolved all the rest or which by some power of its own activity has changed into all that we see? The old Greek thinkers conceived of cosmic Substance as possessed of four elements, omitting or not having arrived at the fifth, Ether, in which Indian analysis found the first and original principle. In seeking... image fixed in the Puranic mythus of Vishnu sleeping on the serpent Infinite in the milky ocean. But even as early as the Rig Veda, ether is the highest symbol of the Infinite, the apeiron of the Greeks; water is that of the same Infinite in its aspect as the original substance; fire is the creative power, the active energy of the Infinite; air, the life-principle, is spoken of as that which brings ...
... and theological terminology. However, in his opinion, the reassessment cannot touch the "evidence of the influence of the Greek world in his style... Paul knew Greek and had some sort of Greek training... Paul lived for roughly ten years in a Hellenistic atmosphere... This Greek atmosphere cannot be lightly dismissed. Its influence is seen in the figures and illustrations he uses". It would be indeed... publication with a "Nihil Obstat" from the church authorities, carries the same phrase. 10 Thus very plainly Paul, who wrote in Greek like the rest of the New-Testament authors, makes a difference between "brother" (Greek "adel-phos") and "cousin" ("anepsios" in the Greek original). If James were a cousin of Jesus and not a brother, Paul could Page 43 certainly be expected to... not in Hebrew but in Greek and is not at all,a translation from the Hebrew or its dialect Aramaic. The ambiguity of "achim" has no application here. The New Testament writers knew what they were talking about and used Greek words to mean what they wanted to communicate. Paul, Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, when speaking of Jesus' family, have written "adelphos" which is the Greek for "brother" 26 and ...
... Classics scholars of his year. Yes, Krishna Dhan Ghose's Ara had a most brilliant academic career. At the end of the first year at King's College he won a prize for Greek Iambics. At the end of the second year he was awarded prizes for Greek Iambics again, as well as for Latin Hexameters. Having distinguished himself in the College Examination in Classics, A. A. Ghose was given "books bearing the College... interest in games must have lessened his enjoyment of the place." There speaks the Englishman, although Sri Aurobindo may not have agreed with that opinion. "His interests were in literature: among Greek poets for instance he once waxed enthusiastic over Sapphic and he had a nice feeling of English style. Yet for England itself he seemed to have small affection; it was not only the climate that he... Mead. . . . He asked me, 'Dutt, aren't you a Bengali?' 'Yes, but why do you want to know?' I asked. 'During my days at Cambridge there was an extraordinary Indian student, with a profound knowledge in Greek and Latin, named Aurobindo Akroyd Ghose. I was acquainted with him, a very fine man; I got a lot of help from him for my studies. Do you know him? He was perhaps a Bengali.'" At the time Dutt had not ...
... house, only a few trunks, a table and a chair. On opening the drawers of the table he found only books and papers. On some of the papers Greek was written. He was very much surprised and asked if Sri Aurobindo knew Greek. When he came to know that he knew Latin, Greek and other European languages, his suspicion waned, yielding place to a great respect for Sri Aurobindo. He invited Sri Aurobindo to meet... Aurobindo's residence for a search. But when their Chief found there were Latin and Greek books lying about on his desk, he was so taken aback that he could only blurt out, '// salt du latin, ill suit du grec!'— 'He knows Latin, he knows Greek!'—and then he left with all his men. How could a man who knew Latin and Greek ever commit any mischief?" When the father-and-son pair failed in their efforts... Mother's Chronicles - Book Six 30 He Knows Latin, He Knows Greek Though Governor Duprat gave a certificate of good conduct to the British secret police stationed in Pondicherry, in reality its conduct was not all that good. Even if the French government thought that with the Bengal Partition undone the threat from violence would subside ...
... Chaldean. But Greek, for instance, which is relatively recent, is it a language of Aryan or Chaldean origin? Greek is entirely Aryan. Entirely Aryan. Egyptian is of Chaldean origin. Chaldean, yes. But everywhere there was an intermixture of Egyptian and Greek. The Phoenician language was older. From the point of view of the written language, it was earlier than Greek. But Phoenician... more recent peoples have spoken about them, the Greeks mention them, the Phoenicians speak of them; they had phonetic writing. But earlier than that? The first pharaohs and all those names of the gods, who discovered these? According to tradition it is Champollion, with the Rosetta Stone; they found a stone with inscriptions in Egyptian, Greek and Coptic, which enabled them to solve the problem... given for the words. Now, whether they know the exact pronunciation or not is another matter. They don't even know the pronunciation of ancient Greek. Greek? They don't know the pronunciation? They don't know how it used to be pronounced. Is the language of ancient Egypt contemporaneous with the earliest Sanskrit, or is it earlier still? And then, something else: was the cuneiform script ...
... exceptional merit: like an astute jeweller he knew the worth of a precious gem at a glance. He gave his personal attention to the boy and finding him to be well up in Latin but a little deficient in Greek, he helped him in this and other subjects, pushing him rapidly into the higher classes. Soon the boy caught the attention of other teachers by his quick intelligence and industry. He took an active... read all kinds of books outside of the school curriculum — poetry, novels; history, French literature — and even learning a few other European languages. From time to time he composed a poem or two in Greek or Latin, and then he would be complimented by the teachers, but generally they deplored his lack of attention to school studies. However, Sri Aurobindo did in fact find the class lessons quite easy... Nights which he read with great pleasure. In the final examination, the young scholar did very well, securing prizes in literature and history; he had already shown exceptional proficiency in Latin and Greek. Of his school career, perhaps the last word was said by Mr. Walker. When Sri Aurobindo's name came prominently before the British public in connection with the Alipore Bomb Trials, the old Head Master ...
... Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) Appendix - Poems in Greek and in French Collected Poems Greek Epigram μῶρος Ἔρως ἀλὰος θʹ · ὁ δ᾽ ὅμως ἅ γ ᾽ ἐνί φρεσί ϰεῖται ἡμῶν, ὀφθαλμοὺς ὤν ἀλαὸς ϰαθορᾷ. παῖ, σὺ γὰρ ἡδὺ γελῶν ἰοβόστρυχε ϰαλλιπρόσωπε, διϰτύῳ ἄνδρα ϰαλῷ ϰαὶ σοφὸν ἐξαπατᾷς. οὐδὲ σοφὸς περ ἀνὴρ σε, δολόπλοϰε, φύξιμος ...
... c. 1965 ( The opening of this letter is missing. It ends: ) For a long time, I have been under the impression that the Greek gods are superior to the Indian Gods. Is it only in their aesthetic expression? Greek thought and art are far more materialistic, less spiritual than Hindu art and thought; that is why the modern mentality understands it better. But the future ...
... Aphorism - 146, 147, 148, 149, 150 146—I find in Shakespeare a far greater and more consistent universalist than the Greeks. All his creatures are universal types from Lancelot Gobbo and his dog up to Lear and Hamlet. 147—The Greeks sought universality by omitting all finer individual touches; Shakespeare sought it more successfully by universalising the rarest individual ...
... about some of the metres in Sanskrit, I should now say something about Greek and Latin. Just as in Sanskrit the syllables are measured according to their quantity, on which the metres are based and their rhythm, so does Greek or Latin verse depend on the variations of vowel length. But there is a difference. The metrical foot in Greek or Latin prosody is a fixed unit, as in English, and it consists of... quotations from the original Greek, but let me recite the opening line of Homer's Iliad: Mênin a/iede, the/a, Pê/lê/iadêo Achi/lêos Many of you are no doubt acquainted with its rendering in English: Sing heavenly Muse, the wrath of Achilles, Peleus' son. Perhaps in this connection I may briefly allude to the difference between the rhythmic movements of Greek and Latin verse. The Latin... strong point. The Greek movement on the other hand is an undulating flow characterised by grace. Now here is the Latin – Tytire tu patuloes recubans sub tegmine fagi. Page 87 This gives an impression of hammer blows carving a statue in stone, the beauty of solid powerful form takes shape out of skilled consonantal assonances. But when we listen to the Greek– Mênin aeide ...
... to which one is subject). But भरन्तः from the root भृ does not mean here to fill, but is used in the older sense of to bear (cf भारः, Greek φέρω, Lat. fero). We may therefore more appropriately take नमो in the active sense of that which bends, controls; as in the Greek νóμος,—law, rule, mastery. The participle here used as a verbal adjective dispenses with the necessity of a finite verb. एमसि । ... the latter interpretation explains how Agni has the force to be the protector of all creatures here below. दमे । house, home, territory. Greek δóμος house; cf also δῆμος people or deme. The root is दम् to master, conquer, own, from which we have the Greek δμῶες (दमायाः), servants, δέμας (दमस्), body, δάμαρ, δάμαρτος wife (दम्रस्), δῆμος, territory or people conquered or owned, the Latin domus,... ἄϒω & S. अंग्), अंगारः a live coal, अंग् to stir, move; and in अंगिरः and अगस्ति,—the former term often applied to Agni. There was another signification, to cling, embrace, love, which we find in the Greek Page 525 ἀϒάπƞ, love, ἀϒανóς, tender, gentle, charming, which seems to have been another meaning of अंगिरः, loving, and appears in the mode of address अंग, in अंकः, अंगम् etc, & in अनंग ...
... rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman manuscripts, by the finding of antique statues, by their passion ate study of ancient "pagan" civilizations, the Italians aspired to free themselves from the burden of the Middle Ages. They looked at life in a new way, and they loved it; it had lost its taint of sin. And this finding reawakened in them the passionate curiosity of the Greeks; they eagerly turned... for which movement, which part of the body rests when another is at work, the proportions between the different limbs, etc. Painters as well as sculptors had been very enthusiastic about some Greek sculptures that had been recently unearthed in Rome. They also felt the urge to depict nude bodies, and even when the body was hidden by draperies, they wanted the anatomy of the body to show under ...
... about it she made a face and shrugged her shoulders! A very significant point is that the Amphitheatre gives the impression of old Roman and Greek architecture and culture, which is old and belongs to the past. The Matrimandir is not just another Roman, Greek or Indian temple. It is the Centre of the Truth-Consciousness, Force and Light. The Mother always emphasised the New World, the New Creation ...
... Statements Made in Biographies and Other Publications Autobiographical Notes Sources of His Philosophy Sri Aurobindo's intellect was influenced by Greek philosophy. Very little. I read more than once Plato's Republic and Symposium, but only extracts from his other writings. It is true that under his impress I rashly started writing at the age of... the principle of Beauty and Harmony, but I never got beyond the first three or four chapters. I read Epictetus and was interested in the ideas of the Stoics and the Epicureans; but I made no study of Greek philosophy or of any of the [? ]. I made in fact no study of metaphysics in my school and College days. What little I knew about philosophy I picked up desultorily in my general reading. I once read... a book on Bergson, but that too ran off "like water from a duck's back". I remembered very little of what I had read and absorbed nothing. German metaphysics and most European philosophy since the Greeks seemed to me a mass of abstractions with nothing concrete or real that could be firmly grasped and written in a metaphysical jargon to which I had not the key. I tried once a translation of Kant but ...
... scatter appears in Greek krinō , I sift, choose, judge, determine. Dakṣa has a similar history. It is kin to the root daś which in Latin gives us doceo , I teach, and in Greek dokeō , I think, judge, reckon, and dokazō , I observe, am of opinion. So also we have the kindred root diś meaning to point out or teach, Greek deiknumi . Almost identical with dakṣa itself is the Greek doxa , opinion... place for himself by violence on the earth he had come to inherit. We see this connection in the ordinary Sanskrit word for Page 71 strength, balam , which is of the same family as the Greek ballō , I strike, and belos , a weapon. The sense, strength, for dakṣa has the same origin. But this idea of division led up also in the psychology of language-development to quite another order... been first applied to distinguishing by the ocular sense and then to the act of mental separation,—discernment, judgment. Thus the root vid , which means in Sanskrit to find or know, signifies in Greek and Latin to see. Dṛś , to see, meant originally to rend, tear apart, separate; paś , to see, has a similar origin. We have three almost identical roots which are very instructive in this respect ...
... snatches, often intermixed, of nearly all the various manners and tempers compassed by Keats in his poetic career. There is the romantic mood of wonder and exultation, the penchant for Greek mythology and the Greek spirit in its movement towards the beautiful mingled with the sublime, the distant charm of Spenser, the Miltonic majesty, the Shakespearean * Much have I travelled in the realms... fourteener, but nowhere revives the surge and thunder of the multi-motioned yet sinuous and calmly controlled Greek hexameter. Yes, Keats hardly realised the difference, but some unconscious intuition brought into the three lines where he speaks of Homer something of the very accent of the Greek poet, while in the one line where he talks of Chapman we have precisely that Elizabethan's manner. The lines ...
... to the Greeks) reigned over the Indian interior about the Ganges and - at the head of the Gangetic peoples termed the Gangaridai by the Greeks - waited beyond the Ganges to give battle to Alexander if he should advance deeper into India. 315 B.C. The accession of Chandragupta I (known to the Greeks as Sandrocottus), founding the dynasty of the Imperial Guptas at Pātaliputra (Greek Palibothra)... from the Greeks and joins the Aramaic version to the ancient non-Greek Yonas. From certain practices attributed by a Buddhist Jataka to several Kambojas we understand that some of them must have followed the Mazdean religion. The Mazdean religion, in a specially orthodox form, intolerant of "daiva-worship", was just the one that would strictly exclude Bramanas and Śramanas. The Greeks never banished... look at the Greek version engraved in the blank space above the Aramaic, in preference to the one below. Linguistically, that version is datable to the period 275-225 B.C. Its contents are not so close as those of the Aramaic to the Indian incriptions of Aśoka. It appears to be a generalised translation of the Aramaic adapted to Greek needs. It must have been engraved as a result of Greek interest in ...
... l even when we do not know it. Indeed, I am convinced that when the Inconscient is conquered no more conditions will be required; all will be a free decision of the divine Grace. The Greeks had a keen and exceptional sense of beauty, of eurythmy, of harmony in forms and things. But at the same time they had an equally keen sense of men's impotence in face of an implacable Fate which none... compassion and grace made its appearance in Europe later with the Christian religion—whereas in Asia and especially in India it had long before been the very essence of Buddha's teaching. So in all the Greek stories, legends and tragedies we find this inexorable cruelty of the decrees of a Fate that nothing can deflect. The faith that goes to the Cosmic Divine is limited in the power of its action ...
... "Varuna" is answered by the Greek "Ouranos", so too "Vainya" must have sounded to the Greek ear like the Greek "Oinos" (wine), "Oine" (vine), "Oenos" (vinter). We may remember that Dionysus, because of his art of crushing grapes in the wine-press, came to be termed "Lenaios". The Greeks may have understood Prithu to have been designated "Vainya" for the same act. What is more, Greek legend knew of a King... And, indeed, would it not be odd that he should? When we know that the Greeks were writing for Greek readers, then, unless they give a warning about a change of meaning in the terms intelligible to such readers, we have to assume for "spring" or for any other season the meaning commonly attached to it in the Greek Calendar. The proof is to be found in Strabo himself. He (XV.1.13) 3 says:... Chantraine's edition which has the original Greek on one side and the French version on the other. 2 The Greek words used with both the republics whose years are given are: Thv.., Thv meaning "once...once" and rendered "une fois...une fois" by Chantraine. McCrindle has not been absolutely literal but his English idiom is essentially faithful to the Greek turn of speech. There is no denying that ...
... CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA, CHANDRAGUPTA I AND THE GREEK PICTURE OF SANDROCOTTUS A COMPARATIVE GLANCE AT THE RIVAL CLAIMS Even apart from the weighty chronological tilt from Megasthenes favouring the founder of the Imperial Guptas instead of the founder of the Maurya dynasty as the Indian original of the Greeks' Sandrocottus in the time of Alexander and his immediate successor... Sandrocottus: "Chandragupta does not appear to have been known to Megasthenes, and, for the matter of that, to most of the Greek writers as a scion of the Maurya family." ("Most" is an unconscious misnomer: "any" would be the mot juste.) Sometimes it is argued 2 that the Greeks do mention the Mauryas when they refer to a tribe named the Morieis. But if "Morieis" stands for the clan of Moriyas about... about which the Buddhist tradition 3 speaks and if Sandrocottus is Chandragupta Maurya, it is all the more difficult to understand how the Greek writers never associated it with Sandrocottus. Strange indeed that, aware of such a term, Megasthenes who lived at Palibothra and knew Sandrocottus personally should still omit to introduce it in his report. His ommission ought to lead us to feel certain ...
... have been carried on around the Sea of Galilee without the use of Greek....Moreover, Jerusalem too must have been bilingual. The most thorough study yet made of the use of Greek in ancient Palestine 6 concludes: 'The degree of a person's Hellenistic culture depended on his social standing. Probably the upper class knew Greek literature, the middle class was less conversant with it, while the knowledge... Christ * The text used everywhere in this article is the one originally published from Cambridge in 1899 as The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, according to the received Greek text together with the English Authorised Version (Photographic Reprint, 1922). Page 81 would be within the span of their lives and his own. 1 Paul makes a broad... to happen at any moment now. 1 Corinthians 16:22 sings the identical tune but with a more violent voice: "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha." "Anathema" is the Greek for "accursed", and "Maranatha" the Aramaic for "The Lord is at hand" or "Come, Lord!" Some Bible-students urge that Paul had no idea when the Last Day would arrive. In 1 Thessalonians 5:1 ...
... Sanskrit, along the same lines as item [2], followed by a detailed listing of derivatives of mal and related roots in Sanskrit and Greek with dictionary definitions. [4] Circa 1912 – 13. A list of Greek words with English definitions, partly duplicating the list of Greek words in the previous item; Sri Aurobindo also wrote a few similar Tamil words on facing pages (reproduced here in the right margin)... presumably refers to this item. Roots in M. “M” in the heading was written in Devanagari in the manuscript. The Root Mal in Greek . This item is one of the first in the “Origines Aryacae” notebook, preceded only by the title page, the notes on the root mal in Greek reproduced in the next section, and “Word- Formation”. Section Three: Philological Notes The notes published in this section... on the “secondary root” dal in Sanskrit and its cognates in Greek, Latin and Tamil are found together in a single notebook containing material probably written in 1912. Sri Aurobindo used this root-family as one of his first examples in both drafts of The Origins of Aryan Speech . [1] Sanskrit words with dictionary definitions.[2] Greek words with dictionary definitions.[3] Latin words with dictionary ...
... England gave him a wide introduction to the culture of ancient, of mediaeval and of modern Europe. He was a brilliant scholar Page 12 in Greek and Latin, | passed the Tripos in Cambridge in the first division, obtained record marks in Greek and Latin in the examination for the Indian Civil Service |. He had learned French from his childhood in Manchester and studied for himself Italian and... and inwardly becomes, and of that I have said nothing. I do not want to alter what I have written. If you like you can put a note of your own to the "occidental education" stating that it included Greek and Latin and two or three modern languages, but I do not myself see the necessity of it or the importance. June 1930 [5] I would prefer another form more in keeping with the tone of the ...
... a series. We had about a hundred of them, all classics of French literature Afterwards, I also bought from the secondhand bookshops in the Gujli Kadai area several books in Greek, Latin and French. Once I chanced on a big Greek lexicon which I still use," Nolini said in 1962. "Gradually, a few books in Sanskrit and Bengali too were added to our stock, through purchase and gifts." There being no bookshelves... with Moliere's L'Avare? Nolini had studied only Bengali and English in his school and college days. Here he continued to learn French, and having such a wonderful teacher he did not miss knowing Greek and Latin. "Sri Aurobindo has taught me a number of languages," Nolini said. "Here again his method has often evoked surprise. I should therefore like to say something on this point. He never asked... books written for children, but for adults, for those, that is, who had already had some education, the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I took up Greek, I began straightway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone. I began a translation of Antigone into Bengali and Sri Aurobindo offered to write a preface if I completed ...
... KAZANTZAKIS 'MODEL SEQUEL' Sri Aurobindo was an Indian who mastered classical Greek and so completely entered into the spirit of Homer's poetry that he attempted, as we saw in the previous chapter, a 'sequel' to the Iliad in English hexameters. Nikos Kazantzakis was a Cretan Greek who became a European and a man of the world and tried to cram into his life and work divers realms... realms and modes of experience. He knew (like Sri Aurobindo) many languages, he wrote fiction and poetry, he translated the epics of Homer, the Commedia and Faust into modern Greek, and (in 1945) he was for a time Minister of Education. Having come under Bergson's influence as a pupil, Kazantzakis was intrigued by the problem of evolution, and his life veered between action and introspection... was already a long established one in India at the time of the Buddha, and it is an unbroken tradition to this day. 63 The surprising thing is that such an idea should have occurred to a modern Greek writer, and that such a retreat should have filled him with creative purpose for the rest of his life. One result, and indeed for us the chief result, of Kazantzakis' mystic experience is this stupendous ...
... precisely. The difference between the Greek and Hindu temperaments was that one was vital, the other supra-vital; the one physical, the other metaphysical; the one sentient of sunlight as its natural atmosphere and the bound of its joyous activity, the other regarding it as a golden veil which hid from it beautiful and wonderful things for which it panted. 2 The Greek aimed at limit and finite perfection... line of poetical art I have chosen. The impression that Hindu Myth has made on you, is its inevitable aspect to a taste nourished on the pure dew and honey of Hellenic tradition; for the strong Greek sense of symmetry and finite beauty is in conflict with the very spirit of Hinduism, which is a vast attempt of the human intellect to surround the universe with itself, an immense measuring of itself... and gracious tenderness of feeling reach their climax, at once perceives how they vary with the hands which touch them. But you are right. The Hindu myth has not the warm passionate life of the Greek. The Hindu mind was too austere and idealistic to be sufficiently sensitive to the rich poetical colouring inherent in crime and sin and overpowering passion; an Oedipus or an Agamemnon stands therefore ...
... there was created, on the defection of the First Lords—the Asuric Quaternity—a second hierarchy of luminous beings—Devas, gods. (Something of this inner history of the world is reflected in the Greek legend of struggle between the Titans and the Olympians.) These gods, however, being a posterior creation, perhaps because they were young and inexperienced, could not cope immediately with their... mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras, Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance. However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of the Divine, for ...
... it occurs. Page 494 स । The static root स, signifying existence in rest, used as a pronoun, expresses a fixed object resting before the eyes. It is the original of the Greek article, ὁ, ἡ, τό, the Greek relative ὅς, ἥ, ὅ, (O.S. सः, सा, स), cf ὅτɩ because, and in the old Aryan and Vedic languages had not only the demonstrative force, but also when connecting two clauses, the relative... things and easily acquires significations on the one hand of strength, force, excellence, preeminence, brilliance, on the other of gentle contact, love, possession. Illustrative derivates are Latin and Greek ago, ἄϒω, to lead, drive, act; stir; move; ἀϒαθóς, excellent, good; S. अग्र, foremost, in front, Gr. ἄχρος, top, ἀχμή, extreme height, ἀχτή, extreme limit, border, coast; ἄϒαν, excessively (O.A. अगाम्);... means people or subjects, from another sense, to control, master, rule, cf ईश्); इडः as an epithet of Agni; ईडा, love, desire, prayer or praise; ईडनम्, adoration; ईड्य or ईडेन्य, adorable, desirable. Greek derivatives are ἰλαδóν, in a close throng, pressed together, εἴλƞ, a crowd, troop; εἰλέω, press together, gather, assemble, hem in; εἶλαρ, a stronghold, fortification. Page 489 The word ...
... Ambu's Correspondence Ambu's Correspondence with The Mother 6 April 1935 Ma, Who was Hermes? Hermes Trismegistus is the name given by the Greeks to a great initiate who founded in Egypt the occult science and was deified under the name of Thoth thousands of years ago. Love and blessings to my dear faithful Baby 6 April 1935 ...
... from thirty-five to fifty or sixty years after Jesus' death and at that time and even before it the general language of the Roman Empire was Greek. If the Gospels were meant to be widely read, Greek was the right tongue to be written in. Their composition in Greek does not at all "point to the suspicion that they might have been made up". (7) Yes, there were "other Gospels" than the ones we... in about 64 A.D. of the Christians, "a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition". Note the word "new". Suetonius's "Chrestos" (the Greek for "good") is merely the Greek-speaking world's easy alteration of the unfamiliar "Christos" (the Greek for "anointed"). Indeed the latter's derivative "Christiani" was frequently spelled "Chrestiani". There is no evidence of Christians before... inevitably have referred to it, particularly as he reported several skirmishes in the immediate vicinity of present-day Nazareth. Unfamiliar with Hebrew-Aramaic and with the topography of Palestine, Greek-speaking Christians of Matthew's and Luke's time traced to an imaginary city the word "Nazarene". In passing, it is worth remarking that no other instance is known of a sect being called after the home ...
... life and character in Roman Satires, the annalistic histories of Livy & Tacitus, the Letters of Cicero or Pliny, but in the more splendid & ambitious portions of Latin literature we get only the half Greek dress in which the Roman mind learned to disguise itself. Let us suppose that all historical documents, archives, records were destroyed or disappeared in the process of Time and the catastrophes of... picture of its life & civilisation and the story of its development adequately revealed in its best writing? Three European nations would survive immortally before the eyes of posterity, the ancient Greeks, the modern English and French, and two Asiatic nations, the Chinese & the Hindus,—no others. Of all these the Hindus have revealed themselves the most perfectly, continuously and on the most colossal ...
... provide a reasoned basis, built up on the facts of the old languages, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, German, Celtic, Tamil, Persian, Arabic, for a partial reconstruction, not of the original devabhasha, but of the latest forms commonly original to the variations in these languages. I shall take the four languages, Sanscrit, Greek, Latin and Tamil first, to build up my scheme and then support it by the four ...
... Arabic satin, Greek sindon and Hebrew sadin, which becomes evidence for trade between Harappa and Mesopotamia and of an Aryan clement in the Harappan Culture, Sethna was not satisfied. It struck him as peculiar that where the Sanskrit karpasa, cotton, produced Hebrew and Greek analogues, that same product should be given a different name in Assyrian, Hebrew and Greek. So he wrote to... important of these is the supposed linking of the Greeks with Asoka. Sethna's penetrating insight reveals that the Asokan "yona raja" Amtiyoka of Rock Edict XIII cannot refer to a Greek king and that the dating of this edict proposed by Bhandarkar is quite mistaken even on the basis of the current chronology. Next the Asokan inscription in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar is analysed and the conclusion... who informed him that the Akkadian word was not sindhu at all but sintu, referring to woollen garments and having no relationship at all with India or the Indus! Kramer also denied that the greek sindon and the Hebrew sadin could be equaled with sintu or sindhu,. Thus, what had seemed to be a sure linguistic proof of Aryanism in Harappan Culture was exposed through Sethna's relentless ...
... mingle and there can be a multi-faceted distinctness and a crowded accuracy. You mention Greek poetry as being the opposite of the involved and the complex. I must admit Greek poetry to be superb and to be in the main, despite Aeschylean and Pindaresque elements, "clarity winged with beauty". But I wonder what the Greeks would have thought of Shakespeare at his most Elizabethan, at his extreme of mercurial... More or less the same, I suspect, as what Voltaire did. The French have an intellect very much like that of the Greeks, though in other respects they are very different, and most probably Aristotle would have proclaimed like Voltaire that Shakespeare was a drunken barbarian. And would the Greeks have got hold of the Romantic Movement in its Shelleyan, ethereally entangled aspects by the right end? And... uncomplex? Are the formations of the life-force quite straightforward? The important point appears to be that whatever the complexity there must be a harmonious working, a fine unity of effect — what the Greeks called the quality of being felt as a whole. The means for achieving such an end can be elaborate or ingenuous, multiply-wrought or plain-built, highly coloured or crystal-clear, remote in suggestion ...
... with a Greek name is the same as a Latin or Greek metre with that name—an equivoque based on the fiction that a stressed and an unstressed English syllable are Page 152 quantitatively long and short. There is a certain kind of general equivalence, but a fundamental difference—as those who have tried to find an equivalent in the English stress system to the quantitative Latin or Greek hexameter... find any worth stealing. But all the same, if that applies to Shakespeare, Homer, Virgil, what about Alcaeus, Sappho, Catallus, Horace? they did a good deal of inventing or of transferring—introducing Greek metres into Latin, for example. I can't spot a precedent in modern European literature, but there must be some. And after all, hang precedents! A good thing—I mean, combining metric invention with perfect... phrase येन तेन प्रकारेण; I can't for the life of me see how anyone can say that the ये ते रे or the का there are naturally short to the ear, but long by stylisation. The classical languages (Sanskrit, Greek, Latin) are perfectly logical, coherent and consistent in the matter of quantity; they had to be because quantity was the very life of their rhythm and they could not treat longs as shorts and shorts ...
... the new god, to sum up the career and destiny of Polydaon... Page 113 [ Sri Aurobindo struck through "the new god" and wrote: ] The new brilliant god is the new Poseidon, Olympian and Greek, who in Polydaon's vision replaces the terrible old-Mediterranean god of the seas. Perseus is and remains divine-human throughout. ...
... Christ" (1:11-12). 5 Brown, 6 after noting Evans's gloss, ponders how precisely "appeared to" should be interpreted in the visibility it involves. He reflects on the Greek ophthe: "A study of this verb in the Greek Bible shows that it covers a wide range of visual experience including contacts with supernatural beings such as God and angels, so that it does not have to imply Page... facts: Page 263 "Paul was a Jew with a Greek cultural background which he had possibly begun to acquire when a boy in Tarsus and which was certainly reinforced by repeated contact with the Graeco-Roman world; this influence is obvious not only in his logical method but also in his language and style. He sometimes quotes Greek writers, 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 1:12; Acts 17:28, and... wave after wave, Ephesians 1:3-14; Colossians 1:9-12, has a precedent in hellenistic religious literature. The Greek that was a second mother tongue to Paul (cf. Acts 21:40), that he was able to use so familiarly with only occasional semitisms, was a cultured form of the koine, i.e. the Greek of his own day..." Paul's Graeco-Roman culture fused with his Pharisee-faith and his borrowing from ...
... dash themselves in vain as if it were a bird snared by a monstrous Fowler in a dim-lit and fantastic cage. Page 158 All times and nations have felt or played with the idea of Fate. The Greeks were pursued by the thought of a mysterious and ineffable Necessity presiding over the divine caprices of the gods. The Mahomedan sits calm and inert under the yoke of Kismet. The Hindu speaks of Karma... the living; pressure of environment comes in as a third Fate to take from us the little chance of liberty we might still have snatched out of this infinite coiling of forces. The triple Moirai of the Greeks have been re-enthroned with other masks and new names. We believe once more in a tremendous weaving of our fate, but by the measured dance of immense material Powers. It is the old gods again, but... the freest believer in free-will. It is not our intellectual ideas that govern our action, but our nature and Page 159 temperament,—not dhī , 1 but mati or even manyu , or, as the Greeks would have said, thumos and not nous . On the other hand a great man of action will often seize on the idea of Fate to divinise to himself the mighty energy that he feels driving him on the ...
... Philology Philological Notes Vedic and Philological Studies Notes on Phonetic Transformations Greek Origins. The following rules govern normally the transliteration of the Old Sanscrit into the Greek Prakrit. There are however other variations. Vowels. अ becomes α ε or o , normally, but these short vowels may be lengthened by the old ...
... used adverbially. पुर् meant door, gate, front, wall; afterwards, house or city; cf. the Greek πύλƞ, pule, a gate, πύλος, pulos, a walled city or fort, πύλɩς, a city; so in front. हितम् is the participial adjective from the root हि in the sense of to cast down, throw down, plant, place, which appears in Greek as χέω cheo, I pour (हया:). पुरो हितम् means therefore set or planted before. यज्ञस्य ।... in other paths of Yoga. Whatever Yoga is adopted, sahaituka tapas is of the first importance to full siddhi. स । Sa is here used much in the sense of "who",—it is the Greek ὅς (originally σóς though by a common law in Greek the s has been worn into an aspirate), and it gives the reason for the adoration of Agni. देवान् । The gods of the lower functions in the body, prana, mind and vijnana... the primary root इ, Greek ἶφɩ, ἴφθɩμος, ἴς (ἴνα), इन्द्र, ईर् to utter, force out, etc. The adverb used is especially appropriate to the action of the god of tapas; it is in strength, by the force of tapas that he supports all the gods. वक्ष्यति । The root is वह् + ष, and ष in old Sanscrit gave a habituative or desiderative sense, the two being kin to each other, cf the Greek φɩλεῖ, meaning both ...
... supposes a period in India in which thought took the form or the veil of secret teachings such as those of the Greek mysteries. Another hiatus left by the received theories is the gulf that divides the material worship of external Nature-Powers in the Veda from the developed religion of the Greeks and from the psychological and spiritual ideas we find attached to the functions of the Gods in the Upanishads... origin or function of some other Gods is less trenchantly clear, it is easy to render the obscure precise by philological inferences or ingenious speculation. But when we come to the worship of the Greeks not much later in date than the Veda, according to modern ideas of chronology, we find a significant change. The material attributes of the Gods are effaced or have become subordinate to psychological... n. We see the same revolution effected in the Puranas partly by the substitution of other divine names and figures, but also in part by the same obscure process that we observe in the evolution of Greek mythology. The river Saraswati has become the Muse and Goddess of Learning; Vishnu and Rudra of the Vedas are now the supreme Godhead, members of a divine Triad and expressive separately of conservative ...
... yet the homelessness of me. I move a stranger whose horizon flies Hither and thither, settles on no sea Guarding and lulling one dear and alone. Fire-cult that neighboured the Greek world of thought Burns through my Persian blood to Europe's large Earth-richness; India's infinite Unknown Lures up the same fire-cry—both stay uncaught. My country's a future where ...
... Poetry and Its Creation Poetry and Its Creation Poetic Technique Letters on Poetry and Art Greek and Latin Classical Metres Acclimatisation of Classical Metres in English In the attempt to acclimatise the classical scansions in English, everything depends on whether they are acclimatised or not. That is to say, there must be a spontaneous, natural,... rarely in English rhythm. The line is divided by a caesura, and the variations of the caesura are essential to the harmony of the verse. An example of Alcaics from the Jivanmukta (Alcaics is a Greek metre invented by the poet Alcaeus): In the Latin it is: But in English, variations (modulations) are allowed, only one has to keep to the general plan. Swinburne's Sapphics are ...
... there was created, on the defection of the First Lords – the Asuric Quaternity – a second hierarchy of luminous beings – Devas, gods. (Some-thing of this inner history of the world is reflected in the Greek legend of struggle between the Titans and the Olympians.) These gods, however, being a latter creation, perhaps because they were young and inexperienced, could not cope immediately with their strong... mythological legends the gods very often worsted at the hands of the Asuras: Indra hiding under the sea, Zeus threatened often with defeat and disaster. It is only an intervention from the Supreme (the Greeks called it Fate) that saved them in the end and restored the balance. However, the Asuras came to think better of the game and consented to use their freedom on the side of the Divine, for the fulfilment ...
... about Augustus (so Eduard Norden in Deissmann, p. 366, n. 8), the analogy with the use of the term by Mark and the other evangelists is evident. The full Greek text is in Wilhelm Dittenberger, Orientis Graeci Inscriptiones Selectae [Selected Greek Inscriptions from the Orient], Vol. 2, no. 458 (reprinted, Hildesheim: Olms, 1960), lines 40-79 (the point at which the passage under study appears). ... compatriots to one felt to be of extraordinary greatness, as if sent by Heaven on a sovereign mission. A further point of interest and significance in the comparison arises from the use of the Greek word euangelion in regard to Jesus by Paul and the other writers of the New Testament. This word, translated "Gospel" in English, connoting "Glad Tidings" or "Good News", is illuminated the most by... from the deep heart of religious aspiration, it brought also a threat to the existing progressive elan of the European consciousness. There was the danger of its submerging the glory that was the Greek mind of inspired reason and chastened aesthetic sense and the grandeur that was the Roman vitality building a manifold order, instituting laws, moulding strength of character and striking out pathways ...
... Madhu Sudan Dutt, besides English, Bengali and Sanskrit, studied Greek, Latin, Italian and French, and wrote the last naturally and with ease. Toru Dutt, that unhappy and immature genius, who unfortunately wasted herself on a foreign language and perished while yet little more than a girl, had, I have been told, a knowledge of Greek. At any rate she could write English with perfect grace and correctness... note of a Renascence, a burning desire for Life, Life in her warm human beauty arrayed gloriously like a bride. It was the note of the sixteenth century, it is the note of the astonishing return to Greek Paganism, which is now beginning in England and France; and it was in a slighter and less intellectual way the note of the new age in Bengal. Everything done byte men of that day and their intellectual ...
... of sweet and serious rhyme, Traveller with calm, inimitable paces, Critic with judgment absolute to all time, A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. ...
... hanumāṁśca vibhīṣanaḥ krpaḥ paraśurāmśca saptaite cirajivīnaḥ. 2 Mahābhārata, vanaparva, sarga 295. 3 Manasāmaṅgal. 4 Babylonian myth. 5 Greek legend. 6 Katha Upanishad. 7 8 Greek mythology. 9 Mahābhārata, ādiparva. Page 329 to have escaped death and been bodily assumed to heaven. 1 But, alas, all these are... expressing perhaps the wish-fulfilment of the human race but bringing no definite succour or message of hope to death-stricken man. Where can be found the Indian soma or the Iranian haoma or the Greek nectar that would confer the boon of immortality on man? Paracelsus, the great alchemist, claimed to have discovered the elixir of life that would indefinitely prolong one's earthly existence; but ...
... and Their Worlds Do the gods of the Puranas and the gods of Greek and Egyptian mythology have any real existence? Between the gods of the Puranas and the gods of Greek and Egyptian mythology, all kinds of similarities are found; it could be an interesting subject for study. To the modern Western world, all these divinities—the Greek gods and other "pagan" gods, as they call them—are simply a product ...
... aspect. For although Nietzsche is by birth a Slavo-Teuton, by culture and education he is pre-eminently Hellenic. His earliest works are on the subject of Greek tragedy and form what he describes as an "Apollonian dream." And to this dream, to this Greek aesthetic sense more than to any thing else he sacrifices justice and pity and charity. To him the weak and the miserable, the sick and the maimed are ...
... Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body The Greek hero Heracles slaying the Nemean lion Strength Introduction Man, and particularly modern man, is the weakest of the large animals. If he has come to dominate the terrestrial creation it is by the power of his mind rather than the strength of his frame. And yet, at the beginning of his long journey... stone cubes or stone wheels fitted with a handle to grip. They would repeatedly Page 348 lift sand bags with either hands or legs long before barbells were invented. The ancient Greeks also put a great emphasis on the body. They worshipped Health, Beauty and Strength. Mythical heroes of fabulous strength like Atlas or Heracles were emulated in real life by characters almost as formidable ...
... that Tagore is to Bengali literature what Shakespeare is to English, Goethe to German, Tolstoy to Russian, or Dante to Italian and, to go into the remoter past, what Virgil was to Latin and Homer to Greek or, in our country, what Kalidasa was to ancient Sanskrit. Each of these stars of the first magnitude is a king, a paramount ruler in his own language and literature, and that for two reasons. First... have taken a turn that is almost an about-turn. But this revolution was not caused by a single person. Dante and Homer are the creators, originators or the peerless presiding deities of Italian and Greek respectively. Properly speaking Tagore may not be classed Page 177 with them. But just as Shakespeare may be said to have led the English language across the border or as Tolstoy ...
... yoke of steeds, and fashioned for the Aswins a spacious car of ease." प्रमतिः. Throughout the Veda I take प्रमतिः in its simple and obvious etymological sense of प्रज्ञा, mental knowledge. The Greek & Latin sense of प्र, beforehand, need not be premised of the Sanscrit particle. The force of प्र in प्रमतिः and प्रज्ञा comes from the idea of the object of knowledge standing before the mind & the... (4) in light & splendour. From (1) we have the idea of excellence, virtue, nobility, lordship, honour, lifting, leading, height in अर्य, आर्य, अर्घ, अर्च्, अर्ह. The Tamil aran, aram (virtue), the Greek ἄρɩστος, αἴρω, ἄρχω, ἄρχομαɩ, ἀρετή, ὄρος a mountain; from (2) the sense fight, slay or hurt, oppress, in अर्, अर्व्, अर्ब्, अर्द्, अरि, Ares, अराति, arma, अररः, and plough, work, row, propel in अर्... & appropriate to take the word in the sense "he attains safety", cf Lat. tutus, tueor etc, but it is more likely to be "he attains vigour" or "is in full force, prospers". अश्रोति. अश् is the Greek ἔχω. It means to have, possess, & so to enjoy, to eat. This instance of its use shows how these meanings developed out of each other. "Evil cannot have him or hold him, cannot possess him" with a strong ...
... Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) Appendix - Poems in Greek and in French Collected Poems Sur les grands sommets blancs Sur les grands sommets blancs, astre éteint et brisé, Seul dans l'immense nuit de son cœur désolé, L'érémite Amita, l'homme élu par les dieux, Leva son vaste front comme un ciel vers les cieux, Et ...
... Through Persia Vedanta put its stamp on Judaism, through Judaism, Christianity and Sufism on Islam, through Buddha on Confucianism, through Christ and mediaeval mysticism and Catholic ceremonial, through Greek and German philosophy, through Sanscrit learning and [ sentence left incomplete ] Page 413 ...
... in our times Davies, some of whose verse we have quoted. Timur the terrific conqueror was lame — and Marlowe in his Tamburlane made the Tartar look even more terrific by some of his similes. The Greek god Hephaestus had also an abnormal leg, but Sri Aurobindo in his Ilion brings out his godhead all the same when he describes how from the conference of the deities before the final battle at Troy... pathetic lines a lover ever spoke, pathetic by a heart-breaking homeliness verging on naivete. You may have heard of Troilus and Cressida. Troilus was a Trojan, a brother of Hector, and Cressida was a Greek girl. She had sworn fidelity, and Troilus had given her a brooch as a sign of his love. Once he sees on the coat of Diomedes this very gift of his to Cressida. He says to her: Through which I see... and so long as we remain there we have a greater vision in a more lustrous air and we feel ourselves raised to a semi-divine stature." 1 But how shall we have an idea of Homeric poetry? It is in Greek and to translate great poetry we need a great poet in the new language. Also, Homer wrote in quantitative hexameters and unless we translate him in hexameters of a genuine inspiration and with something ...
... n and deep emotion. This is the character of Milton's poetry, which is based upon Greek & Latin models. Pope and his school aimed at correctness & restraint without high imagination and deep emotion; their poetry is therefore not really classical. Gray, Collins and Akenside endeavoured by study of Milton & the Greek writers to recover the true classical style. They were however all greatly hampered... supernatural into poetry. This is partly done by carrying the eighteenth-century habit of personification to an almost ridiculous extreme, but more successfully by dwelling like Milton on the images of Greek mythology, as in the Hymn to the Naiads, or Gray's earlier poems, especially the Progress of Poesy; also by dwelling on the ideas of the Celtic romantic fancy, such as ghosts, fairies, spirits as in... school departed most radically from Pope. They rejected French influence altogether & were little influenced by the inferior Latin poets; they were above all things Hellenists, lovers & followers of Greek literature; the English poet who influenced them most was Milton whom Johnson considers to be rough in his verse & language; Gray even declared the diction of Shakespeare to be the true poetic diction ...
... tendency, the Elizabethans of the second. The earlier work of Shakespeare abounds with classical instances. As distinguished from the Greek, English is a pronouncedly rajasic literature and, though there is much in it that is more splendid than almost anything done by the Greeks,—more splendid, not better,—a great deal even of its admired portions are rather rich or meretricious than great and true. The... 1910-1913 Essays Divine and Human The Sources of Poetry The swiftness of the muse has been embodied in the image of Pegasus, the heavenly horse of Greek legend; it was from the rapid beat of his hoofs on the rock that Hippocrene flowed. The waters of Poetry flow in a current or a torrent; where there is a pause or a denial, it is a sign of obstruction ...
... AUROBINDO: Simonides did not write fragments, but only fragments are left of what he wrote. And from them one can judge that he is a great poet. NIRODBARAN: Dilip says these are Greek poets and we know nothing of Greek, so we can't judge them. SRI AUROBINDO: But we know about them and by that we can call them great. NIRODBARAN: Now take the Bengali poet Govind Das, he says. His poem beginning ...
... It could apply to the old Greek mythology, though. No, not uniquely. It could apply in many other eases. Even if the Christians don't understand, there are many others who will! Those who have read a little and who know something other than their little rut will understand. Page 217 There is something similar between the Puranic gods and the gods of Greek or Egyptian mythology. The... The gods of Egyptian mythology are terrible beings... They cut off people's heads, tear their enemies to pieces!... The Greeks were not always tender either! In Europe and in the modern Western world, it is thought that all these gods—the Greek gods and the 'pagan' gods, as they are called—are human fancies, that they are not real beings. To understand, one must know that they are real beings ...
... passages from Greek and Latin poetry. Later he told us of a significant incident in this connection. Once a class-mate of his, Norman Ferrers, was reading a line from Homer which he thought was one of the poet's finest lines and, as Sri Aurobindo listened, his ear caught the true rhythm of quantitative metre. As you may appreciate, English is an accented language whereas the sound-structure of Greek and Latin... III: Cambridge: The Call of the Motherland (1890-1893) AS a Senior Classical scholar, Sri Aurobindo studied for the Classical Tripos, the B.A. degree examination in Greek and Latin. He was given rooms in the college and, except for vacations, he stayed at Cambridge for the next two years. In addition to his work for the Classical Tripos, Sri Aurobindo had to study... achievement which fulfilled his promise as a classical scholar. For distinguishing himself in the examination he won 'books bearing the College arms to the value of £40'. Earlier he had also won prizes for Greek and Latin verses. However, in spite of these distinctions Sri Aurobindo never obtained his B.A. degree. Under the rules it was necessary for a student to put in at least three years' residence at the ...
... 23 July 1965 My dear Mama, There is a rumour in the Ashram that You said: All the signs of Pralaya are apparent. Is it true? I never said that. The Greek and Egyptian Gods exist, but their sadhanas seem to be forgotten. Are these Gods realisable, then? What exactly do you mean by “sadhana” in this case? Do you mean the discipline or process by which ...
... the same thing, for the fingers are those of the two hands of the Sun, दश धियः प्रशस्तं Well-expressed (शस्) by the word: external sense = praised. अथर्युं अथ् to move, cf अत् or अथर् —Greek αἰθήρ—the plane of flaming light Page 743 ...
... purposes unless it is very heavily weighted with consonants. But the mere occurrence of two or more consonants after a short vowel does not by itself make the syllable long as it necessarily does in Greek, Latin or Sanskrit. The system may then be reduced to the following rules: 1) All stressed syllables are regarded as metrically long, as also all syllables supported on a long vowel. 2) All... or else alternating lines with a different arrangement for each, forming a stanza,—as in the practice of accentual metres. But there could also be an arrangement in strophe and antistrophe as in the Greek chorus. In "Thought the Paraclete" the first rule is followed; all the lines are on the same model. The metre of this poem has a certain rhythmic similarity to the Latin hendecasyllable which runs ...
... contemplative, self-possessed, takes possession of Europe's discovery and corrects its exaggerations, its aberrations by the intuition, the spiritual light she alone can turn upon the world. When Greek and Roman had exhausted themselves, the Arab went out from his desert to take up their unfinished task, revivify the civilisation of the old world and impart the profounder impulses of Asia to the pursuit... they were the reminiscences of her old intellectual experiments laid aside and forgotten. She took them up, rethought them in a new light and once more made them part of herself. So she dealt with the Greek, so with the Scythian, so with Islam, so now she will deal with the great brood of her returning children, with Christianity, with Buddhism, with European science and materialism, with the fresh sp ...
... manufactured aggregate. On the other hand, a real national unity broken up by circumstances will always preserve a tendency to recover and reassert its oneness. The Greek Empire has gone the way of all empires, but the Greek nation, after many centuries of political non-existence, again possesses its separate body, because it has preserved its separate ego and therefore, really existed under the ...
... There the manifestation of the Spirit is secondary, however beautiful and charming it may be; it is based on ignorance or partial lesser knowledge and it is perishable. The beauty of Greek sculpture is of this type. The Greeks wanted to express this lesser beauty and charm of life. But there is another type which surrenders its independent existence and becomes the vehicle and embodiment of Immortality ...
... cannot be separated. I think sometimes that when Christ spoke of himself as the Son of Man, he really meant the son of the Purusha, and almost find myself imagining that anthropos is only the clumsy Greek equivalent, the literal and ignorant translation of some Syrian word which corresponded to our Purusha. Be that as it may, there can be no doubt that man is full of divine possibilities—he is not ...
... however, it should have had a more faithfully Hindu colouring, but it was written a score of years ago when I had not penetrated to the heart of the Indian idea and its traditions, and the shadow of the Greek underworld and Tartarus with the sentiment of life and love and death which hangs about them has got into the legendary framework of the Indian Patala and hells. The central idea of the narrative alone ...
... the above account will show. It appears that, when he was in full charge of the College, he used to lecture for ten hours per week, and he taught, in addition to English Literature, British, Greek and Roman History also. Not correct, should be omitted. ...
... style; he is familiar with the Septuagint, which was written in Greek for Greeks; he seldom uses loanwords and repeatedly improves Mark's wording." Stendahl 36 on the author of Acts runs: "Acts was written in relatively good literary Greek (especially where it addresses Gentiles), but it is not consistent, and the Koine (vernacular Greek of the first century) was apparently more natural to him." There... other locutions which too he notes. Thus the word enopion ("before") as in Luke 1:15 occurs thirty-seven times in Luke/Acts, once in John and never in Matthew and Mark. 20 The particular Greek way of expressing "from of old" as in Luke 1:70 is found elsewhere in the New Testament only in Acts (3:21; 15:18). 21 Again, the verb ody-nasthai ("worried") of Luke 2:48 occurs four times in Luke/... New Testament, not even in Acts where we would expect it as a distinguishing mark of its Lucan authorship. 26 On the other hand, the verb egeneto ("it happened") in the classical Greek construction where it is followed by an infinite is found fifteen times in Acts and only five times in Luke, for Luke adopts the Septuagint form (egeneto followed by a finite verb without kai) which ...
... Introduction Our Many Selves The Inmost Being - The Psychic Being Sri Aurobindo uses the term "psychic being" (from Greek psukhē , meaning the soul) for the inmost being which supports the outer and the inner beings. The psychic being in its essence, called the psyche or psychic entity, is a spark or portion of the Divine present in all things and creatures ...
... to an end; the age that followed, sub-divided by the historians in various periods, is not over yet. The Renaissance rediscovered the courage and art of thinking for oneself in the way the ancient Greeks and Romans had done, but this was a very suspect exercise in the eyes of the powers-that-be. They did not like questions because they did not like being put into question. The movement called “... found out, was a “topos” used by classical authors to impress their readers with the curiousness of the barbarian people they were writing about; in other words, it was a historiographers’ cliché. The Greek historian Herodotus applied the same cliché to the Scythes, and Pliny the Roman used identical words to depict the Singhalese in Ceylon! In this way myths are born, perilous myths when they are held... well-sounding and malleable means of expression. “I thank God for being able to hear and find my God in the German language, for neither you nor me would ever have been able to find him in Latin, Greek or Hebrew.” “German was promoted to the fourth holy language, more admirable than any other and comparable only to the Hebrew spoken before the confusion of Babel, the language of Adam.” 383 Luther ...
... sensuous delight. Now having entered somewhat into the heart of meaning of Greek sculpture, I can see that this is a wrong account of the matter. The critic has got into the real spirit of the Indian, but not into the real spirit of the Greek work; his criticism from that moment, as a comparative appreciation, loses all value. The Greek figure stresses no doubt the body, but appeals through it to an imaginative... figure and a Greek Aphrodite which illustrates the difficulty in an extreme form. The critic tells me that the Indian figure is full of a strong spiritual sense—here of the very breath and being of devotion, an ineffable devotion, and that is true, it is a suggestion or even a revelation which breaks through or overflows the form rather than depends on the external work,—but the Greek creation can... European culture, a partial shifting even of the standpoint from which it was accustomed to see and judge all that it saw. In matters of art the Western mind was long bound up as in a prison in the Greek and Renascence tradition modified by a later mentality with only two side rooms of escape, the romantic and the realistic motives, but these were only wings of the same building; for the base was the ...
... some official and the official must have found it out in France. And so, when he came back here he has taken up a definite attitude against the leader and the party. Sri Aurobindo : There is a Greek saying that when one becomes too powerful he becomes insolent and commits excesses and then that strikes against the throne of God and then the retribution begins. The leader of the former dominant... arrest his political opponents he refused. Disciple : Hitler also has a precipitous rise, he can't maintain the momentum. He can't last very long. Sri Aurobindo : There is another famous Greek story about the tyrant of Syracuse. Do you know it? Disciple : No. Sri Aurobindo : This tyrant wanted to make friends with another tyrant of Sicily. Both belonged to Sicily. The latter ...
... Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) Pondicherry (Circa 1927-1947) Appendix - Poems in Greek and in French Collected Poems Lorsque rien n'existait Lorsque rien n'existait, l'amour existait, Et lorsqu'il ne restera plus rien, l'amour restera. Il est le premier et le dernier, Il est le pont de la vérité, Il est le compagnon dans l'angle du tombeau, ...
... instead of properly pausing or concluding? At least we know that when Milton went blind he taught Page 29 his daughters to read Greek and Latin to him without understanding what these languages said. He did not teach them the meanings of Greek and Latin words nor their syntactical structure but only how to pronounce them. The poor girls were bored with long hours of gibberish recitation... of—the minuter differences between Dochmiacs and Antis-pasts". If you happen to be those miserable men I may tell you that a Dochmiac is a five-syllabled Greek foot composed of short-long-long-short-long and an Antispast is a four-syllabled Greek foot consisting of short-long-long-short. But I am afraid I cannot tell you more minute differences than that the former has one final long in excess of the... recitation to their papa. They must have frequently protested, but Milton was adamant. When one of his friends asked him why he had not taught them Greek and Latin properly, he tartly replied: "One tongue is sufficient for any woman." He meant, of course, that a woman makes more than enough use of even one language and if she had more than one at her command she would — to employ a coinage of Milton himself ...
... as the Odyssey. It is even older." He considers the legends of Greek mythology highly Romantic, nor does Greek Romanticism end for him with the fabulous and the fantastic in Homer: imagination breaks bounds in Aeschylus, passion snaps the leash in Euripides and strange as well as violent themes are found in much Greek drama. Touches of the Romantic occur in Latin literature too - in Ovid "with... as Lucas 25 admits, "never outrages common sense or common taste like Marlowe"? Nor is it that the Greek poets conceived of their art tamely: they felt it to be a storm sent into them by Heaven, a divine madness. The theory of God-given inspiration has entered European culture through the Greeks, and surely such inspiration - whether it blow in a continuous Page 12 sweep or with... mood can make Sophocles Romantic or Shakespeare Classical. Similarly, Dante rests Classical for all his poignancy and sensitivity. Lucas 23 himself feels that though he has called several things in Greek poetry Romantic he would like not to exaggerate; for Homer and Aeschylus never sound the extreme Romantic note that is heard in Spenser and Marlowe, while Catullus in even his "Romantic frenzy" is still ...
... stressed becomes the grotesque, which has its value in Art: tragedy heavily stressed becomes melodrama, which has no value anywhere. One step beyond the sublime & you are in the grotesque. The Greek mythology was evolved by poets and sculptors; therefore it is beautiful. The Hindu mythology fell into the hands of priests and moralists; therefore it has become hideous. Art holds the mirror up ...
... had given me. His birthday was in February and would fall after I had left, so I gave him the watch. It was an Omega. Omega is of course the name of the company; but it is also the last letter of the Greek alphabet. This was symbolic, as I knew it was my last gift to him. I also gave him the keys to all my cases. He was a nice man, but had no aim that accorded with mine. On the last night before ...
... connections. Before proceeding farther let us cast a rapid and cursory glance at them to see what they can teach us. The association of a river with the poetical inspiration occurs also in the Greek mythology; but there the Muses are not conceived of as rivers; they are only connected in a not very intelligible fashion with a particular earthly stream. This stream is the river Hippocrene, the fountain... it sprang from the hoof of the divine horse Pegasus; for he smote the rock with his hoof and the waters of inspiration gushed out where the mountain had been thus smitten. Was this legend merely a Greek fairy-tale or had it any special meaning? And it is evident that if it had any meaning, it must, since it obviously refers to a psychological phenomenon, the birth of the waters of inspiration, have... transliterate it into the original Aryan phonetics, becomes Pājasa and is obviously connected with the Sanskrit pājas , which meant originally force, Page 92 movement, or sometimes footing. In Greek itself it is connected with pēgē , a stream. There is, therefore, in the terms of this legend a constant association with the image of a forceful movement of inspiration. If we turn to Vedic symbols ...
... very much post-Rigvedic. Strabo (born c. 63 B.C.), in his Geography (XV. 718), cites a writer who, referring evidently to the time (c. 300 B.C.) of Megasthenes - the Greek ambassador to the court of the Indian king whom the Greeks named "Sandrocottus" - tells us that the Indians worshipped Zeus Ombrios, "Zeus of the Rain-storms", who can only be Indra. On the coins of the Kushāņas (early centuries... fused foreign gods with their religion, the aruna (Varuṇa) of the Maryanni appears to be connected with the Hittite arunas (sea) and the latter to anticipate by its mythical associations the Greek Ouranos whose name, in turn, is almost identical with uruwana, the alternative to aruna. 13 We may add that arunas (sea) brings to mind also the Rigvedic phrase for the celestial upper waters ...
... expressiveness, a perfect beauty of rhythm. But with the Renaissance came a new impulse, a new influence; an enthusiasm was vividly felt by many for the greatness of structure and achievement of the Greek and Latin tongues—an achievement far surpassing anything done in the mediaeval Romance languages—and a desire arose to bring this greatness of structure and achievement into English poetry. As Chaucer... fluidity of the Romance tongues, so they too Page 318 conceived that the best way to achieve their aim was to bring in the greatness of classical harmony and the nobility and beauty of Greek and Latin utterance by naturalising the quantitative metres of Virgil, Ovid, Horace. It was also natural that some of these innovators should conceive that this could be best done by imposing the classical... problem of English quantitative verse. Even if successful, in every field and not only in the treatment of the hexameter, it would have only solved the other quite distinct problem of naturalising Greek and Latin metres in English. But even in this direction success has been either nil or partial and defective. The experiments have always remained experiments; there has been no opening of new paths ...
... and in urban centres. By the ninth century the Jews of Europe enjoyed their greatest success as international merchants and traders; the words Jew and merchant were virtually synonymous. Along with Greeks, Syrians and Italians – Christians all – Jews were the advance agents of a society yet to come … Down to our own time, the wealth of some highly visible members of the Jewish community has generated... in Europe was in fact carried on by wealthy clerical and monastic institutions [the Knights Templar among them] along with secular officials and groups such as the Lombards, Venetians, Syrians and Greeks – Christians all. The Vatican itself was known for its sophisticated credit practices.” It may be remembered that Judaism, Christianity and Islam all condemned money lending as a sin. “Some complaints ...
... Bengali There have been attempts to write in English quantitative verse on the Greek and Latin principle with the classical metres, attempts which began in the Elizabethan times, but they have not been successful because the method was either too slipshod or tried to adhere too rigidly to the rules of quantity natural to Greek and Latin but not to the English tongue instead of making an adaptation of it ...
... y fidelity the essential features of a primitive Greek ecclesia or the Roman comitia in the most oligarchical period. The first attempt to democratise the Congress was the creation of the Subjects Committee, as a sort of temporary Senate or Council which should prepare the business of the Congress. It was an unconscious reproduction of the Greek boule or preliminary Council which had similar ...
... directed towards Greek culture. The inspiration of religion from arts almost dried up and Europe accepted the Greek ideal of perfection especially in its arts. The Greek ideal was a kind of balance between man's intellect, his aesthetic being and his body. To the Greeks, a human being endowed with intellectual eminence, a sense of beauty and a strong and beautiful body was the ideal. The Greeks never seriously... awoke. The European critics told the world that India had no art and Indians swallowed this nonsense for more than two generations. All arts except those that Europe had created were 'primitive'. Greek art which is the parent of later European art was the standard by which all art had to be judged. All these uncritical ideas have to be given up. Fortunately, thoughtful men in Europe are giving them... artistic value. And it is a gratuitous assumption to suppose that one who pays a high price for a painting understands art. The first genuine outburst of inspiration in European art,—apart from Greek which derived much from Crete, Asia minor and Egypt,—was after the spread of Christianity. It was during the Renaissance that churches, statues and paintings came as if in floods. Gothic, Romanesque ...
... Appendix I: The Problem of the Hexameter The perfection of the hexameter is one of the unsolved problems of English prosody. Either the problem is insoluble, the noble rhythm so satisfying in Greek and Latin unsuited to the brief Saxon vocables—or else the secret of a successful measure has not yet been discovered. Even were the solution found, there are many obstacles in the way of its acceptation ...
... (plural) or "god" (singular) indifferently. When he speaks of "god" we must not interpret him in terms of simple monotheism. He thought that the myths of Greek polytheism were crude and misleading. He does seem to have believed (like most Greeks) in a supreme god, but he would not have regarded that belief as precluding the existence of a multiplicity of spiritual powers of whom many could rank... return to the lower levels of existence. But, says Plato, the mark of a good teacher is that he returns "to go down again among those bondsmen and share their labours and honours, 1. Periaktoi, (Greek: "revolving"), ancient theatrical device by which a scene or change of scene was indicated. It was described by Vitruvius in his De Architecture, (c. 14 BC) as a revolving triangular prism made of... the ordinary man is often very uncritical in his beliefs, which are little more than a "careless acceptance of appearances" (Crombie). 2. Lit: "regard nothing else as true but the shadows". The Greek word alethes (true) carries an implication of genuineness, and some translators render it here as "real". 3. Or "more real". 4. Or "true", "genuine". 5. Odyssey, XI, 489. 6. ...
... : Elie Faure says that the Greek arts – sculpture and painting – are the expression of passions and have no mystery about them. Sri Aurobindo : What is he talking about? He seems to have s queer mind. Where is the expression of passions in Greek sculpture? On the contrary it is precisely their restraint that is very evident everywhere in this art. The Greek are well-known for restraint and... of Socrates, the banishment of Themistocles and the killing of other great men were an expression of unrestrained passion. Greek life was far from settled at the time. Sri Aurobindo : What has that to do with the arts? Disciple : He means to say that the Greek mind that found expression in the arts was such a mind. Page 221 Sri Aurobindo : On the other hand ...
... measure of the claimed success we have only to take the reviewer's quotation of Lattimore's rendering of the first line of Homer's famous passage in the Iliad about the descent of Apollo to avenge the Greeks' insult to his high-priest Chryses: Be de kat' oulumpoio karenon choömenos ker. Lattimore writes: And strode down along the pinnacles of Olympos, angered in his heart... ... heart-strings. Sri Aurobindo has sacrificed strict literalness at the end but the fundamental Homeric spirit and sound are there—and perhaps all the more by that extra poetic touch to match the Greek splendour of word. In Lattimore we feel a smothering of the needed qualities. Day Lewis has not tried his hand at Homer, but we have his very readable Virgil, with some excellent responses in places... present if Lewis had been aware of the correct technical requirements. What is true about Lewis's metre applies also to the line chosen by Kimon Friar in his translation of Nikos Kazantzakis's Greek epic, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel A mild breeze blew on ringlets of a yellow brow, somewhere amid an olive tree a nightbird sighed, soft seawaves far away in the smooth shingles ...
... human thought as well) in Page 367 their scope and touch too on things which the Greek and Elizabethan poets could not even glimpse. But as poets—as masters of rhythm and language and the expression of poetic beauty—Vyasa and Valmiki are not inferior , but also not greater than the English or the Greek poet. We can leave aside for the moment the question whether the Mahabharata was not the ...
... Life Divine . At the end Satyendra and Nirodbaran laughed aloud. SRI AUROBINDO: What is the matter? SATYENDRA: Nirodbaran is laughing because he doesn't understand a bit of the talk. It is all Greek to him. NIRODBARAN: Same for you. CHAMPAKLAL: Nirodbaran was trying for some time to pick up Sanskrit and now has given up. NIRODBARAN: I was trying to learn the letters. I studied Pali in... AUROBINDO: It is the story of the Vishnu Purana where we read that it is difficult to say whether the king is on the elephant or the elephant is on the king. All European philosophers after the Greeks hold that Reason is the faculty by which you arrive at the Truth. The question about sense-perception and its reliability is easily met. We perceive certain things by our senses and the sensations ...
... observation: 2 "...the Arthaśāstra... refers to certain high revenue functionaries styled the Samādhartri and the Sannidhātri. No such officials are, however, mentioned in Maurya inscriptions. Greek writers, on the other hand, refer to 'treasurers of the state' or 'Superintendents of the treasury.' " Here Raychaudhuri notes one of the few significant contacts of the Arthaśāstra with the age ...
... Ansari equals Anusari. (Laughter) SRI AUROBINDO: That was the fashion at one time. It was Colonel Todd, I think, who said that Krishna was Hercules who is also called Heracles. He derived the Greek name from Harikul (Laughter) EVENING SRI AUROBINDO: It is now known what Bhaskar's source was for the report of the coming German attack on England. A detailed document was found in the pocket ...
... southern borders fearing spared the aggressor. England the sea-queen, England the fortunate, England the victor Fled like a dog from the whip of his menace yelping for succour, Loudly to Frank and to Greek and to Turk and to Yugoslav calling "Help me! I dare not alone; he will shatter my fleet and my empire," You did not cower, O African people, you did not tremble. Armed but with rifle and spear you ...
... up in the old Greek mentality. The ancient Greeks surmised that it must have been the gods of the Page 102 Upper World who were responsible for all the sufferings and mishaps and disasters of the human beings. They were perhaps jealous of the happiness and well-being of men and were all the time scheming to disrupt the smooth flow of their lives. A few of the Greek Gods had specially... specially bad repute in this matter: these were Zeus, Themis, Nemesis and Ananke. While speaking about a special trait of the consciousness of the ancient Greeks the Mother once observed: "The Greeks had a keen and exceptional sense of beauty , of eurythmy, of harmony in forms and things. But at the same time they had an equally keen sense of men's impotence in face of an implacable Fate which none... any of his enterprises. Somehow everything gets bogged down before the final goal is reached. His boat sinks before the shore is reached. He has to remain permanently thirsty like King Tantalus of Greek mythology: his parched lips cannot touch the level of the drink in his cup. The question is: Why so? Who or what frustrates all his efforts at final fulfilment? Enough is enough: let us stop ...
... Aurobindo's residence for a search. But when their Chief found there were Latin and Greek books lying about on his desk, he was so taken aback that he could only blurt out, "Il sait du latin, il sait du grec!" — "He knows Latin, he knows Greek!" — and then he left with all his men. How could a man who knew Latin and Greek ever commit any mischief? In fact, the French Government had not been against... house, only a few trunks, a table and a chair. On opening the drawers of the table he found only books and papers. On some of the papers Greek was written. He was very much surprised and asked if Sri Aurobindo knew Greek. When he came to know that he knew Latin, Greek and other European languages, his suspicion waned, yielding place to a great respect for Sri Aurobindo. He invited Sri Aurobindo to meet ...
... other hypothesis of direct & genuine derivation is Page 28 also possible. If there was no common origin, if Greek & Indian separated during the naturalistic period of the common religion supposed to be recorded in the Vedas it is surprising that even the little we know of Greek rites & mysteries should show us ideas coincident with those of Indian Tantra & Yoga. When we go back to the Veda... grudgingly and attempt to give it as crude and primitive an appearance as possible, but the moral & supernatural functions of Varuna are undeniable. Yet Varuna is the Greek Ouranos, which is simply & plainly the sky, Akasha. Ouranos in Greek myth is a colourless presence, parent by his union with Earth, Akasha with Prithivi, of all beings but especially of Kronos & the Titans, the elder gods, the first... for so I take Daksham apasam. Mitra has already been described as having a pure daksha. The adjective daksha means in Sanscrit clever, intelligent, capable, like dakshina, like the Greek δεξɩóς. We may also compare the Greek δóξα, meaning judgment, opinion etc & δοᵪέω, I think or seem, and Latin doceo, I teach, doctrina etc. As these identities indicate, Daksha is originally he who divides, analyses, ...
... place of preparation, of initiation, of apprenticeship to a future life, where the guests prepare to enter tricitinium, or the banquet hall" 2 . (iv) In Graeco-Roman Philosophy:3 The Greek philosophy propounded, in the main, a dualistic antithesis between body and soul, matter and spirit. Thus in Philolaus' teaching, the human body was regarded as a house of detention wherein the... illusive values, beneath which nothing permanent exists; and there, the goods which never fade away". 5 He 1 2 A. J. Heschel, op. cit. 3 W. Capelle, "Body and Asceticism (Greek)" in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. II. 4 E. L. Allen, A Guide Book to Western Thought. 5 W. Capelle, op. cit. Page 12 considered "the body as... (b) Stoicism: Posidonius held that the body, that inutilis caro et fluida, receptandis tantum cibis habilis ("flesh useless and flaccid, so apt to be hungry and demanding": rendered from Greek into Latin by Seneca in Ep. 92, 110), is an impediment to the heaven-born soul, the daimon, that pines in her prison-house for a return to her celestial home, the Aether, where alone full knowledge ...
... basis of the rite or institution of sacrifice that was a characteristic feature of the old-world society. Iphigenia was offered as a victim to avert the wrath of the gods and bring victory to the Greeks. Sometimes an animal replaced the human victim and served the same purpose and in the same way. And in a higher sense—indeed in the highest sense—a body can sacrifice itself in such a way— wholly ...
... the basis of the rite or institution of sacrifice that was a characteristic feature of the old-world society. Iphigenia was offered as a victim to avert the wrath of the gods and bring victory to the Greeks. Sometimes an animal replaced the human victim and served the same purpose and in the same way. And in a higher sense – indeed in the highest sense – a body can sacrifice itself in such a way – wholly ...
... A modern artist when he creates, as he cannot but create himself, will have to embrace and express something of this peculiar cosmopolitanism or universalism of today. When Ezra bursts into a Greek hypostrophe or Eliot chants out a Vedic mantra in the very middle of King's English, we have before us the natural and inevitable expression of a fact in our consciousness. Even so, if we are allowed... and the flippant, the climax and the bathos are blended together, chemically fused, as part and parcel of a single whole. Take, for example, the lines from Ezra Pound quoted above, the obvious pun (Greek tin' or tina, meaning "some one" and English "tin"), the cheap claptrap, it may be explained, is intentional: the trick is meant to bring out a sense of lightness and even levity in the ...
... and the Secretary of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His apprenticeship in writing commenced as a subeditor of the two journals conducted by Sri Aurobindo in 1909 and 1910. He was taught Greek, Latin, French and Italian by the Master himself; and the knowledge he acquired then has borne ample fruit during the past half a century of almost incessant writing on a variety of themes. He has about ...
... concerned with personality. But the artist expresses his inspiration and in that there must be the stamp of his individuality, as you find in the case of great artists and poets. Take for instance the Greek poets or the French dramatists. They follow the same tradition, national custom, etc., but each has his own individual stamp. An artist does not express his personality, but it is stamped on his work ...
... Savitri VII Savitri There remains Savitri. Reading Ilion people interject: "Isn't it entirely Greek?" Reading Savitri people might likewise exclaim: "How entirely Indian!" These can only be one's first reactions. Closer study must reveal whole new universes of meaning—and this is particularly true ...
... Cambridge. The Scholarship examination was taken at Cambridge under the supervision of the college authorities. There were several papers, such as translation from English verse and prose into Latin and Greek, and vice versa. Needless to specify that candidates were not accepted unless they had a good school record in examinations. As a result 1. Robert Pentland Mahaffy, who became a distinguished... vacant Open Scholarship. This means that in the examiners' opinion he was the best of the candidates for scholarships. No wonder. English was to Ara like water to a duck; and he had so well mastered Greek and Latin that he passed the Scholarship examinations with record marks. The Scholarship amount of £80 a year was paid from Page 186 the foundation of King's College, Cambridge ...
... right to venture. If it is not accepted it will remain a blot in the poem. Tagore coined the word তৃণাঞ্চিত but he laments that people have not accepted it. Why a blot? There are many words in Greek poetry which occur only once in the whole literature, but that is not considered a defect in the poem. It is called a hapax legomenon , "a once spoken Page 656 word" and that's all. তৃণাঞ্চিত ...
... of social & intellectual agencies & under conditions of law, the relations are exactly reversed, & indeed they are more than reversed. The India of today may be presented under the image of the Greek biga [ incomplete ] Page 74 ...
... make them accommodate each other, tone down the individual acuities and angularities, blunt or cut out the extreme expressions and effect some sort of a compromise or a pact of goodwill. It is not the Greek ideal of the golden mean nor is it akin to the modern democratic ideal which lays down that each element is free—to grow and possess— to the extent that it allows the same freedom to every other element ...
... them accommodate each other, tone down the individual acuities and angularities, blunt or cut out the extreme expressions and effect some sort of a compromise or a pact of goodwill. It is. not. the Greek ideal of the golden mean nor is it akin to the modern democratic ideal which lays down that each element is free – to grow and possess – to the extent that it allows the same freedom to every other ...
... Aurobindo's residence for a search. But when their Chief found there were Latin and Greek books lying about on his desk, he was so taken aback that he could only blurt out, . "Il sait du latin, it sait du grec /" – "He knows Latin, he knows Greek!" – and then he left with all his men. How could a man who knew Latin and Greek ever commit any mischief? In fact, the French Government had not been against ...
... Aurobindo's residence for a search. But when their Chief found there were Latin and Greek books lying about on his desk, he was so taken aback that he could only blurt out, "II sait du latin, il sait du grec!" —"He knows Latin, he knows Greek!"—and then he left with all his men. How could a man who knew Latin and Greek ever commit any mischief? In fact, the French Government had not been against ...
... was suggested to him that those were "actual words used in this sense in pre-Vedic Sanskrit." That is how Sri Aurobindo came to write 77i<? Origins of Aryan Speech. "He knows Latin, he knows Greek!" had exclaimed the French magistrate, and he could have added, "He knows Sanskrit!" That Sri Aurobindo knew perfectly both English and French was common knowledge. Once, when someone expressed surprise... found himself "continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally, between the Greek and the Sanskrit." Moreover, "Sometimes the Tamil vocable not Page 368 only suggested the connection, but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And," he avowed, "it... of "tracing back the finished forms to the embryonic and digging down into the hidden original Foetus of language." An archaeologist of language! The most convenient tool was Sanskrit—helped out by Greek, Latin, Tamil, and occasionally Celtic, Irish, French, Spanish and Italian. In Sanskrit the original type of Aryan structure was fairly well preserved. Surprisingly, "The structure we find is one of ...
... heart of a youth and it is coloured by the temper of Romanticism which was inevitable in the eighties of the last century. But the blending of the rich with the graceful and shapely is an effect of the Greek and Latin Muse, in fervent dedication to whom the young Indian lived at Cambridge. Echoes and immaturities are not absent, but the inspired individual note is often struck. Thus The Lover's Complaint... astray And with a sudden sweet dismay My heart into her apron fell. The wit, for all the occasional romantic embroidery, is Attic as well as Aurobindonian. And surely a snatch from the Greek Anthology meets us with yet a personal accent in the earth-wisdom of A Doubt: Many boons the new years make us But the old world's gifts were three, Dove of Cypris, wine of Bacchus... heartbeat, and his eyes are open to contemporary situations as his verses on Parnell and Ireland show. The same modernism is astir in another piece, The Lost Deliverer, which begins with an allusion to Greek mythology but moves on to some dramatic development of the day. The subject is not very clear, but ignorance on our part detracts in no way from the poem's force and from the grandeur, the irony, the ...
... used to come there to learn. Ajmal Khan was the direct descendent of the court Hakim to the Mogul Emperors. Where from is it derived? Page 113 Sri Aurobindo : It is from the Greek school. They use animal products and salts. Besides curing which is common to all the systems the Unani lays claim to rejuvenate the human system. Many diseases which require operation for their cure ...
... drama, higher perhaps than to the Greek or any other. But these things are enough only to produce plays which will live their time on the stage and in the library; they are not, by themselves, sufficient for great dramatic creation. Something else is needed for that, which we get in Shakespeare, in Racine, Corneille and Molière, in Calderón, in the great Greeks, in the leading Sanskrit dramatists;... in its total artistic creation, it bears a certain stamp of defect and failure. It cannot be placed for a moment as a supreme force of excellence in literary culture by the side of the great ages of Greek and Roman poetry which started with an equal, if different creative impetus, but more self-knowledge. But, unhappily, it falls short too in aesthetic effect and virtue in comparison with other poetic... which is its outward instrument, must arise out of that deeper sight harmoniously, whether by a spontaneous creation, as in Shakespeare, or by the compulsion of an intuitive artistic will, as with the Greeks. This interpretative vision and seeing idea have in the presentation to seem to arise out of the inner life of a few vital types of the human soul or individual representatives of its enigma and to ...
... that the God in humanity may grow. Therefore it is that Nationalism is the dharma of the age, and God reveals himself to us in our common Mother. The first attempts to form a nationality were the Greek city, the Semitic or Mongolian monarchy, the Celtic clan, the Aryan kula or jati . It was the mixture of all these ideas which went to the formation of the mediaeval nation and evolved the modern... Imperialism which afflict modern nations are due to this insistence. It is the source of that pride, insolence and injustice which affect a nation in its prosperity and by that fatal progression which the Greeks with their acute sense for these things so clearly demarcated, it leads from prosperity to insolence and outrage and from insolence and outrage to that ate , that blind infatuation, which is God's ...
... legitimate. Interestingly enough, we have an actual instance where the Chaucer-analogy brings in quite a different time-relationship. There is the Linear B. script which we have mentioned before. Its Greek, dated c. 1400 B.C., is said by Cleator to bear "about as much resemblance to the familiar classical version [c. 550-300 B.C.] of the language as does Chaucerian English to that of the present day"... choose 2500 B.C. at the earliest and especially some among them who vote for a still earlier date than 5000 or 6000 B.C. in agreement with Xanthos of Lydia (fifth century B.C.), Herodotus and other Greek contemporaries of the Achaemenid emperors. A.S. Altekar seems to side with Ghosh about the Avesta's chronology and yet differs toto caelo about the Rigveda's, which he starts at 2700 B.C. He ...
... translations from the Sanskrit in blank verse and heroic verse —"has disappeared into the unknown in the whirlpools and turmoil of my political career." When he was seventeen, he translated from Greek a passage titling it Hecuba. Mano's friend Binyon happened to read it, then asked the young man why he was not writing more poetry? "I dare say," acknowledged Sri Aurobindo, "my brother stimulated... Mahabharata, and dedicated it to his brother. He sent him an accompanying letter in which he tried to soften Manmohan's indictment of Hindu legend, which he found 'lifeless' compared to the 'warm' Greek myths. At the end of his long apology of Sanskrit literature, Sri Aurobindo generously concluded : "Will you accept this poem as part-payment of a deep intellectual debt I have been long owing to you ...
... The poets of the time have a tendency to the false or conventional pastoral; i.e. to say a mechanical imitation of Latin & Greek rural poetry, & especially when they try to write love poetry, they use Latin & Greek pastoral names; but these pastorals have nothing to do with any real country life past or present, nor do they describe any rural surroundings and scenery... contemporary science, philosophy Page 132 and literature which were regarded with interest were ancient classical literature and French civilisation. Even of the classics, little was known of Greek literature though it was held in formal honour; French & Latin and Latin rather of the second best than the best writers were the only foreign influences that affected Augustan literature to any appreciable ...
... Logopoeia is not intuitive in a direct or a mentalised manner — at least nor markedly so. It can be a mental statement with greater or less felicity, pungency, magnificence. There is the couplet which the Greek poet Simonides composed as epitaph for the Spartans who died at Thermopylae. A band of three hundred under Leonidas were ordered by the State to delay the march of the thousands sent by King Xerxes... very well — Tell them at Lacedaemon, passerby, That here obedient to their laws we lie. Heroic unadorned pathos wrought into a masterpiece of understatement in thought-form is here. The Greeks had a genius for straightforward writing which yet spoke volumes and was extremely poetic. The Indian genius is more rich: Phanopoeia rather than Logopoeia is the Indian tendency in poetry. I am... epitaph. Of course, Vyasa is an exception among Indian poets. Sri Aurobindo has considered him a great master of bare strength. Among European poets the most successful in chiselled Logopoeia after the Greeks was the Italian Dante. The Italians are not particularly distinguished for control over their emotions. Just as the Frenchman talks with his hands and his shoulders, the Italian carries on his conversation ...
... or participle-sound does duty for both the genders and the neuter gender into the bargain. The inflection in French is not sufficient to allow a large freedom in word-arrangement as in Latin or Greek, and whatever freedom it does allow is not very deliberately exploited: I know of only one great poet who exploits it to a marked result — Mallarme. Latin simply invites you to virtuosities of w... In English the words are related to one another by their order in a sentence and not by inflections. Therefore one single order, with minor exceptions, rules the English sentence. Latin and also Greek are so inflected that they can vary the order as they please: the word-endings immediately denote the proper connections of the words. Words which the writer has married in his mind can stand quite... lines would in their Latin forms indicate with perfect precision how they were to be mentally combined in order to make the intended sense. The highly inflec-ted character of Latin, like that of Greek, enables this language to achieve countless delicate beauties of rhythm which are impossible in English. Another difference of Latin from English is that metre in Latin is based on the lengths ...
... comes off. But (touching his head) how to open here? SRI AUROBINDO: Just open it. (Laughter) DR. MANILAL: Could you not smash our heads, Sir, as the blacksmith smashed Jupiter's head in the Greek story? SRI AUROBINDO: What is that story? I don't know of any blacksmith doing that. DR. MANILAL: That is what is given in children's books, Sir. SRI AUROBINDO: That may be for children. What ...
... Aryan tongue the dative अने was used verbally to express the action, no less than the agent, and appears disguised in the Greek infinitive ναɩ, εναɩ, while the shorter form अन्, dative or nominative, appears as the ordinary Greek infinitive εɩν. Old Aryan असने for being remains in Greek as εἶναɩ to be, दावने for giving as δoȕναɩ to give, भुवन् for becoming as ϕύεɩν to become, श्रुवन् for hearing as χλύεɩν... vibration etc. From the idea of working continually comes the sense, “to plough” which we find in Greek and Latin, aro, arvum, ἄρoνρα, Page 350 ἄρóω, ἄρoτoς, άρóτƞσ, ἄρoτρoν . But its earlier and more distinguished sense was “to fight”. From this sense we get आर्यः, अरिः, अर्यमा, Greek Ares, the god of war; άρετή, fighting power, courage, virtue; ἄρεσɩς, Latin arx. It also meant to excel... अरणः (cf अट् to wander, अटवी a forest), अरिन् a wheel, अर्वन् a horse, अरं swiftly; nomadic ground or wild country अरण्यम्, Greek ὄρoς, (अरस्) a mountain. From the idea of struggle, we have that of fighting and this is one of the most characteristic uses of the root. We have in Greek Ἀρƞς, the god of war, Ἀρεɩμανής, our Aryama, άρετή, virtue (originally, valour, cf Lat. virtus),άρήϒω, fight for, succour ...
... and recent secularism, will not in spite of its oriental origin and affinities be of much real help. To bring in into the artistic look on an Indian temple occidental memories or a comparison with Greek Parthenon or Italian church or Duomo or Campanile or even the great Gothic cathedrals of mediaeval France, though these have in them something much nearer to the Indian mentality, is to intrude a fatally... it may readily be admitted that the failure to see at once the unity of this architecture is perfectly natural to a European eye, because unity in the sense demanded by the Western conception, the Greek unity gained by much suppression and a sparing use of detail and circumstance or even the Gothic unity got by casting everything into the mould of a single spiritual aspiration, is not there. And the... often in spite of Mr. Archer's dictum, a singular grace in their power, a luminous lightness relieving their mass and strength, a rich delicacy of beauty in their ornate fullness. It is not indeed the Greek lightness, clarity or naked nobleness, nor is it exclusive, but comes in in a fine blending of opposites which is in the very spirit of the Indian religious, philosophical and aesthetic mind. Nor are ...
... × For state we have agra , first, top and Greek agan , excessively; for feeling, Greek agapē , love, and possibly Sanskrit aṅganā , a woman; for movement and action several words in Sanskrit and in Greek and Latin. × The logs... originally demigods, powers of the Light and Flame, who became humanised as the fathers of the race and the discoverers of its wisdom. Both of these processes are recognisable in early mythology. In the Greek legend, for instance, Castor and Polydeuces and their sister Helen are human beings, though children of Zeus, and only deified after their death, but the probability is that originally all three were... figure of the Dawn. But in either case there has been a farther development by which these gods or demigods have become in vested with psychological functions, perhaps by the same process which in the Greek religion converted Athene, the Dawn, into the goddess of knowledge and Apollo, the sun, into the divine singer and seer, lord of the prophetic and poetic inspiration. Page 160 In the Veda ...
... mother tongue, became a classical scholar, and wrote verses in Greek and Latin—and also in English—in his Cambridge days. He had besides an intimacy with several European literatures, and after returning to India, he tried to gain an equal intimacy with Sanskrit, Bengali and some other modern Indian literatures. Apart from the undergraduate Greek and Latin exercises in versification, all Sri Aurobindo's... scale. Lotika Ghose has recorded that to a query about Sri Aurobindo's poetry Frederic Spiegelberg of the Stanford University answered with the counter-question: "Isn't it entirely Greek?" 117 I/ion at least is certainly Greek—though not entirely! While experimenting on classical metres, it was but natural that Sri Aurobindo should feel particularly attracted to the hexameter. It appears... Aeneas, Antenor and Halamus, Paris and Helen, Paris and Cassandra. Meanwhile Achilles has learned of the rejection of his offer and decides upon instant battle. There is a parallel assembly of the Greek chieftains, and Page 54 after hearing Agamemnon, Menelaus and Odysseus, they too decide to join the fray at Achilles' side. In a short Book Achilles takes leave of his ...
... God cometh not with observation; neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Io there! for, behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.' Ronald Knox has the gloss to his modern translation:' "Within you": the Greek might also mean "among you."' The Revised Version says in the margin: 'The Kingdom of God is in your midst. In the course of a letter to the Editor, the author of the article discussed... careful and troubled force of man to be freed from care and grief and become the joyous play of the divine Will, his relative and stumbling reason to be replaced by that divine knowledge which to the Greek, the rational man, is foolishness and the laborious pleasure-seeking of the bound mentality to lose itself in the spontaneity of the divine Ananda; 'for of such is the kingdom of heaven.' The Paramhansa... outside the moral universe of discourse, and point, as Sri Aurobindo himself says, to a mystic liberation of soul. If all that I have submitted has any cogency, the question arises: How is the Greek word entos, which the Authorized Version translates as "within", to be correctly rendered in its double inner-outer suggestion? "Among", which the original permits, goes to the other extreme. The ...
... modern times are usually considered to be the monopoly of despotisms like Turkey and Russia. But by the time that England had fastened its hold on India, a change had come over the modern world. The Greek ideas of freedom and democracy had penetrated the European mind and created the great impulse of democratic Nationalism which dominated Europe in the nineteenth century. The idea that despotism of any... cannot stand against Page 363 rivals which to equal military efficiency unite a greater science, intellectual energy and political ability. A purely aesthetic and intellectual state like the Greek colonies in Italy or a purely moral and spiritual community like the empire of Peru are blotted out of existence in the clash with ruder but more vigorous and many-sided organisms. No Government, therefore ...
... Shastras, mentally seeing the Divine in everybody, etc. Now he wanted some direct guidance from Sri Aurobindo. SRI AUROBINDO: The difficulty is that he is too old. It is like X trying to learn Greek at eighty. These things take too long and before he has taken a few steps he may be off. Then Purani gave Sri Aurobindo a typed review of The Life Divine by N.C. Brahma Sri Aurobindo read it and ...
... have no substance. Have you found. wonderful rhythm? PURANI: None. Isn't that poem "O Apollo.. .tinwreath" by him? Nolini said tin-wreath is wonderful! (Laughter) SRI AUROBINDO: Yes, it is in Greek tina; most idiotic it is. And he says it is a great pun; not a pun but most idiotic. PURANI: I told you Amal's joke that Pound is not worth the penny! (Laughter) SRI AUROBINDO: Among all these ...
... Tilak and the Mahrattas. In fact it was written in Calcutta. (After reading the whole instalment) He has not made enough out of the poetry. He ought to have said that Myrtilla was addressed to a Greek girl—a girl whom I loved and buried on an island. Seshadri said about the poem "Revelation" that the girl spoken of there must be somebody I came across on the Pondicherry beach! (Laughter) PURANI: ...
... puja.) I was walking as usual and she came; that was when she made her surrender to the Supreme.... Those divinities don't have the sense of surrender. Divinities such as Durga and the Greek gods (although the Greek gods are a bit dated now; but the gods of India are still very much alive!). Well, they are embodiments—what you might almost call localizations—of something eternal, but they lack the... it's in Perseus —when she appears to the Sea-God and forces him to retreat to his own domain. There's a description there that fits this Being quite well. 3 Page 223 Besides, all the Greek gods are various aspects of a single thing: you see it this way, that way, that way, this way ( turning her hand, Mother seems to show several facets of a single prism ).... But it's simply one and ...
... wrote many poems in Greek and in Latin as school or college assignments. A typical assignment would be to render an English poem into Greek or Latin verse of a given metre. The Greek epigram below appears to be an example of such an assignment. Sri Aurobindo also learned French in England, and in later years wrote two poems in that language. Greek Epigram . January 1892... Dated 1896 in the manuscript and all printed editions. On a Satyr and Sleeping Love . Circa 1890–98. This is a translation of a Greek epigram attributed to Plato. A Rose of Women . Circa 1890–98. This is a translation of a Greek epigram by Meleager (first century B.C.) Saraswati with the Lotus . 1894 or later. Written after the death of the Bengali... the spring". A Doubt . Circa 1900–1901. The Nightingale . Circa 1900–1901. Euphrosyne . Circa 1900–1901. The Greek word euphrosunē means "cheerfulness, mirth, merriment". In Greek mythology, Euphrosyne was one of the three Graces. A Thing Seen. Circa 1900– 1901. Epitaph . Circa 1900–1901. ...
... appeared forces and beings also proper to each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the original Asuras—the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in the Greek legend of Chronos and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and ranged—at the first line of ...
... continued as a Trustee and Secretary of Sri Aurobindo Ashram. His apprenticeship in writing commenced as a sub-editor of the two journals conducted by Sri Aurobindo in 1909 and 1910. He was taught Greek, Latin, French and Italian by the Master himself and the knowledge he acquired then has borne ample fruit during the past half a century of almost incessant writing on a variety of themes. He has about ...
... the Romans are born as Americans. Sri Aurobindo : Very queer Romans! You may say in some sense that the English are the ancient Carthaginians! Or one may even hazard that the French are the Greeks reborn. But it won't carry us very far. You can't take for granted that one individual is always born in the same race or nation in which he is born now. So how can the nation soul or race soul ...
... coarseness, appetite and rapid satiety of the imperial Romans combining in various proportions or associating on various terms with the euprepeia & looseness of the Greeks. But the Pagan virility whether united to Roman coarseness or Greek brilliance is only to be seen in a few extraordinary individuals. Society is cast in the biune mould of monogamy & prostitution. You will find such a Parisian who ...
... that in this poem there are plenty of Sanskrit words. SRI AUROBINDO: But here the country is spoken of as "Durga", so a Hindu Goddess has nothing to do with it. The Christians may also object to Greek Gods and Goddesses being represented in literature. As for the other point, the Muslims have plenty of Persian words in their writings. Let these be removed also. PURANI : Yes, they don't see that ...
... not a scientist. SATYENDRA: In India they say snakes are attracted by the flute. But scientists say snakes have no ears. SRI AUROBINDO: Scientists say all sorts of things. NIRODBARAN: The Greeks also used to say that animals are attracted by music. SRI AUROBINDO: That is a universal belief. SATYENDRA: Snake-charmers in India have a particular kind of instrument common among them and ...
... Art of prehistoric antiquity and of those countries and ages whose culture has been faithful to the original truth of the Spirit. Greek culture, on the other hand, deviated on a path which led away from this truth to the obvious and external reality of the senses. The Greeks sought to use the forms of Nature as they saw and observed them, slightly idealised, a little uplifted, with a reproduction of her... would miss almost entirely the meaning of the image and might only see a man praying. The reason becomes evident when we study the images of the gods. These deities are far removed indeed from the Greek and the Christian conceptions; they do not live in the world at all, but in themselves, in the infinite. The form is, as it were, a wave in which the whole ocean of being expresses itself. The significance ...
... sciences other than physical. The Sanscrit language was discovered. It was at first imagined & expected that this discovery would lead to results as important as those which flowed from the discovery of Greek literature by Western Europe after the fall of Constantinople. But these expectations have remained unfulfilled. European knowledge has followed other paths and the seed of the nineteenth century has... Indeed the theory worked out by me, took its rise originally not from any analysis of the Sanscrit word-system, but from an observation of the relations of Tamil in its non-concretised element to the Greek, Latin & Northern Indian languages. At the same time it is on an analysis of the Sanscrit word-system that I have chiefly relied. I have omitted from that system most of its Vedic elements. The meanings... Turning from Latin to the more fruitful field, the more copious evidence of Sanscrit, we find this root dol in the form dal ( a sounded like the English u in dull and represented both in Greek & Latin by either a , u or o ) meaning also to split, burst, & then to bloom, open. We find dala , a fragment; a blade, petal or leaf; we find dalapa , a weapon, that which splits, just as we ...
... of mediaeval and of modern Europe. He was a brilliant scholar in Greek and Latin. He had learned French from his childhood in Manchester and studied for himself German and Italian sufficiently to read Goethe and Dante in the original tongues. (He passed the Tripos in Cambridge in the first division and obtained record marks in Greek and Latin in the examination for the Indian Civil Service.) [ Sri ...
... sake of freedom and variety. I have said that this device should be adopted in transferring classical metres into English, so as to create a natural English quantitative verse—not a rigid imitation of Greek and Latin models. The verse so written would, doubtless, be something rich and strange: Page 750 So much the better. but would it be really hexameter, simply because it would (and... Sprung Rhythm, will always masquerade in English as if it were in everyday garb: it will always be meretricious. "As if" here refers to the fact that the hexameter is in origin an importation from Greek and Latin, but it must not read as such, it must not sound like a naturalised alien music; it must have a native English sound and for that it must follow the native rhythm of the English tongue. If ...
... medium for its self-expression. A work of art may be revealed to the artist even in dream. Q. Does this happen to the Indian artist or is it common to all artists? A. Ancient Greek artists, it is said, experienced the feeling of exuberation and exaltation during periods of creative activity. There is evidence that all great artists had contact with a higher world of which most... Page 31 A great work of art, it must be noted, bears the stamp of its creator. Even in the same field of work each great artist leaves his own stamp on his work. For example, take the Greek dramatist Sophocles, Euripides and Aeschylus or the French trio. Voltaire, Racine, Corneille —you will find the distinguishing stamp of each on his work. A soul expressing the eternal spirit ...
... and Yeats also, I think, would naturally like. But the poem [This Errant Life] I selected for special praise had no striking expressions like these standing out from the rest, just as in a Greek statue there would be no single feature standing out in a special beauty (eyes, lips, head or hands), but the whole has a harmoniously modelled grace of equal perfection everywhere as, let us say ...
... objective, it could be understood. But now they lose both the advantages of helping and those of resistance. EVENING SRI AUROBINDO (suddenly to Nirodbaran): Do you know Savitri Devi? She is a Greek married to a Bengali. NIRODBARAN: I seem to have read about her in the papers. SATYENDRA: Yes, there was some mention of her. SRI AUROBINDO: She is a militant Hindu-Sabhaite. SATYENDRA: ...
... experience and spiritual perception. Modern philosophers wrap their ideas up in extraordinary phraseology and there is too much gymnastics of the mind—even then they don't seem to have gone deeper than the Greeks in their ideas and theories. I read some of the commentaries of Romania, Shankara, etc. They seemed to me mere words and phrases and at the end Romania says that nobody has experienced Pure Consciousness—a ...
... that were not expected or even imagined. They all move along lines that shift and change continually. This is the status of becoming – sambhuti, as designated by the Upanishad and described by the Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, in the words, panta reei, everything flows on. Here, often a certain disposition that seems quite stable or predictable is upset all of a sudden by the irruption of a new ...
... surround something that can be seized as a design of emotion and imagination as Page 89 well as of word and rhythm. And there is also that quality, of being felt as a whole, which the Greeks considered the sine qua non of art. No work of art can be haphazard, inconclusive, issueless. The modernist is not content to break the old metrical form and set up in its Stead a jarring free verse... in the debased or the diseased. Thus "the multidinous seas" of Shakespeare are said to "yap like a Pekinese". "Epileptic larks", extremely unShelleyan, fill the sky. And the nightingales which, from Greek times onward, have inspired singers to their most sensitive apprehension of the strange magic that is mixed with common clay, exhibit to the eye of the modernist poet no mystery beyond their "droppings" ...
... dropped an "h"; others held that our Calcutta Hamlet, unlike the Shakespearian, cannot distinguish between a mouse and a rhododendron. A learned Government professor assures us, however, that rhodon is Greek for a rose and that Mr. Ghose has found a new species of mouse that not only flutters but flowers,—of which he believes himself to be the only surviving specimen. However that may be, we have learned ...
... leads them to some outward increase of power & pleasure, we who are beginning to neglect & ignore poetry and can no longer write it greatly & well,—just as we have forgotten how to sculpture like the Greeks, paint like the mediaeval Italians or build like the Buddhists,—are apt to forget this grand utility of the poets, one noble faculty among their many divine and unusual powers. The kavi or vates, poet ...
... family. Interestingly, when death of a person evokes a response from a wider circle of people it tends to give it immortal character. This baffles the rough hand of death. It even revives the dead. The Greeks spoke of Katharsis, tears that wash clean a grieving heart. I intimately knew Abhay for a long time. It gives me immense joy when I am associated with this touching tribute. Samir Kanta Gupta ...
... laugh! There were men and women, they call the women "nuns," and they too have their mouths covered.... Page 27 ( Then Mother refers to an American disciple who has set up the whole Greek pantheon in his home and is very unbalanced. ) It's odd, he is receptive enough: every time I do something, there is a result... but the result he attributes to his gods! So it makes a muddle in ...
... least in the fundamentals as a better counterpart of Xandrames of the Classical accounts? Page 175 1 The name "Xandrames" indubitably looks as if it were the Greek form of either the Sanskrit "Chandramās" or some other appellation like it. The Purānas 1 mention the founder of the Nandas as Mahāpadma and designate one of his eight sons variously as Sukalpa... wealth." What Thomas implies is quite possible - but there are innumerable other possibilities, too. What is to lend "ChandRāmas" priority - without our first demonstrating Dhana to be the king the Greeks were speaking of? The English scholar's supposition has in itself no force. We can judge its value only after surveying the whole plea for the last Nanda. Can we even be sure the Mahāvamsatīkā... Agramm'es and not Xandrames, he has submitted that the Sanskrit patronymic "Au-grasainya", derivable from "Ugrasena" and meaning "Son of Ugrasena", is the Indian original of the name preserved by the Greeks. But it is difficult to see how Ugrasena who is explicitly called the eldest among the Nanda brothers can give rise to a term which clearly makes him the father of the rest to whom alone it must ...
... ideals we may set up for a human being. That is what the Greeks believed. They held that man should not go beyond a certain limit. There should not be hubris, overweening pride or ambition. And man must observe his own human measure. That by the way is the interpretation some Hellenists give of the two great aphorisms that have come to us from Greek times: "Know thyself" and "Nothing too much." These... one of them some sort of moderation in life in general is recommended, not because man is man and has limitations but because moderation is itself a virtue We can interpret the adage in the light of Greek Art. There also you have a fine restraint, you don't have abundance as you have in Oriental Art. You have a chiselling of lines and everywhere a kind of divine perfection limited or moderated to human... to the number of his examples in the effective, illumined and inspired styles, these are few. Sri Aurobindo has given some other examples than the sleep-murder lines — examples from Latin and from Greek as well as from English. Three of the Page 436 English instances are: ...magic casements opening on the foam Of perilous seas in faery lands forlorn The Winds come to me ...
... to the one called Matthew's and which as late as 1966 the prestigious Catholic production, The Jerusalem Bible, was still loth to abandon. 4 The view is that the Greek Matthew, our present text, is based on the Greek translation of a primitive version of it in Aramaic composed by Matthew the publican, one of the Apostles mentioned in our present version (9:9; 10:3) as chosen by Jesus. Our... Annotating Acts 17:32, it 142 writes: "In the Greek world, even among Christians, the doctrine of the resurrection met stubborn resistance from preconceived ideas, cf. Corinthians 15:12f." Again, we are told: 143 "The body, though tyrannised by the 'flesh',... by sin,... by death,... is not however doomed to Page 183 perish, as Greek philosophy would have it, but, in accordance... used as his source Mark's Gospel (and other traditions)..." The "other traditions" are indicated by Brown 8 when he speaks of "Matthew's dependence on Mark (and upon Q, a body of Jesus' sayings in Greek, known also to Luke)..." In pointing to Q (from Quelle, German for "Source"), as does the bulk of Protestant scholarship, Brown sets little store by old orthodox attitudes. He 9 informs us: "Roman ...
... not bear telling. Certain periods of mortal agony there were, each with its own physical surroundings, that I long to forget but cannot. Some of them recalled strangely, not in detail, but in kind, Greek Tartarus and Catholic Inferno. I was the prey of harpies, I was hunted and torn and devoured, I experienced the agonies of the men I had sent to the deliberate and brutal torture of our jails or beggared ...
... Peninsula by Russia as the premier Slav State; but such a scheme would have to meet not only the independent Serbian nationality and the imperfect Slavism of the Bulgar but the quite incompatible Rumanian, Greek and Albanian elements. Thus it does not appear that this tendency towards vast homogeneous aggregates, although it has for some time played an important part in the world's history and is not exhausted... culture that was superior in certain respects to her own and accepted it as part of her own cultural existence and even as its most valuable part; she created a Graeco-Roman civilisation, left the Greek tongue to spread and secure it in the East, but introduced it everywhere else by the medium of the Latin language and a Latin education and succeeded in peacefully overcoming the decadent or inchoate... conquest and colonisation, abandoning for the most part the pre-Roman principle of simple overlordship or hegemony which was practised by the Assyrian and Egyptian kings, the Indian States and the Greek cities. But this principle also has been sometimes used in the shape of the protectorate to prepare the more normal means of occupation. The colonies have not been of the pure Roman, but of a mixed ...
... the semivowel roots the V & Y families. The modified vowels e and o are in the Aryan languages secondary sounds conjunct of a and i , a and u . The diphthongsn ai and au with their Greek variations ei and ou are tertiary modifications of e & o . Another conjunct vowel lṛ is a survival of a more ancient order of things in which l and r no less than v and y were considered ...
... self-conscious being. From its place behind the heart centre, the psychic supports the mind, life and body and, as it develops, increasingly aids their evolution and growth. The word psychic, from the Greek psyche, is used in its original sense of soul, as distinguished from the mind and vital; as an adjective it refers to the experience and movements of the soul and not to all the inward psychological ...
... appeared forces and beings also proper to each domain. The earliest, the first among them are the Asuras, rather the original Asuras – the first quaternary (some memory of them seemed to linger in the Greek legend of Chronos and his brood). For they embody the powers of division, of Inconscience: they are the Affirmations of the Negation. Against the Asuras there came and ranged-at the first line of division ...
... the aim of the Epicurean finds itself married to the method of the Stoic. But the Upanishads are never, like Greek epic & Jewish scripture, simply ethical in their intention. Their transcendence of the ethical plane is part of their profounder observation of life & soul-experience. The Greeks sought always for a rule of moral training & self-discipline; the Mosaic Law imposed always a rule of outward... highway. The particular prohibition of covetousness stands partly on the idea of the morally seemly, the epieikes of the Greeks; much more (and in the Jewish temperament entirely) it rests on the stronger & more mechanical conception of legal justice between man and man, the Greek dikaion. In either case, it proceeds, like all ethics, from an original acceptance of the egoistic outlook on the universe;... extend and pasture this eternal hunger, others permit us to satisfy it under severe restrictions; but always we must satisfy desire ethically, with justice & decency, with the sense of measure of the Greeks, avoiding the aischron, the adikon, the perversion, or with the religious enthusiasm of the Jews, shunning offence to the Lord of Righteousness. We must indulge it [in] what we possess or can lawfully ...
... systematic destruction of Roman places of worship, of old Druidic holy sites, of Greek temples—any 'pagan' holy site became rubble. "Historians of the Roman Empire have documented the large-scale destruction of 'pagan' temples by Christian clergy from the fourth century onwards." 1 By the end of the fifth century, the famous Greek temple at Eleusis, where Demeter—Mother Earth—was worshipped, was changed ...
... may mean nothing to you; but these sounds, delightfully linked together as if by magic, will fuse with the rhythms of your own living body and make harmonious all the instincts of your nature. The Greeks grew up in the midst of great sculpture and architecture: ours is not an age of builders of beauty, but we can raise around you palaces not made by chisel and hammer, spacious patterns of music, and ...
... heroism. In this process, human nature is honed by gigantic forces both human and divine that purify the lower nature and bring out the latent noble and godlike possibilities. The struggles between the Greeks and the Trojans revolve around issues of power and honor. The Iliad shows us the conflict between mighty human spirits, and how the Gods intervene in such conflicts to workout a Divine Will. Homer ...
... the admirable but rather unmanageable Greek word, metempsychosis, which means the insouling of a new body by the same psychic individual. The Greek tongue is always happy in its marriage of thought and word and a better expression could not be found; but forced into English speech the word becomes merely long and pedantic without any memory of its subtle Greek sense and has to be abandoned. Reincarnation ...
... capitals, received a grand impetus which brought them to their highest technical perfection. That this impetus came from Greek sources or from the Buddhists seems hardly borne out: the latter may rather have shared in the general tendencies of the time than originated them, and the Greek theory gives us a maximum of conclusions with a minimum of facts. I do not think, indeed, it can be maintained that this... a rigid tradition, too appreciative of rhetorical device and artifice and even permitted and admired the most extraordinary contortions of the learned intelligence, as in the Alexandrian decline of Greek poetry, but the earlier work is usually free from these shortcomings or they are only occasional and rare. "The classical Sanskrit is perhaps the most remarkably finished and capable instrument ...
... Aristotle regards God as eternal and immutable, the Arch-perfection that simply IS, the changeless Being beyond motion and relation: how then is the cosmos set moving? In a short pregnant sentence the Greek philosopher suggests the way: "Like one beloved, God moves the cosmos." In other words, without Himself moving or having any relation with the cosmos God is the cause of the latter's movement because... by its love, is set a-stir to its mighty periodic rhythms. Of course there are difficulties in the Aristotelian position and the deity of St. Aquinas's system is not altogether conceived after the Greek thinker, but the inspiring and subtle idea that the spheres were driven by a love-urge for the Divine remained and shaped that verse of Dante's: The great Florentine's phrase has kindled in a recent ...
... mean the same thing, forthe fingers are those of the two hands of the Sun, दश धियः प्रशस्तं Well-expressed (शस्) by the word: external sense = praised. अथर्युँ अथ् to move, cf अत् or अथर्? — Greek αἰθήρ— the plane of flaming light नरः पुरुषा मनुष्या देवा वाग्निं जनयंताजनयन् जनितवंतः। कुतः। अरण्योर्दीधितिभिर्बुद्धिभिरंगुलिभिर्वा हस्तच्युती हस्तद्वयचालनेन। कीदृशमग्निं प्रशस्तं प्रशंसितमचा प ...
... unique, and the Hindu has believed that they can work wonders, even arrest Nature's normal process (as in the story of Nalayani who could prevent the sun from rising), and achieve the impossible. In the Greek story of Admetus and Alcestis (the theme of Euripides' Alcestis), the wife dies so that the husband may live. Although Admetus' father and mother both decline to die in his place, his wife Alcestis ...
... mythical stories of Antigone, Medea and Eurydice; other dramatists too—Andre Gide, Jean Giradoux, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Cocteau, Eugene O'Neill, Tennessee Williams, Jack Richardson—have found the ancient Greek myths susceptible to transplantation on the soil of our uncertain, agonised, tortuous modern consciousness. Dr Richards is thus right in describing the 'saner and greater' mythologies ...
... poet and given a place next to Dante. Simonides has not a single surviving complete poem; he is known only by his fragments. But he is ranked as a great poet, second only to Pindar who is the greatest Greek lyricist. Nor has Pindar himself written very much. Sappho has come down to us in only one complete poem: the rest of her is in mere snatches. Still, she is hailed as a great poet. So there can be no ...
... master and inhabit in us with the sisters; casting away from thee those of them that are infant minds thou shouldst burn bright encompassing us all about like a cuirass in our battles. (श्वसिः is the Greek χάσɩς and an old variant of श्वसृ—wife or sister. Therefore it is coupled with वृषा—like पत्नी.) 11) This, O Agni, is that which is well-established upon the ill-placed; even out of this blissful ...
... out but it has fitted in extremely well. It has also at the same time a remarkable combination of the three unities of the Greek drama into which this distant scene, though not too distant, manages to dovetail very well, — the unity of one place, sometimes one spot in the Greek play or a small restricted area, one time, one developing action completed in that one time and spot, an action rigorously ...
... which her intellect could suggest. But when she was utterly reduced to despair, the time came for her own power to awake and set itself against that of the foreigner. She flung aside the devices of the Greek and took on herself the majesty of Roman strength and valour. When she declared the Boycott, she did so without calculation, without reckoning chances, without planning how the Boycott could succeed ...
... Vedic Notes Vedic Notes Vedic and Philological Studies Mandala Six Rig Veda. Mandala VI (1) मनोता. Cf Greek termination οτƞς (δƞμóτƞς). S. देवानां मनो यत्र संबद्धे भवति. Aitareya Br. अग्निः सर्वमनोताग्नौ मनोताः संगच्छंते द्रुष्टरितु . Term. ईतु . Passive sense तृ = pierce सहसे सहध्यै. Vedic construction. Dat. of objective, attraction. सहध्यै ...
... nothing akin to the Prototype, they belong to a different line of emanation, other than that of the human being. We may have some idea of what it is like by taking recourse to the distinction that Greek philosophers used to make between the formal and the material cause of things. The prototype is the formal reality Page 22 hidden and imbedded in the material reality of an object. ...
... Prasii. But what then must be the Indian original of the word? No designation of the kind we want exists in Sanskrit literature, and some scholars believe it to be a purely Greek formation on the analogy of the Greek name for the people of the north-western frontier country of Gandhara: Gandarai, Gandarioi, Gandaridai -the last variant even stealing into Diodorus to do duty for "Gangaridai"... "Gangaridai" (sometimes misspelled "Gandaridai", once "Gan-daritai") - "Gāngārides", - "Gāngāridae" (or "Gaggaridae" 1 ) -these are the names under which a great people in ancient India was known to Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. Modern historians 2 are as good as unanimous in locating this people in the region watered by the mouths of the Ganges, the Ganges-delta in what is now called Lower... linked with the Prasioi, what exactly is the relation of the two?" Our scholars equate the "Prasioi" to the Sanskrit Prāchya, meaning "Easterners"; but, though the linguistics are correct, the Greek and Latin texts fix a narrower denotation than the Indian term. After stating that Palibothra (Pātaliputra) lies at the confluence of the Ganges and another river, which is elsewhere called Erannoboas ...
... Sadhaka: a spiritual aspirant Sadhana: practice of discipline for God-realizations Swabhava: the bhava or nature native; the law of one's being Tapasya: Sri Aurobindo often uses the Greek word askesis: it means spiritual effort with the last stress on protected austerities. Prayopaveshana: to fast unto death till the boon sought is granted. Page 376 ...
... one of the glands in the inner coat of the eye-lid. Sri Aurobindo: This is more intelligible. You have not explained your bad Greek, though - myoboemian* which * It is mock-Greek, a play on the word "meibomian", which is a legitimate medical term and is not Greek. Myo Page 103 seems to have something to do with a mystically silent shout. 61 3.NB: Dr. Andre says that... affair. 59 XIV. Fun with Greek/Latin expressions: 1.NB: [A's case] Anemie cerebrale! Good God, no! It is anaemia hepaticus. Sri Aurobindo: Who is this hermaphrodite? [Sri Aurobindo changed "hepaticus" to "hepatica".] 60 2.NB: M's is not a pimple. It looks like a Myobeian cyst. Sri Aurobindo: What the hell is that? I don't know bad Greek. NB: I send you a diagram... insistence on the Supramental is of course apodiaskeptic. Don't search for the word in the dictionary. I am simply imitating the doctors who when they are in a hole protect themselves with impossible Greek. ... Of course, I am not asking you to become supramental offhand. That is my business, and I will do it if you fellows give me a chance, and which you are not doing just now (you is not personal ...
... in the Rigvedic epoch. The period was 48 years. Old books mention several periods - 12 years, 24, 36 and finally the extreme I have mentioned. I remember reading in the Indica of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to the court of the Indian king whom the historians of Alexander the Great called "Sandrocottus" (= Chandragupta), that the age of marriage for the Brahmins was 37. Evidently, around 300... than the Rigvedic. Don't we read in the Isha Upanishad the injunction about desireless and detached activity: "Doing verily works in this world, one should wish to live a hundred years"? In ancient Greek books too the longest life-span was put at a century and they equated this length of time to three generadons. Nowadays we count a generation as 25 years instead of a little over 33 as did Herodotus ...
... Iliad, translation by W. C. Bryant, Boston, I898' Homer, Odyssey, text and translation by A. T. Murray, Loeb Library. 3 Murray, G., Five stages of Greek Religion, Oxford, I930. 4 Harrison, G. E., Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1922. 5 Vide., Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, Rutledge, London,1996, p. 43. 6 There appears to be a long ...
... There have been many nuptials mixed like these, Of which world-famous emperors were born. INDRANY Yes, but we took, not gave, were lords, not slaves. As ransom of his fate the conquered Greek To Indian Chandragupta gave his child, Knowing a son by her could never rule. ATRY There is no bar. The Scythian weds with all And makes impartial Time the arbiter Whether a native or a foreign ...
... we draw near the Pope. He gives Mama a few hosts in a handkerchief then asks his servant to bring a multicolored alb similar to his, and I see on the Pope's chest Mother's symbol, and at the back a Greek cross (with two equal sides). The servant brings the alb, which the Pope puts on me. Everyone has left. I hear P.L.s voice, but only see a little friend of the Ashram. We go back home, and as we are ...
... Could I read it? If you want to read it as a piece of literature, it is all right. I did not find so much of poetry in the book. Perhaps you have read it in the original Greek? Even in a good translation the poetry ought to come out to some extent. Plato was a great writer as well as a philosopher — no more perfect prose has been written by any man. In some of ...
... agents that work out and initiate movements in Nature, while the apparent ones are only the external forms and even masks. This occultism was also practised very largely in ancient Egypt from where the Greek took up a few threads. The Mysteries—Orphic and Eleusinian—cultivated the tradition within a restricted circle and in a very esoteric manner. The tradition continued into the Christian Church also and ...
... agents that work out and initiate movements in Nature, while the apparent ones are only the external forms and even masks. This occultism was also practised very largely in ancient Egypt from where the Greeks took up a few threads. The Mysteries – Orphic and Eleusinian – cultivated the tradition within a restricted circle and in a very esoteric manner. The tradition continued into the Christian Church also ...
... revised knowledge, it is due to the survival of the theory with which European erudition started, that they belonged to the so-called Aryan race and were on the same level of culture with the early Aryan Greeks, Celts, Germans as they are represented to us in the Homeric poems, the old Norse Sagas and the Roman accounts of the ancient Gaul and Teuton. Hence has arisen the theory that these Aryan races were... found myself continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally between the Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocables not only suggested the connection Page 25 but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And it was through the Dravidian... we may dwell a little on Sri Aurobindo's impression of a common source of the so-called Aryan and Dravidian tongues. 19 He notes, with several illustrations, how those ancient languages, Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, which we regard as related, tended to lose "even in the commonest terms... their original vocabulary and diverge from each other so that if the process had not been arrested by an early ...
... Christian religion propounded the theory of revelation and pointed out that there was a clear distinction between reason and revelation. However, with the advent of the Renaissance, when the ancient Greek knowledge began to spread once again throughout Europe, a new age of reason began to dawn. Now, by means of physical verification certain facts were established which turned out to be in direct opposition... revealed truth. The great scientists of this time revolutionised the concept of the universe and the place of earth and man within it. Mathematics, which had already reached great heights in ancient Greek civilisation, was now developed as a perfect model of science. That a proposition must be proved to be true before it can be accepted as true became widely acknowledged. Along with this came a serious... philosophy, in its beginnings, breathed the spirit of the modem times, the characteristic of which we have endeavoured to describe. It was independent in its search for truth, resembling ancient Greek thought in this respect. It was rationalistic in the sense that it made human reason the highest authority in the pursuit of knowledge. It was naturalistic in that it sought to explain inner and outer ...
... of the human being so that the obstructions of his inner knowledge are removed and he attains to the utmost splendours of the liberated mind. But what is this Soma, called sometimes amrita, the Greek ambrosia, as if it were itself the substance of immortality? It is a figure for the divine Ananda, the principle of Bliss, from which, in the Vedic conception, the existence of Man, this mental being... climbing upwards. The Aryan man labours towards heights, fights his way on in a march which is at once a progress forward and an ascent. That is his Aryahood, his aretē , virtue, to use a Greek word derived from the same root. Ārata , with the rest of the phrase, might be translated, "Out and push forward in other fields." The idea is taken up again, in the subtle Vedic fashion of tho ...
... this way indeed does the world deal with us, there is a law here which does so make itself felt and against which all our egoistic ignorance and self-will and violence dashes up in the end, as the old Greek poet said of the haughty insolence and prosperous pride of man, against the very foundation of the throne of Zeus, the marble feet of Themis, the adamantine bust of Ananke. There is the secret of an... strength of man: but it was clouded over by other ideas inconsistent with any reign of law, vague ideas of Page 330 some superior caprice or of some divine jealousy,—that was a notion of the Greeks,—a blind Fate or inscrutable Necessity, Ananke, or, later, the mysterious ways of an arbitrary, though no doubt an all-wise Providence. And all this meant that there was some broken half-glimpse of ...
... perfection can only become truly spiritual when it is founded on the awakened spiritual consciousness and takes on its peculiar essence. We are told by Europeans that the lined and ravaged face of the Greek bust of Homer is Page 416 far more spiritual than the empty ecstatic smile of the Buddha. We are told often nowadays that to earn for one's family and carry out our domestic duties, to be ...
... incontestable conclusions which they could present, rationally founded, first to all enquirers and then to the world at large. Mṛṣ Besant would have us believe that Theosophy is Brahmavidya. The Greek Theosophia and the Sanscrit Brahmavidya, she tells us in all good faith, are identical words and identical things. Even with Mṛṣ Besant's authority, I cannot accept this extraordinary identification ...
... × This book should normally have been written four or five years earlier, and at the time Satprem saw it in the form of a Greek tragedy. × Petrea volubilis , crimson morning glory. ...
... nothing akin to the Prototype, they belong to a different line of emanation, other than that of the human being. We may have some idea of what it is like by taking recourse to the distinction that Greek philosophers used to make between the formal and the material cause of things. The prototype is the formal reality hidden and imbedded Page 179 in the material reality of an object ...
... The reign of Poseidon represents man in his half animal stage worshipping the dark vital gods. Pitted against that rose later, as the scholars say, the Aryan civilisation represented in Europe by the Greeks – worshippers of the solar Page 383 gods, Gods of Light and Love. The force that transforms darkness into light, passion into pure energy, gloom into happiness, is the touch of Love ...
... poetical bent, Manmohan's influence stimulated him to write poetry. At the age of seventeen he translated from the Greek a passage entitled "Hecuba". Laurence Binyon, who happened to read it, asked Aurobindo why he was not writing more poetry. Occasionally Aurobindo used to write Greek and Latin verses. During those days games did not form an important item of school life as they do today. Football... it was an intense flame that touched many Indian hearts and set them ablaze. Some people have supposed that Aurobindo studied Greek philosophy while he was in England. This is not true. He read Plato's Republic and Symposium , but he did not study Greek Philosophy. He had heard of Heraclitus while in England, but ¹Ibid pp. 1 - 4. ² Ibid. p. 4. Page 31 ... admitted to St. Paul's after being examined by Dr. Walker, the headmaster of the school. Dr. Walker was satisfied with Aurobindo's proficiency in Latin and other subjects, but he found him weak in Greek. He took a personal interest in Aurobindo and coached him in classes called "specials" where it was his practice to gather all young and promising students. Dr. Walker did not take any regular classes ...
... sadhana and meditations. But occasionally he too did not hesitate to join in our childish pranks. One day I asked to hear from him something in the Greek language. He gave us a recital of ten or twelve lines from Homer. That was the first time I listened to Greek verse. Such was the picture of our outer life. But how about the inner feelings? There a fire had been smouldering. Barin had suggested that ...
... in school and college textbooks ? By and large, it was a history of conquerors coming from the outside and establishing regimes of long or short durations in this country - the Iranians, the Greeks, the Parthians, the Scythians, the Kushans, the Huns, the Arabs, the Turks, the Mughals, the Portuguese, the Persians, the Dutch, the French, and the British. The scenario had been given a finishing ...
... religions? No, a museum is too intellectual—a city of religions. We would have to re-create the atmosphere and have a temple, churches, a cathedral, a totem pole ... ( laughing ) We'd entrust the Greek temple to Ananta! 2 That would be really unique on earth. But you know, there are still so many fanatics—more than we think. You would think all that has disappeared with modern development—not ...
... have to live and move, we come across the monster; we cannot pass him by, we have to accost him (even in the Shakespearean sense, that is) welcome him, woo him. It is like one of the demons of the Greek legends that come out of the unknown, the sea or the sky, to prey upon a help- less land and its people until a deliverer comes. Corruption appears today with a twofold face, Janus like: violence ...
... quite such a beginning. Others also started with a poetry of external life, Greek with the poetry of Homer, Latin with the historical epic of Ennius, French with the feudal romances of the Charlemagne cycle and the Arthurian cycle. But in none of these was the artistic aim simply the observant accurate presentation of Greek or Roman or feudal life. Homer gives us the life of man always at a high intensity ...
... these things will be added unto you. But persist in your foolish moderation, your unseasonable and unreasonable prudence, and another fifty years will find you more degraded than ever, a nation of Greeks with polished intellects and debased souls, body and soul helplessly at the mercy of alien masters. The Bengalee in these fiery paragraphs denounces for the moment prudence and moderation as mere ...
... them and attempts to eliminate them. According to the Indian tradition there are in descending order the asuras , the great hostiles of the vital-mental plane, sometimes compared to the Titans of Greek mythology; then there are the rakshasas, the ugly ogres of the vital plane, which are nevertheless perfectly capable of taking on the most seductive appearance; and on the lowest level there are the ...
... full yield, is by that effort an Aryan. If Arya were a purely racial term, a more probable derivation would be ar , meaning strength or valour, from ar , to fight, whence we have the name of the Greek war-god Ares, areios , brave or warlike, perhaps even aretē , virtue, signifying, like the Latin virtus , first, physical strength and courage and then moral force and elevation. This sense of the ...
... by their own Commission or else take a different decision and until the plebiscite Administrator is appointed and makes the final arrangements. What will finally transpire from all this lies as the Greeks used to say on the knees of the Gods, theōn en gounasi keitai . It lies also with the reactions of the Pakistan leaders which are more easily calculable, but may not show themselves until a possibly ...
... have the memory of the sounds. So how did they rediscover them? Do you know? By crosschecking; that's in fact what Pavitra explains to you. They found stones with inscriptions in Egyptian, in Greek and in Coptic: the same thing said in those three languages. So they pieced it together. Now, with the gramophone and all that, the sounds will be remembered, but at that time they weren't noted ...
... of the human mind and intellect. The modern analytical languages with their army of independent prepositions have taken the place of the classical languages which were predominantly inflexional. The Greek and Latin started the independent prepositional forms in the form of a fundamentally inflexional structure. Still further back, in Sanskrit for example, the inflexional form reigns supreme. Prefixes ...
... particular morning is not so improbable as it may seem. But of Ghose's background I scarcely knew anything. His enthusiasm for literature sufficed my curiosity." Manmohan was already well versed in Greek and English literature when he joined St. Paul's School, London. Aravinda A. Ghose and Manmohan Ghose were both admitted to St. Paul's School in September 1884. The original site of the school ...
... speed or both before it came to be applied to a horse. In its first or root significance it means to exist pervadingly and so to possess, have, obtain or enjoy. It is the Greek echo (OS. [ Old Sanskrit ] ashâ), the ordinary word in Greek for "I have". It means, also and even more commonly, to eat or enjoy. Beside this original sense inherent in the roots of its family it has its own peculiar significance... preeminent, noble, excellent or first; to raise, lead, begin or rule; it means also to struggle, fight, to drive, to labour, to plough. The sense of struggle & combat appears in ari, an enemy; the Greek Ares, the war-god, arete, virtue, meaning originally like the Latin virtus, valour; the Latin arma, weapons. Arya means strong, high, noble or warlike, as indeed its use in literature constantly indicates ...
... the Russian name for God,—worshipped in Iran before Ahuramazda replaced them,—for Ahriman, the dark spirit of the Persians, preserves the name of the strong Vedic deity,—worshipped at some time by Greek & Roman & Celt and Scandinavian, they have long given way even in India to the direct adoration of their Master whom they revealed, the Deva Adhiyajna whom through them the ancient masters of the sacrifice... a recompenser of virtue, a Master of Truth and Knowledge are already present to this early Indian consciousness. The idea of Zeus pater or Jupiter existed in European antiquity but it evoked in the Greeks & Latins no such emotions as break out in the piteva sunave of Madhuchchhandas & are paralleled by the intimacy of his claim, later on, of special & dear comradeship with Indra, the master of the ... ideas & images which they have not mastered, in which as yet there is no fixity. Yet the moral ideas of other ancient races,—Aryan races—seem to have been otherwise clear, concrete & definite. The Greeks knew well what they meant by Fate, Necessity,Ate, Themis, Dike, Koros,Hubris; we are in no danger of confusing morally Zeus with Ares, or Ares with Hephaistos, Aphrodite with Pallas or Pallas with ...
... of French literature. I find a few of them are still there in our Library. Afterwards, I also bought from the secondhand bookshops in the Gujli Kadai area several books in Greek, Latin and French. Once I chanced on a big Greek lexicon which I still use. Gradually, a few books in Sanskrit and Bengali too were added to our stock, through purchase and gifts. As the number of books reached a few... but for adults, for those, that is, who had already had some education the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I Page 62 took up Greek, I began straightway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone . I began a translation of Antigone into Bengali and Sri Aurobindo offered to write a preface if I completed ...
... Great was the most famous fighter of the Greeks next to Achilles. According to Greek legend and, unlike as in Ilion., he died by his own hand when after Achilles's death he lost to Odysseus in the attempt to gain possession of the armour of Achilles. The Small, son of Oileus and called the Locrian, boastful in character and reputed to be the fastest of the Greeks next to Achilles, figures as alive in... life-bloom on the withered lips that at one time uttered it, then we should know how sweet it were to repeat that name, sweeter than the simple and solemn music in the Dorian mode prevalent in the Greek countryside. But such a name disappears and later men do not cherish it." Page 330 The first fourteen lines of stanza 8, With thy kisses chase this gloom:— Thoughts, the... Parnell's life. The two opening lines of the same piece, Pythian he came; repressed beneath his heel The hydra of the world with bruised head, run together two incidents of Greek mythology, which have been already explained in the second part of The World of Sri Aurobindo's Poetry. The reference is to Apollo and Hercules. * ** Lines on Ireland. 1896 ...
... difference between the European or rather the Hellenic spirit and the Indian spirit. It is the Indian spirit to take stand upon divinity and thence to embrace and mould what is earthly and human. The Greek spirit took its stand pre-eminently on earth and what belongs to earth. In Europe Dante's was a soul spiritualised more than perhaps any other and yet his is not a Hindu soul. The utmost that he could... ² "A Child's Imagination." ³ Inferno, xxxiii. 39. Page 60 However spiritual a soul, Dante is yet bound to the earth, he has dominated perhaps but not conquered. The Greek sings of the humanity of man, the Indian the divinity of man. It is the Hellenic spirit that has very largely moulded our taste and we have forgotten that an equally poetic world exists in the domain ...
... discussing the life of Aurobindo." He admits feeling rather nervous when he was asked "to coach Aurobindo in Bengali. Aurobindo was a profound scholar. He had secured record marks in Latin and Greek in his I.C.S. examination," he explained. "Before I met Aurobindo," began his testimony, "I had formed an image of him somewhat like this: a stalwart figure, hatted-coated-booted from head to foot... jacket, his feet shod in old-fashioned slippers with upturned toes, a face sparsely dotted with pockmarks, 1 this slim young man was Sriman Aurobindo Ghose, a living fountain of French, Latin and Greek? I would not have been more surprised — and disappointed —had someone pointed to the hillocks of Deoghar and said, 'Look, there stand the Himalayas!' However, I had hardly known him for a couple of ...
... statuette of Nataraja or a pocket edition of the Bhagavad Gita, but that most unexpected symbol of his country — the mango! In the world of fruits the mango is as essentially Indian as olives are Greek, grapes French, figs Spanish, oranges Maltese and dates Arabian. Even more so — since it is a stauncher nationalist than any of them inasmuch as it has refused to thrive to any marked degree in a non-Indian ...
... some of their principal languages, and he had imbibed the literature and the poetry of their epics and lyrics, Homer and Shelley as well as Vyasa and Kalidasa. He admired Plato greatly and classical Greek culture as a whole – “where living itself was an education” – witness his essay on Heraclitus and the four thousand hexameters of his unfinished epic Ilion. He had the highest appreciation of the ...
... all. The great Shakespeare and poets from Milton to Shelley did not write, consciously in the Anglo Saxon language – except William Morris, who used Anglo Saxon words. They have followed Latin and Greek vocabulary. And the idea of writing for the mass is a stupid idea. Poetry was never written for the mass. It is only a minority that read and appreciated poetry. The definition of modern poetry is what ...
... poeticus, as the Romans characterised it. Pound offers us the three heads: Melopoeia, Phanopoeia, Logo- Page 129 poeia. The first term is easily seen as the Greek for "Song-making", the third as the Greek for "Word-making". The second looks somewhat obscure,. but we may remember the last half of the word "epiphany" : this half connotes "appearing, showing, manifesting. " So ...
... interpretation or variation of what the physical eye has seen. Imitation is the key-word of creation, according to Aristotle; Shakespeare advises the artist to hold up the mirror to Nature; and the Greek scientist and the English poet reflect accurately the mind of Europe. But the Indian artist has been taught by his philosophy and the spiritual discipline of his forefathers that the imagination ...
... there had been no reaction, the process would have been soon over and, whatever race finally occupied India, it would not have been the Indian race. For that race would have slowly perished as the Greek, when he parted with the springs of his life, perished and gave way to the Slav, or as the Egyptian perished and gave way to the Berber. This fate has been averted, because a great wave of reaction ...
... prepare for the Transformation. 30 September 1972 ( Concerning the sketch on the Games Tournament Award Card for the winner ) The drawing on the winner's card is an adaptation from a Greek bronze and is meant to express our will to use the physical strength for mastery over the black bull of passion. ( Concerning the sketch on the Games Tournament Award Card for the runner-up ) ...
... than before—of course it is nothing exceptional. I am speaking of the masses. That is the first necessary condition. PURANI: Yes, I told him how in Buddha's time or in the classical period of the Greeks, teaching and culture were limited to a small area, the greater part of the race had no access to them. Now, communication being so easy, there is no such obstacle. One can hear Roosevelt here in India ...
... have to live and move, we come across the monster; we cannot pass him by, we have to accost him (even in the Shakespearean sense, that is) welcome him, woo him. It is like one of the demons of the Greek legends that come out of the unknown, the sea or the sky, to prey upon a help - a less land and its people until a deliverer comes. Corruption appears today with a twofold face, Janus like: violence ...
... was that the house contained hardly anything except books. And when he saw that some of the books in Sri Aurobindo's room were in Greek and Latin, he was overwhelmed with admiration and kept exclaiming: 'II sait du latin, it sait du grec!' (He knows Latin, he knows Greek!) So the 'charmingly polite visit' came to a happy end. But the end for Mayuresan was not quite so happy. The revolutionaries filed... the first instance, and then he would give it an external verification in the light of reason, making the necessary changes accordingly.' During this period it was also Nolini's good fortune to learn Greek and Latin and some Italian from Sri Aurobindo. His method of teaching was unusual and Nolini writes: 'He never asked me to begin the study of a new language with primary readers or children's books... books written for children, but for adults, for those, that is, who had already had some education the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I took up Greek, I began straightaway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone.... I began my Latin with Virgil's Aeneid, and Italian with Dante.... I should tell you what one gains by ...
... translatable as "Ionian", indicating "Greek") - five rulers whose names have been adjudged to correspond with those of five post-Alexandrine Greek monarchs. And there is also the version in Greek along with an unmistakably Aśokan message in Aramaic in the inscription discovered some decades ago in Kandahar. Since the discovery of this bilingual inscription another in Greek alone and two more in only Aramaic... king whose name had been mentioned in a Greek form by foreign writers on India soon after the invasion of the Punjāb by Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. Outstanding among these writers was Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to India in c. 302 B.C. by Seleucus Nicator, the chief successor of Alexander in the East. He came to the court of the king whom the Greeks called Sandrocottus and whose capital they... kingship has to be distinguished from a monarchical status won in the Indus-region in relation to a conflict with the foreign governors left behind by Alexander. Interpreting, on the one hand, the Greek background for it and, on the other, the Buddhist tradition, modern historians, by and large, favour 321 B.C. 1 Here, or close to it, is a point of certainty for them and all Indian chronology has ...
... order. First there is something subtle, inscrutable and formidable that meets us in our paths, a Force of which the ancient Greeks took much notice, a Power that is on the watch for man in his effort at enlargement, possession and enjoyments and seems hostile and opposite. The Greeks figured it as the jealousy of the gods or as Doom, Necessity, Ate. The egoistic force in man may proceed far in its victory... excess and selfish violence. It appears to demand of man and of individual men and nations that they shall keep within a limit and a measure, while all beyond that brings danger; and therefore the Greeks held moderation in all things to be the greatest part of virtue. There is here something in the life forces obscure to us, considered by our partial feelings sinister because it crosses our desires ...
... of French literature. I find a few of them are still there in our Library. Afterwards, I also bought from the second-hand bookshops in the Gujli Kadai area several books in Greek, Latin and French. Once I chanced on a big Greek lexicon which I still use. Gradually, a few books in Sanskrit and Bengali too were added to our stock, through purchase and gifts. As the number Page 418 ... books written for children, but for adults, for those, that is, who had already had some education, the reading material must be adapted to their age and mental development. That is why, when I took up Greek, I began straightway with Euripides' Medea, and my second book was Sophocles' Antigone. I began a translation of Antigone into Bengali and Sri Aurobindo offered to write a preface if I completed the ...
... unites with the initial letter of its successor in a conjunct sound); each word in English is independent and has its own metrical value unaffected by the word that follows. In Sanskrit, as in Latin and Greek, the short syllable having already its full natural sound-value is affected by the additional consonant and passes Page 338 into the category of longs by the force of the consonant weightage... variation except for such modulations as are, in the form chosen, possible or desirable. Secondly, stanza forms can be found, either analogous to those used in accentual verse or else analogous to the Greek arrangement in strophe and antistrophe. Thirdly, one can use a freer quantitative verse in which each line has its own appropriate movement, the feet being variable, but with a predominant single rhythm... unchanging from line to line needs greater skill; modulation is here of great importance. A semi-free quantitative verse also gives considerable scope; it can be planned in a form resembling that of the Greek chorus but without the fixed balance of strophe and antistrophe, or a still looser use can be made of it escaping towards the freedom of modernistic verse. There are in this collection of poems examples ...
... the heart and the head. Aristotle had a similar gradation. It is from the ancient Greek philosophers onwards, and because of their all-permeating influence in medieval Western thought, that the real soul, the ‘psyche’ has been confused with the mind. The reason of this confusion seems to have been that the Greeks, despite their Mysteries, lacked the spiritual experience of the East. Descartes’ basic... posits two principles as supports of his assertion, both originating with Plato and Aristotle, who, after all, had been Plato’s disciple for twenty years. The first is the principle of plenitude. The Greek reason could not imagine a gap, empty space or break in the cosmos. For the cosmos was the creation of supernal powers, for whom “no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled.” – “Aristotle ...
... intoxication; in a charm of subtle romance. It casts into the mould a higher urge of thought than the vital common sense of the Saxon can give, not the fine, calm and measured poetical thinking of the Greeks and the Latin races which deals sovereignly with life within the limits of the intellect and the inspired reason, but an excitement of thought seeking for Page 55 something beyond itself... immediate vision which is the strength of English poetry. Page 60 For since the heightening cannot come mainly from the power and elevation of the medium through which life is seen, as in Greek and ancient Indian poetry, it has to come almost entirely from the individual response in the poet, his force of personal utterance, his intensity of personal vision. Three general characteristics ...
... the novel of the future, in his provocative essay "Surgery for the Novel or a Bomb", D.H. Lawrence said: If you wish to look into the past for what next books, you can go back to the Greek Philosophers. Plato's dialogues are queer little novels. It seems to me it was the greatest pity in the world, when philosophy and notion got split. They used to be one, right from the days of myth... statement but emerges powerfully, aided by vivid images that capture this feeling of oneness while retaining the uniqueness of each civilisation as well: Fire-cult that neighboured the Greek world of thought Burns through my Persian blood to Europe's large Earth-richness; India's infinite Unknown Lures up the same fire-cry ~ both stay uncaught. My country's ...
... August - Sri Aurobindo passes the I.C.S.; he does not appear at a riding test and is disqualified. 1893,Feb. 6 - Lands at Bombay and soon joins the State service of the Maharaja Greek wad of Baroda. From August 1893 to March 1894, contributes a series of articles, "New Lamps for Old," to the Indu Prakash. 1893,May 31 - Swami Vivekananda sails for America. ...
... of the mental limitation and ignorance. And, again, Western thought has ceased to be dynamic; it has sought after a theory of things, not after realisation. It was still dynamic amongst the ancient Greeks, but for moral and aesthetic rather than spiritual ends. Later on, it became yet more purely intellectual and academic; it became intellectual speculation only without any practical ways and means ...
... because of the failure or insufficiency of these anterior – in the evolutionary movement – and inferior gods that Agni's service is being requisitioned. Mythologically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said that the Olympian gods – Zeus and his company – were a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, ...
... cranium will hold, as it were, a golden ball, rounded and fully formed, the golden egg, hiranyagarbha, out of which the new physical creation will emerge – something in the manner of the legendary Greek goddess Minerva, whole and entire, complete in arms and panoply, out of the head of Father Jupiter. Page 328 ...
... great classics are absent, even though no mediaeval poet can rank in power with Valmiki and Kalidasa. The modern literatures of Europe commonly fall short of the Greek perfection of harmony and form, but they give us what the greatest Greek poets had not and could not have. And Page 39 in our own days a poet of secondary power in his moments of inspiration can get to a vision far more satisfying ...
... you have a large number of retainers here. Call one of them, anyone you like, and I will use him to demonstrate it to you. MENO: Certainly. [To a slave boy] Come here. SOCRATES: He is a Greek and speaks our language? MENO: Indeed yes — born and bred in the house. SOCRATES: Listen carefully then, and see whether it seems to you that he is learning from me or simply being reminded... the spontaneous recovery of knowledge that is in him is recollection isn't it? MENO: Yes. From Plato, Protagoras and Meno (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), pp.130-138. A Greek philosopher, V th century, bronze. Page 115 ...
... उ, and may be pure or preceded by the enclitics अ, इ, उ or their prolonged forms आ, ई, ऊ. Thus करण, शयान, बलिन्, राजन्, वरुण, इष्णु, विष्णु etc. अग्नि means one who exists in force or power. Cf the Greek ἄϒαν, exceedingly, ἀϒαθóς, good, originally meaning strong, powerful, brave. From the same sense of power, force, excellence come various senses of ἄϒω, the Latin ago , lead, drive, act, etc. On the ...
... rhythm of the line but it cannot change the metre; it cannot lengthen the preceding syllable so as to turn a trochee into a spondee. Sanskrit quantitation is irrelevant here (it is the same as Latin or Greek in respect to this rule); but both of us agree that the Classical quantitative conventions are not reproducible in English metre and it is for that reason that we reject Bridges' eccentric scansions ...
... invasion. It is not at all a question of strength or weakness. The first have a greater sense of life and answer to life; they suffer more from life and get more from it. It is the difference between the Greek and the Roman. Even without egoism the difference remains because it is of the temperament. In Yoga the first type are more able to feel everything directly and know everything in detail by Page ...
... Achilles on his foe pursued Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's, that so long Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son:... Not sedulous by nature to indite Wars, hitherto the only argument Heroic deemed.... ...or to describe races and games, Page ...
... magnificence" he is familiar with. From St. Paul's School, London, he went with a senior classical scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, where he took away in one year all the prizes for Greek and Latin verse. In the open I.C.S. examination in which he competed he scored record marks in these ancient languages that lie at the very foundation of European culture. Among Europe's modern languages... at the cost of his own health and the loss of a lucrative practice, Mr. Beach croft sitting in judgment over a man who had been with him at Cambridge and had beaten him there to second place in Greek and Latin! The charge of implication in the bomb-outrage at Muzzaferpore was torn to shreds by Das in a historic speech: Sri Aurobindo was acquitted. This was the second time he had been accused ...
... language as if it were his mother-tongue, he was a brilliant classical scholar who made his mark not only at Cambridge but also in the open competition for the I.C.S. by his record scoring in Greek and Latin. Fluent knowledge of French, Italian and German was another of his accomplishments. Together with his linguistic proficiency, close study of European history and institutions gave him... in jail and C.R. Das, the future leader of Bengal, appeared as his counsel and, by a curious stroke of fate, the judge at his trial was one Mr. Beachcroft whom he had beaten to second place in Greek and Latin in the I.C.S. competition, Rabindranath Tagore addressed to him a long stirring poem opening, "Aurobindo, Rabindranath bows to you." During his political career he began the practice of ...
... one form, the idea, the soul of Love, that strange essence which walks forever in the peopled Shadow-land, he is shackled in a single and uniform shape. How then shall I paint the idea of Love? The Greeks have described a child with a warlike bow of horn and bitter arrows tipped with steel, and modern poets inspired by this rude conception have fabled of the smart which is the herald of Love's shaft ...
... one opens to a new force which can change one's destiny. 22 August 1937 It is no doubt possible to draw the illnesses of others upon oneself and even to do it deliberately, the instance of the Greek king Antigonus and his son Dimitrius is a famous historical case in point: Yogis also do this sometimes; or else adverse forces may throw illnesses upon the Yogi, using those round him as a door or ...
... justification for the fear." * Page 81 "What does your correspondent mean by 'philosophy' in a poem? Of course if one sets out to write a metaphysical argument in verse like the Greek Empedocles or the Roman Lucretius it is a risky business and is likely to land you into prosaic poetry which is a less pardonable mixture than poetic prose. Even when philosophising in a less perilous ...
... a moved language no poetry can exist, just as no poetry can exist without the wings of the imagination in the word. Both may be controlled, both may be let loose - but they must be present. In the Greeks and Ro- mans, in Dante and Milton, Corneille and Racine, they are controlled, though often very intense - and the controlling actually adds at times to the effect of the intensity. In the Elizabethan ...
... Mystery and Excellence of the Human Body Greek physician treating a patient's arm Page 176 Healing Introduction A man was suddenly struck by a crippling disease. In a matter of only a few days, he was reduced from a normal condition to a situation where he could hardly move his limbs, and his jaws were nearly locked. In the words of the ...
... it can be touched—yes, it may burn also and it gives out sound. The fourth element, water, adds a fourth quality which is its own, namely, taste. Water has taste, very delightful taste to mortals. A Greek poet says water has the best taste, hudor men ariston. So you can taste water, you can see its form, you can touch it, you can hear it gurgle. Coming to the last, earth has all these qualities: ...
... can be touched – yes, it may burn also and it gives out sound. The fourth element, water, adds a fourth quality which is its own, namely, taste. Water has taste, very delightful taste to mortals. A Greek poet² says water has the best taste, hudor men ariston . So you can taste water, you can see its form, you can touch it, you can hear it gurgle. Coming to the last, earth has all these, qualities: ...
... of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown by barbarians invading from without or multiplying within." Naturally, the Mohammedans were not the first to invade India. Greeks, Huns and many other tribes had come to this rich land before them; and they had done what all invaders have been doing from the beginning of human history. But once they had settled down they had ...
... exact place of each word in the order. In this simple, easy & yet faultless balance & symmetry a great number of the Vedic hymns represent exactly in poetry the same spirit & style as the Greek temple or the Greek design in architecture & painting. Nor can anyone who neglects to notice it & give full value to it, catch rightly, fully & with precision the sense of the Vedic writings. In the third... master of right knowledge, wide, self-luminous & all-containing in the world-consciousness & in human consciousness. His physical connection with the all-containing ether,—for Varuna is Uranus, the Greek Akasha, & wideness is constantly associated with him in the Veda,—leads us to surmise that he may also be the master in the ideal faculty, ritam brihat, where he dwells, urukshaya, of pure infinite ...
... rescued. Yes, that was the mistake. It was not a mistake to insist (quietly, but firmly, it should be) on his doing his duty—but by losing the temper you raise issues and make it a case of Greek meets Greek. Besides that, you must learn to use a silent inner force on the man or else call in the Mother's force, as C suggested. It may not be successful at first through want of practice and skill in... conquer them. That is not true. Indifference is sufficient. Do you think learning sitar will be useful for me? I don't see much use in sitarring—but if you do! Your German has become Greek to me, Sir! It is illegible. Dilip wants to know if one is "Teufel" meaning "fiend". [The words in italics are mine. Sri Aurobindo filled in the gaps. ] These are swearings in German. Donner ...
... the Upanishads, Gita, Kalidasa's plays and other Sanskrit works. He learnt the language all by himself — no doubt the start he had made in England for his ICS studies as well as his proficiency in Greek and Latin were a help in acquiring another classical language, but so great a mastery did he gain over Sanskrit that he was later able to make a deep study of the language of the Vedas and, with the... Savitri , the story was taken from the Mahabharata. In addition to poems, both short and long, Sri Aurobindo wrote a number of plays in blank verse. One of these, Perseus the Deliverer , is based on a Greek myth which Sri Aurobindo adapted. It is an imaginative presentation of the ideas of evolution and progress which were to recur so prominently in Sri Aurobindo's later works. All in all, the Baroda... in old-fashioned Indian slippers with upturned toes, a face sparsely dotted with pockmarks — who could have thought that this man could be Mr. Aurobindo Ghose, a living fountain of French, Latin and Greek? I could not have received a bigger shock if someone had pointed to the hillocks about Deoghar and said: "Look, there stand the Himalayas." ... ‘He had gone to England as a mere boy, almost on the ...
... हेळः, is a common feature of the Veda. Sy. तोकाय—तुज्यते पीड्यते माता गर्भवासेनेति तोकं पुत्रः. An absurd derivation. तोक is from obsolete root तुच् to cut, shape, form, create, cf तिच् & तच् in Greek τóχος, τίχτω; it may mean anything formed or created or formation or creation. The image is that of the putra or apatyam, the creation of our works. तुजे—गच्छत्यनेनानृण्यं पितेति तुक् पौत्रः —a... but it is not clear that the precise sense of the pressure is that of driving. अज्र I take to be akin in sense to अजिर a court, open space, field of exercise or action, and equivalent to the Greek agros, Lat. ager, a field. 18) Ád it pa sh chá bubudháná vyakhyann, ád id ratnam dhárayanta dyubhaktam; Vi sh ve vi sh vásu duryásu devá Mitra dhiye Varuṇa satyam astu. Then indeed they ...
... God 218 Page 734 God to thy greatness 675 The Godhead 607 A God's Labour 534 Goethe 16 The Golden Light 605 The Greater Plan 606 Greek Epigram 685 The Guest 612 Hail to the fallen 676 Hell and Heaven 538 Here in the green of the forest 680 Hic Jacet 17 The Hidden Plan 602 The Hill-top ...
... for them to fuss over him. Even during the vacations he went about helping the students, sometimes calling them home. The headmaster of the school (Shibpur) was a pundit. He knew even Latin and Greek. He was also acquainted with our Nolinida. Late Mohinida (who looked after Tinda towards the end of his life) was Tinkori-da’s student in Shibpur. Tinkori-da came to the Ashram in 1942 intending it ...
... × In fact, Satprem wrote By the Body of the Earth or the Sannyasin two years later, in 1966. The first Sannyasin he conceived was like a Greek tragedy—quite implacable and, naturally, tragic. ...
... because of the failure or insufficiency of these anterior—in the evolutionary movement —and inferior gods that Agni's service is being requisitioned. Mythologically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said that the Olympian gods—Zeus and his company—were a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the ...
... because of the failure or insufficiency of these anterior—in the evolutionary movement—and inferior gods that Agni's service is being requisitioned. Mytho-logically also a parallelism is found in the Greek legends where it is said that the Olympian gods—Zeus and his company—were a younger generation that replaced, after of course a bloody warfare, their ancestors, the more ancient race of Kronos, the ...
... steal with disinterestedness then he is free. Disciple : To the western mind killing with detachment is difficult to grasp. Sri Aurobindo : All these European philosophers after the Greeks admit that Reason is the faculty by which you arrive at the Truth. The question about the sense perceptions and their reliability is easily met. We perceive certain things by our senses and the sensations ...
... off the hold of the Church, to that measure it could forge ahead in the discovery of the real reality of things and the law of existence. West Europeans, as they came into more and more contact with Greek thought, developed a refined Intellect, open and wide—a Power of Thought. With their Power of Thought they grappled with Matter. With that instrument for becoming, the West European civilization became ...
... heard of—the minuter differences between Dochmiacs and Antispasts". If you happen to be those miserable men I may tell you that a Dochmiac is a five-syllabled Greek foot composed of short-long-long-short-long and an Antispast is a four-syllabled Greek foot consisting of short-long Jong-short. But I am afraid I cannot tell you more minute differences than that the former has one final long in excess of the... sees and discloses. Of course the disclosing, the making manifest, the showing out is an integral part of the poet's function, and it is this part that is stressed in the Latin term poeta from the Greek poetes, which stands for "maker", "fashioner", "creator". But the whole labour of formation lies in rendering visible, in leading us to see, what has been seen by the one who forms. The vision is... Indian name goes to the root of the matter in speaking of the seer who discloses instead of the discloser who has seen. Shakespeare bears out the Indian characterisation, though he does not neglect the Greek and Latin, by the famous passage which describes what the poet does. In picturing the poet's activity he speaks of "the poet's eye"— The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance ...
... - the minute differences between Dochmiacs arid Antispasts". If you happen to be those miserable men I may tell you that a Dochmiac is a five-syllabled Greek foot composed of short-long-long-short-long and an Antispast is a four-syllabled Greek foot consisting of short-long-long-short. But I am afraid I cannot tell you more minute differences than that the former has one final long in excess of... and discloses. Of course the disclosing, the making manifest, the showing out is an integral part of the poet's function, and it is this part that is stressed in the Latin term poeta from the Greek poetes, which stands for "maker", "fashioner", "creator". But the whole labour of formation ____________ 1 Ibid., pp. 33-34. Page 163 lies in rendering visible, in... name goes to the root of the matter in speaking of the seer who discloses instead of the discloser who has seen. Shakespeare bears out the Indian characterisation, though he does not neglect the Greek and Latin, by the famous passage which describes what the poet does. In picturing the poet's activity he speaks of "the poet's eye" – The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance ...
... the minute differences between Dochmiacs and Antispasts." If there happen to be those miserable men I may tell them that a Dochmiac is a five-syllabled Greek foot composed of short-long-long-short-long and an Antispast is a four-syllabled Greek foot consisting of short-long-long-short. But I am afraid I cannot tell more minute differences than that the former has one final long in Page 213... sees and discloses. Of course the disclosing, the making manifest, the showing out is an integral part of the poet's function, and it is this part that is stressed in the Latin term poet from the Greek poetes, which stands for "maker", "fashioner", "creator". But the whole labour of formation lies in rendering visible, in leading us to see, what has been seen by the one who forms. The vision... embodiment and communication of it is the second. The Indian name goes to the root of the matter in speaking of the seer who discloses instead of the discloser who has seen. Shakespeare bears out the Greek and Latin, by the famous passage which describes what the poet does. In picturing the poet's activity he speaks of The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth ...
... Wisdom as a Person, not Personification a Presence, a Power, a Shakti, as we would call her. The original Hebrew word Hokma, like the Sanskrit word Medha and the Greek word Sophia, was feminine. On the contrary the word Logos in Greek for the Word was masculine. The word wisdom also indicated the quality as the Word indicated Utterance, like Vak. But the ancient Hebrews themselves were... John, xviii, 11. 30 Ibid, xix. 30. Page 225 the Vulgate consummatum est, since it was the Vulgate which was used at the time. The original Greek form—since the New Testament was written in Greek tetalestai was not well known. What "It" stands for is explained by Sri Aurobindo: The dread mysterious sacrifice. The "sacrifice" is "mysterious" because ...
... outside – It is self-forbidden. We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute – the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her ...
... (Bombay), (June 12 and 26, 1978). Misra, Haripriya, "A Comparative Study of Assimilation of Conjunct Consonants in Prakrit and Greek", in Linguistic Researches Vol. IV (Dept. of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 1982). "A .Comparative Study of Vowel Contraction in Greek and Middle Indo-Aryan", in Historical and Comparative Linguistics Vol. 1, nos. 1-2 (Dept. of Linguistics, Banaras Hindu ...
... atheism of Charvaka & in the loftiness of the modern Adwaita philosophy. It would almost seem as if this old Indian movement contains in itself at one & the same time the old philosophic movement of [the Greeks], Luther's Protestant reformation and the glories of modern free thought. 1 These are indeed exhilarating notions and they have been attractively handled—some of them can be read, developed with... may have known better the meaning of their religion than the inhabitant of different surroundings and of another world of thought speculating millenniums afterwards in the light of possibly fanciful Greek and German analogies. So far as I have been able to study & to penetrate the meaning of the Rigvedic hymns, it seems to me that the Europeans are demonstrably wrong in laying so predominant a stress ...
... all possible things; I don't think there's anything she hasn't tried, and she goes on. But Nature too has created sexless beings, even in human form; it has happened. I have even seen a Greek statue like that. The Greeks knew this. Everything that one can imagine and much more, Nature has imagined. Only, she doesn't want to be hurried. I think it amuses her. So she wants to go in her own way: trying ...
... "he constantly or habitually bears", or intensive, "he entirely bears", or desiderative, "he wills or intends to bear". From the latter sense we have the use of स for the future, cf S. नी, नेष्यामि, Greek luo, I loose, luso, I shall loose, and English, I will go, where the desiderative will = wish, intend, has acquired the sense of a simple future. "The God-Will is desirable as to the ancient sages ...
... superhuman Power that entered earthly beings and carried them in emotional and imaginative ecstasy beyond themselves. We have a less pervasive sense of the deific than the ancients; so the Eros of the Greeks and the Kama or Madana of old India is not always to our minds a living figure, a burning Presence. Vividly and fierily enough we are aware of falling in love, but we do not trace our feelings to a ...
... road of experience and spiritual receptivity into the tangle of intellectual debate. Yes, that [ to read critically ] is the right way to read these things. These philosophies [ of the early Greeks ] are mostly mental intuitions mixed with much guessing (speculation), but behind, if one knows, one can catch some Truth to which they correspond. Metaphysics deals with the ultimate cause ...
... wanderings abroad and bringing it back to its old habitat. (iii) Myths about effective or quasi-effective return from the land of the dead : The Babylonian myth of Ishtar and Tammuz and the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice illustrate this type. In the Babylonian myth, Ishtar descends into Aralu, or Hades, demands entrance to 'the land whence there is no return' and after a series ...
... cranium will hold, as it were, a golden ball, rounded and fully formed, the golden egg, hira ṇ yagarbha, out of which the new physical creation will emerge — something in the manner of the legendary Greek goddess Minerva, whole and entire, complete in arms and panoply out of the head of Father Jupiter. Page 31 ...
... it. It was my two brothers who studied there. I was taught privately by the Drewetts. Mr. Drewett who was a scholar in Latin (he had been a Senior Classic at Oxford) taught me that language (but not Greek, which I began at St. Paul's, London) and English, History, etc. Mrs. Drewett taught me French, Geography and Arithmetic. No Science; it was not in fashion at that time." As he was studying at ...
... verse. Why should Sri Aurobindo have written a poem in the metre of Greek epic poetry? Of course it can be done as an exercise - a piece of virtuosity (which Ili on is) but I do not find in that poem its raison d'etre, It is like a prize-poem set in a Public School or University, to write a poem in a certain language (Greek for example) and a certain metre. It is an imitation of poetry. ... Dick Batstone sent me the whole poem. It is of course a tour-deforce, reveals (even though I imagine an early work) a tremendous mental energy and of course a command of the English language and the Greek hexameter. But why should any twentieth-century poet want to write in the metre of Homer? If I remember aright Valmiki's 'inspiration' came in the form of the metre in which he wrote the Ramayana. Homer... quality." Now take your estimate: "It is of course a tour-de-force, reveals (even though I imagine an early work) a tremendous mental energy and of course a command of the English language and the Greek hexameter." Read alludes to an extensive stretch of genuine English poetry here: he does not make the least reservation in his praise and considers the work an "achievement" of a most noteworthy order ...
... struggled to express itself. "Your poem," he wrote, "on it's own diminutive scale has both feeling and imagination and is well-turned... it reminded me vividly of a famous prayer in the Illiad by the Greek warriors who did not wish to be killed under the night's bewildering pall." Suddenly it did not matter if my small attempt had any merit of its own -enough that it had kindled in the mind of a lover... original angle: Alexander's Introduction brings up the question of what a poet does. The old Anglo-Saxon word "scop" comes from a root suggesting "shaper, former, creator" and it is allied to the Greek term which is related to "polein" - to make - and to the old Scots expression "maker". All these are unlike the Provencal "trobator", North French "Trouvere" and Italian "tobatore", which come from... on the mere art aspect, working from outside on a pre-existent material rather than a practice of creativeness. Actually, to my mind both the descriptions are to the point. The Anglo-Saxon, Greek and Scots terms combine the God-like creative function with the function of formative labour - the rolling of the "eye in a fine frenzy" from earth to heaven and heaven to earth, as Shakespeare says ...
... the Last Supper, a Passover meal, Jesus and his disciples ate only unleavened bread. It is this unleavened bread which became the bread of the Eucharist. — Messiah or Christ Christ is a Greek word and means Messiah. It was applied to Jesus even in the New Testament to show the faith of the early Christians in the unique meaning of his death and subsequent resurrection. That is, Jesus was... Christian : Christianity insists that Jesus is the anointed* descendant of King David. Through this and other signs from prophets of the Old Testament, Christianity declares Jesus to be the Messiah. In Greek, the word 'messiah' is 'christ' or the anointed one, so according to the faith of Christianity, Jesus becomes Jesus Christ. In the Gospels, Jesus refers to himself as 'the son of man' which is not a... Intermarriage with gentiles was strictly forbidden. These customs and rituals were carried to the Diaspora and practiced in Jewish settlements there. By 300 BCE, the culture of the Middle East was Greek and idolatrous*. While some Jews were influenced by Hellenistic culture and were assimilated and their Jewishness was lost or changed, many Jews reacted to the threat of assimilation by becoming fervently ...
... harmony. " Culture is a " harmony of spirit, mind and body"³ Some form of harmony was attained by certain cultures in the past. We shall consider only three : ( 1 ) The Greek, (2) The Modern European, (3) The Ancient Indian. The Greek culture was the harmony of disinterested intellectual curiosity, flexible aesthetic temperament, a sense of form, a strong and beautiful body. The modern European culture... culture is the harmony of practical reason, scientific efficiency, and economic capacity of man. It takes these powers as the whole truth of the human being. The Greek mind was " philosophical, aesthetic, political," the modern. mind is " scientific, economic, utilitarian." The ancient Indian culture arrived at the harmony of " the spiritual mind, intuitive reason informed by a religious spirit ...
... - in the course of his own Greek composition - on the Greek Septuagint much more than on any Hebrew text of the Old Testament is undeniable. Howard Clark Kee has pointed out: 106 "... in some instances the argument turns on the details of the text as found in the Septuagint (LXX). The quotation from Psalm 8:2 in Matthew 21:16, for example, makes sense in the Greek wording of the LXX but would... Luke also exhibits in his own fashion his greater affinity to the Greek text than to the Hebrew. The Jerusalem Bible's Introduction to the Synoptic Gospels, analysing the Greek of Mark, Matthew and Luke, ends with the observation on the last-named: "Occasionally he goes out of his way to give a good imitation of Septuagint Greek." 107 Brown 108 reports: "Many have detected a strong influence... believe that he could have found it in the Christian tradition if he had known where to look. For instance, as far as I know Page 85 he knew nothing of the Greek fathers (in spite of his knowledge of Greek) or of the tradition of the Eastern Church, where he would have found much to interest him. To me it is quite uncanny the way Aurobindo and the Mother through their sadhana obtained ...
... worried): My digestion is also bad. Page 130 Doctor, (shaking his head to and fro): I see. I know what it is. It's Dyspepsia. Now Cephalalgia is the Greek name for 'headache' while Dyspepsia is the Greek translation of 'indigestion': that's all there is in these pompous terms! 18 Sri Aurobindo's dig at the doctors for the latter's penchant for pedantic language is illustrated... brilliantly, then also. It reduces itself to that. 17 VII. Doctors' mania for pedantic gobbledegook! Modern doctors are often in the habit of speaking in a mysterious jargon sprinkled with Greek and Latin terms. Whether in the process of identifying an illness or in reporting about its ramifications, they employ terms which, alas, instead of revealing the secrets of diseases to the worried... started composing poems in English and in Bengali. The attempts were not always very successful. And Sri Aurobindo got the chance of paying the doctor in his own coin by fabricating strange-sounding Greek and Latin phrases to characterize the defects in NB's poetry. Here is a piece in illustration: NB: Look at this Bengali sonnet. How is it? Sri Aurobindo: Very fine indeed except for the concluding ...
... carefully arranged and well-executed hallucination. Was someone playing hypnotic tricks with his brain? Was he hypnotising himself? His eye fell on the page and met not mediaeval Latin, but ancient Greek, though unHomeric hexameters. Very clear was the lettering, very plain the significance. "For the gods immortal wander always over the earth and come unguessed to the dwellings of mortals; but rare... the original lucubrations of the old mystic, subtle in substance, but in expression rough, tedious, amorphous, persisted from the beginning to the end in their crabbed Latin and deviated nowhere into Greek, flowered nowhere into poetry. There was yet more of the hexameters, he noticed, and he read on. "And men too live disguised in the sunlight and never from their birth to their death shalt thou see ...
... signifying rather "higher", uttara . × Name goḥ. Nama from nam to move, range, Greek nemō; nama is the range, pasture, Greek nomos . × I adopt provisionally the traditional rendering of sadhamādaḥ though ...
... every way and secured the Butterworth Prize for Literature and the Bedford Prize for History. Dr Walker took personal interest in Sri Aurobindo, impressed by his character and abilities, taught him Greek, and pushed him rapidly into the higher forms. Did the Head Master of St Paul's already see something of Sri Aurobindo's future destiny? Sri Aurobindo's school record mentions the fact that he went... comparative study of William Shakespeare and John Milton—was "wonderful". 11 Sri Aurobindo passed the Classical Tripos in the first division, and Page 7 also secured a prize for Greek and Latin iambics. Besides he passed the I.C.S.final examinations with credit. Of extra-curricular activity, too, there was much: for example, nationalist speeches at the Indian Majlis and writing poetry ...
... coloured gleaming red-brown, मृतण्डः, the sun, मरालः, flamingo, swan, duck, horse, मरीचिः, a ray of light, light, Krishna (cf हरिः meaning also a horse, lion, etc), मरीचिका, mirage. Cf the Latin marmor , Greek μαρμαίρω. मरीचं, pepper, is obviously from the kindred sense of तेजस् applied to the taste & smell. We may also note the words मरूण्डा, a high-browed woman and मरीमृज, repeatedly rubbing, where मरू ...
... risk of itself being only perfect in imperfection, because it fulfils entirely some stage in an unaccomplished purpose; it is then a present but not an ultimate Totality. To it we could apply the Greek saying Theos ouk estin alla gigentai, the Divine is not yet in being, but is becoming."³ Thus the cosmic movement, not possessed of the Divine, proves to be capable of real waste. And ...
... other modern language is so varied in mentality, so diverse in turn. It is a fusion of many strains - the Celtic, the Roman, the Saxon, the Teuton, the French, the Italian have mingled in it, and the Greek soul and the Hebrew soul have also coloured it. As a result, it is an extremely plastic and versatile instrument capable of being expressive of multifarious types of consciousness. No wonder it does ...
... sacrifice, and most of all for a cause which would give meaning to life and death? Arminius’ Cheruscians and other Germanic tribes of yore had nothing to offer that could be called “spiritual”, and the Greeks, admired as creators of culture and the arts, had no tradition which exceeded the arbitrariness of a world as depicted by Homer or Sophocles’ tragic human destinies. However, true spirituality, fulfilling ...
... In fact, like gods and goddesses in heaven, there are gods and goddesses on earth also. The gods in heaven are high and far away, but these unobtrusive deities are near to our hearth and home. The Greeks referred to the Olympian gods, of high caste and rank as it were, – like Jupiter and Apollo – ¹ "The Ambrosia of Dionysus and Semele" in New Poems 1962 (Cassel-London). Page 180 ...
... was deteriorating. DR. BECHARLAL: How was that? SRI AUROBINDO: Because I was reading novels and poetry. Only at the examination time I used to prepare a little. But when now and then I wrote Greek and Latin verse my teachers would lament that I was not utilising my remarkable gifts because of laziness. When I went up with a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, Oscar Browning commented ...
... writing a small poem in a fixed metre with a limited number of modulations. If you take the poem simile, it is the Mahabharata of a Mahabharata that has to be done. And what, compared with the limited Greek perfection, is the technique of the Mahabharata? Next, what is the use of vicārabuddhi in such a case? If one has to get to a new consciousness which surpasses the reasoning intellect, can one ...
... "Wait till the last act," she had said. But still.... × Mother may have used this term in its original Greek root meaning: "strengthless nerves." Unless she meant "neuralgia" in its broader sense. × We recall ...
... authority outside—it is self-forbidden. We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute—the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened v by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her ...
... authority outside—it is self-forbidden. We are reminded here of the Kantian moral absolute—the categorical imperative. This is a gospel based upon the Christian and Semitic tradition, polished by the Greek (that is, Socratic) touch, quickened and sharpened by the intellectual and social stress of European Culture. India admitted no such moral absolute or mental categorical imperative. The urge of her ...
... insinuates the essential tragedy of the human situation, whereas the 'holy hush' of Savitri's close is the true meaning of that Divine Comedy. This is not merely because Kazantzakis was a Greek and therefore heir to the great tradition of Attic tragedy whereas Sri Aurobindo was an Indian and therefore heir to the Kalidasian tradition, but also because of the different foundations on which ...
... Mother's Chronicles - Book Four 27 Savitri In Sanskrit, a Poet is a Seer. The Greek root of the word 'poet' means 'creator' or one who 'does.' Both Seer and Creator are words that go admirably with Sri Aurobindo. He was always very much aware of the power of the Word. "The Word has power," wrote Sri Aurobindo in an undated letter. "What ...
... to bathe last and go directly to the kitchen where the other members would be waiting for him after taking their baths. The boys cooked by turns. They—at least Moni and Nolini—had lessons in Latin, Greek and French from Sri Aurobindo. V. Ramaswami (Va. Ra.) may have taken part. Va. Ra. joined Sri Aurobindo's household in 1912. An anecdote of his brings to life the pitiful living condition of those ...
... not ? India has- assimilated elements from the Greeks, the Persians and other nations. But she assimilates only when her Central Truth is recognised by the other party, and even while assimilating she does it in such a way that the elements absorbed are no longer recognisable as foreign but become part of herself. For instance, we took from the Greek architecture, from the Persian painting etc.... were right in taking the step because now the opinion of other Muslim countries would go against them. Sri Aurobindo : Opinion can go to the dogs ! It was not by opinion that Kamal defeated the Greeks ! Disciple : But would he be now popular in Turkey ? Sri Aurobindo : He does not care for popularity. Disciple : The allegiance of other Muslims to the Khilafat has all along been... fasting for the last three days." Sri Aurobindo laughed loudly saying "How funny this Reuter's correspondent seems to be !" Ismet Pasha remarked : "We are in Constantinople because we fought the Greeks and the Khalifa. Sympathy of the people was due to our being strong and not to the presence of the Khalifa." Sri Aurobindo : The first four were the real Khalifas. Afterwards it became a political ...
... the European mind got every- thing and owes everything to the Greeks. Every branch of knowledge in which human curiosity could be interested has been given to Europe by the; Greeks. Page 101 The Roman could fight and legislate, he could keep the states together, but he made the Greek think for him. Of course, the Greeks also could fight but not always so well. The Roman thinkers... who believe that man has not made substantial progress in his powers of reasoning since the Greeks. Sri Aurobindo : It is quite true. Of course, you have to-day a vaster field and more ample material than the Greeks had; but in the handling of it the present-day mind is not superior to the Greek mind in its handling of its limited material. Disciple : Writing about Plato, Emerson... thinkers, Cicero, Seneca, Horace, all owe their philosophy to the Greeks. That, again, is another illustration of what I was speaking of as the inrush of forces. Consider a small race like the Greeks living on the small projecting tongue of land : this race was able to build up a culture that has given everything essential to your modern European culture and that in a span of 200 to 300 years only ...
... followed. There again, it is the spirit of Bengal that expresses itself. The attempt to express in form and limit something of that which is formless and illimitable is the attempt of Indian art. The Greeks, aiming at a smaller and more easily attainable end, achieved a more perfect success. Their instinct for physical form was greater than ours, our instinct for psychic shape and colour was superior ...
... In the poem The Parsi, Sethna describes this strain as "India's infinite Unknown / (that) Lures up the same fire-cry" that relates to his own ancestral Parsi "Fire-cult that neighbored the Greek world of thought". Confronted by the fury of Nature, the ancients (in Persia, India) invoked the Seer-Will, Agni, and exulted in mantric verses which transmuted the human into the Divine. The ...
... will write his "trilogy" on Mother. × The first form of The Sannyasin , which was to be a sort of Greek tragedy, with chorus. × Rejecting the world as it is and climbing to the heights. ...
... Gedrosia Desert, which covers the whole of southern Beluchistan, is one of the most arid and disinherited regions of the world. It was inhabited, at that time, by some primitive population, to which the Greeks had given the name "Ichtyophages" because they ate only dry fish. But what else could they Page 74 eat? This region produced nothing. It was a blinding furnace, where the ground burned ...
... But their hearts are beating. Now he, now she Struggles to awake, Falls back to sleep. Eyes closed. Hills. Clouds. Rivers. Fords. Years. Centuries. To the poet the Greek mythological story is not a temporal and spatial occurrence but an everlasting symbol which repeats itself perpetually. The ballad narrates the incomplete and tragic life of man. A youth hastens to ...
... people in the matter of ethics. So also with the Arabian races. Wilfred Scawen Blunt praised them highly as a very sympathetic and honest people. Do you think the average man today is better than a Greek of 2500 years ago—or than an Indian of that time? Look at the condition in Germany today. You have seen the Kaiser's remark on Hitler. (Smiling) You can't say Germany is progressing. I have come ...
... who was with Paul in order to give the Gospel apostolic authority. References are often made to Luke's medical language, but there is no evidence of such language beyond that to which any educated Greek might have been exposed. Of more import is the fact that in the writings of Luke specifically Pauline ideas are significantly missing; while Paul speaks of the death of Christ, Luke speaks rather of... facilely some scholars read the doctor in Luke. The passage concerned is Luke 1: 41: "the baby jumped in her womb." Brown 3 writes: "Grotius and others have raised the possibility that [the original Greek word] skirtan might have been a technical term for movement within the womb and thus confirm the theory that Luke the physician (Colossians 4:14) was the author of the Gospel. But it is a general... against the vision in Acts on the Damascus-road, has the sentence: "God... called me through his grace and chose to reveal his Son in me..." The last two words - "in me" (en emoi in the original Greek) -suggest an inward revelation, as though Christ's "appearance" was witnessed in a trance or in some sort of communion with an indwelling divine being. In the Epistles the "appearance" is ...
... tongues like Greek and Latin. John Philpot Curran, born on 24th July, 1750, was in due course called to the Irish Bar. Barrister Curran was fond of a form of humorous mystification. One day he appeared before the said judge Avonmore and addressed himself to a jury constituted of some ordinary Dublin shopkeepers whose knowledge of English was poor, not to speak of their acquaintance with Greek and Latin... serious about it, but at all events, the lines you quoted are Latin, not Greek — they are undoubtedly Juvenal's." "Perhaps, my lord, he quotes them from the 'Phantasmagoria'." "Tut, tut, man; I tell you they're Latin - they are just as familiar to me as my Blackstone." "Indeed, my good lord, they're Greek." "Why, Mr. Curran, do you want to persuade me out of my senses? - I... ridicule with Page 319 which my learned friend has been pleased so unworthily to visit the poverty of my client; and remembering it, neither of us can forget the fine sentiment of a great Greek historian upon the subject, which I shall take the liberty of quoting in the original, as no doubt it must be most familiar to all of you." And Curran was addressing himself to the Dublin shopkeepers ...
... t, that the difference has become Page 105 most pronounced, the misunderstanding most aggressive and the sense of cultural incompatibility most conscious and self-revealing. An ancient Greek, full of disinterested intellectual curiosity and a flexible aesthetic appreciation, was in spite of his feeling of racial and cultural superiority to the barbarian much nearer to the Indian mind than... possibility of an unfamiliar truth. In this attitude he would have the average positivist mind on his side. To that mind such notions seem in their very nature absurd and incomprehensible,—much worse than Greek and Hebrew, languages which have very respectable and creditworthy professors; but these are hieroglyphs which can only be upheld as decipherable signs by Indians and Theosophists and mystical thinkers ...
... culture was that of the ancient Greeks, who were the first (in the West) to propose answers to the basic questions of existence in a rational, original manner. Their common view was that the history of humanity and the world was cyclic; it repeated itself again and again at huge time-intervals from chaos to cosmos to chaos. But in the fragments left us from some early Greek thinkers one can find hints ...
... this was his character. As a poet he was the second among the great Augustan poets, a great master of phrase—the most quoted of all the Roman writers,—a dexterous metrist who fixed the chief lyric Greek metres in Latin in their definitive form, with a style and rhythm in which strength and grace were singularly united, a writer also of satire 1 and familiar epistolary verse as well as a master of... dramatic genius in him. None of these poets had. Shelley's Cenci is a remarkable feat of dramatic construction and poetic imagination, but it has no organic life like the work of the Elizabethans or the Greeks or like such dramas as the Cid or Racine's tragedies. 7 February 1935 With regard to Keats, is it not rather difficult to deny a great poet a possibility when his whole ambition is set towards ...
... Shelley, Keats, etc. Mr. Drewett grounded Sri Aurobindo so well in Latin that when Sri Aurobindo went to St. Paul's School in London, the headmaster of that school "took him up to ground him in Greek and then pushed him rapidly into the higher classes of the school." When Sri Aurobindo was eleven years old, he had a sort of premonition that great revolutions were going to take place in the... suppose it is to keep their pride down.' " Though Sri Aurobindo occupied himself mostly with extra-curricular studies, he was still able "to win all the prizes in King's College in one year for Greek and Latin verse, etc." Sri Aurobindo did not graduate at Cambridge. "He passed high in the First Part of the Tripos (first class); it is on passing this First Part that the degree of B.A. is usually ...
... and serious rhyme, Traveller with calm, inimitable paces, Critic with judgment absolute to all time, A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. SRI AUROBINDO THE year 1949 has just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great force of light that was Goethe. We too remember him on the occasion, and will try to present ...
... qualities of sattva in oneself and to move towards our nature's purification and emancipation, free from the evil contact of rajas and tamas. We may as well recollect here the similar .conclusion the Greek thinker, Aristotle, arrived at, that a tragedy has katharsis, a power to purge the heart. However, it is doubtful if anybody has raised the greatness of poetry to such a pitch as Vishwanath Kaviraj ...
... In fact, like gods and goddesses in heaven, there are gods and goddesses on earth also. The gods in heaven are high and far away, but these unobtrusive deities are near to our hearth and home. The Greeks referred to the Olympian gods, of high caste and rank as it were,—like Jupiter and Apollo—and to those others who dwelt on the lowly earth and embraced its water and land, its rivers and trees and ...
... a rigid tradition, too appreciative of rhetorical device and artifice and even permitted and admired the most extraordinary contortions of the learned intelligence, as in the Alexandrian decline of Greek poetry, but the earlier work is usually free from these shortcomings or they are only occasional and rare. The classical Sanskrit is perhaps the most remarkably finished and capable instrument of... and it has been used in most of the plays that have come down to us with an accomplished art and a true creative faculty. At the same time it is true that it does not rise to the greatnesses of the Greek or the Shakespearian drama. This is not due to the elimination of tragedy,—for there can be dramatic creation of the greatest kind without a solution in death, sorrow, overwhelming calamity or the tragic ...
... the bhakta or the sage. “The question extends itself to the forms of the great Powers of the Ishwara: is the Goddess Athena the expression of the Greek national thought form or was there a form of a great Devi who moulded the Greek mind and body in her own image? Does the Goddess Isis similarly represent the soul of ancient Egypt? Is Mother India merely a poetic symbol or an Entity? Long ...
... Page 85 The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture – that was their special ...
... 1882 Had an intimation of his part in great upheavals of the future. 1884-90 At St. Paul's School in London. Learnt Greek. In I886, started writing English poetry Wrote also Latin and Greek poetry. Learnt European languages to study their lite-ratures. Made a thorough study of European history. Won all Classics prizes. ...
... ion of this topic. I. Amal Kiran's humour - literary and intellectual 1. When Milton went blind he taught his daughters to read Greek and Latin to him without understanding what these languages said. He did not teach them the meanings of Greek and Latin words nor their syntactical structure but only how to pronounce them. The poor girls were bored with long hours of gibberish recitation... recitation to their papa. They must have frequently protested, but Milton was adamant. When one of his friends asked him why he had not taught them Greek and Latin properly, he tartly replied: "One tongue is sufficient for any woman." 17 2. The mispronouncing or mishearing of words in other languages has sometimes a farcical effect. The first Indian baronet was a Parsi, a man named Jamshedjee Cursetjee ...
... vain for the other. if I can't find my "W. B. Yeats - Poet of Two Phases" I'll bookpost you by air "Poetic Expressions and Rhythms - Greek and English" which reproduces some comments from two letters of mine, the first of which was apropos of The Penguin Book of Greek Verse. Mention of "Penguin" brings me to your splendid gift of No. 5 of Temenos, which has among other valuable contents... my ear it is a poetic revelation of the Greek genius passed most subtly through an Indian spirit and constituting a masterpiece beyond the range or passion of any Kazantsakis. Several years back a separate edition of it was published, prefaced by a long essay on the possibility of a truly English quantitative metre which would not be a mechanical copy of Greek and Latin rules. If I can lay my hands... and up to the end of his life one could mistake his pronunciation for an Englishman's. When he began to write poetry in England he was not expressing anything Indian any more than when he wrote in Greek and Latin at Cambridge and won prizes for his compositions. In his English work too at that time he embodied the Classical spirit plus a sense of the English landscape and seasons. As an example of ...
... Support. × It is mock-Greek, a play on the word "meibomian", which is a legitimate medical term and is not Greek. Myo in Greek means "shut","mute" or "mystic"; " boē " means "cry" or "shout". × ... do with it. No treatment must be given—if he asks, show him the road to the hospital. M's is not a pimple. It looks like a Myobeian [meibomian] cyst. What the hell is that? I don't know bad Greek. March 19, 1935 We were surprised not to receive any answer from you to R's letter. He says he was late. He is always. He sent me two letters (which I read together) repeating the same... by Nishikanta. I hope the "hell" is clear now! Meibomian cyst is an enlargement of one of the glands in the inner coat of the eye-lid. This is more intelligible. You haven't explained your bad Greek, through—myoboemiant 77 which seems to have something to do with a mystically silent shout. I find many things which are recommended or given for diseases, are not much favoured by the Divine ...
... its own detriment, and entirely to do away with the foolish and ignoble hankering after help from our natural adversaries. Our attitude to bureaucratic concessions is that of Laocoon: "We fear the Greeks even when they bring us gifts." Our policy is self-development and defensive resistance. But we would extend the policy of self-development to every department of national life; not only Swadeshi and ...
... archetypal godhead within; List and May foresaw the re-appearance of the Edelmensch ; George taught the development of the more refined human capacities into a kind of amalgam of a super-poet and a Greek god. It is therefore no wonder that we find the expectation of “the new man” in the diary of young Goebbels. “ Heil and Sieg to the new man! … We must descend into the deepest depths if we want to ...
... of utterance and movement of music are dissimilar. On one plane you may have a lot of attitudes — secular or sacred, sensual or spiritual; Swinburne's frenzy of the flesh in Anactoria and his part-Greek part-Norse part-Indian pantheism in Hertha function on an identical plane as regards essential qualities of sight, speech and rhythm. On one plane you may have also a host of styles: a colourful vitality ...
... however, was the term “Aryans”, for “originally the Aryan question was a linguistic question. It appeared in 1776 when William Jones was struck by the resemblance between several languages: Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, etc. These languages were then brought together into one family, and their resemblance was accounted for by the fact that all of them derived from the same original language, which in ...
... its aim in rhythm to a kind of chanting poetical prose or else based itself on a sort of irregular and complex metrical movement which in its inner law, though not in its form, recalls the idea of Greek choric poetry. Milton disparaging rhyme, which he had himself used with so much skill in his earlier, less sublime, but more beautiful poetry, forgot or ignored the spiritual value of rhyme, its ...
... such supreme moments of human history, the religious life of the congeries of tribes which called itself Israel and, subsequently, of the little nation of the Jews, the many-sided life of the small Greek city states, the similar, though more restricted artistic and intellectual life of mediaeval Italy. Nor was any age in Asia so rich in energy, so well worth living in, so productive of the best and ...
... the candidates — for I have neither the heart of a lion nor the vital of Napoleon." Myself: What will be the nature of the physical transformation? Change of pigment? Mongolian features into Aryo-Greek? Bald head into luxuriant growth? Old men into Gods of eternal youth? Sri Aurobindo: Why not seven tails with an eighth on the head — everybody different colours, blue, magenta, indigo, green, scarlet ...
... surpass them and play with them as the artist does with his material. Something Page 39 of this katharsis, this aestheticism of the primitive impulses was achieved by the ancient Greeks. Even then the primitive impulses remain primitive all the same; they fulfil, no doubt, a real and healthy function in the scheme of life, but still in their fundamental nature they continue the animal ...
... study, since it is symbolic also of Europe's life-course. It was the natural idealism, the inborn spiritual outlook which Ireland possessed of yore – the Druidic Mysteries were more ancient than the Greek culture and formed perhaps the basis of the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries-which impelled her foremost to embrace the new revelation brought on by Christianity. As she was among the pioneers to champion ...
... Vahnyalaya, Vaishravanalaya, Suryaprabha-Suryanibhandana, Brahmalaya and Vrisha in the Ramayana, 113 and Gilgamesh's voyage through darkness in quest of immortality. 114 More recently, the Greek poet, Nikos Kazantzakis, in his colossal epic, The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, has made his hero's travels symbolic of an upward movement spiralling towards increasing perfectibility. The Kingdoms ...
... are often— now, perhaps, less often than before—used with regard to English verse also, even though there is no rigid system of longs and shorts in English as there is in ancient languages like Greek and Latin. 72 The classicist in Sri Aurobindo was fascinated by the possibilities of quantitative verse in English and, while conceding that, "English quantitative metres cannot be ...
... of meanings that when translating the Bible from Greek into English, the translators came upon the word agape, which has been ___________ *abide: to always dwell in a place or in one's heart/mind. Page 26 translated as "God's Love". With this in mind, the English word "charity" has sometimes been chosen to translate the Greek agape. This was meant to reinforce the idea of... spoken by Jesus and the Hebrew people (see Note) around him was Aramaic. The first preachers were from Judea and spoke Aramaic. But soon the tradition about Jesus had to be translated from Aramaic into Greek as the preaching of the Gospel spread beyond the area in and around Jerusalem. These first preachers and teachers were not interested in conveying information about Jesus for its own sake. They sought... Christian missionaries took Christianity and the message of the Gospels to the barbaric tribes of Europe. With the spread of Christianity throughout barbaric Europe, came the forms of Roman law and Greek culture that eventually civilized these tribes. Christianity, along with its own message, was the primary source and carrier of classical civilization to the Western World. But the result of such missionary ...
... new guise. II In his Cambridge days and immediately afterwards, Sri Aurobindo often experimented in literary translation and turned passages or pieces from Latin or Greek into English. Hecuba from the Greek was liked by Laurence Binyon, who thought that it revealed a poetic talent that deserved to be cultivated. A Rose of Women Page 70 from Meleager was included in... than glance at it, now from this side now from that, and try to form some impression of its richness and variety. In this chapter, however, we shall confine ourselves to the translations: from old Greek poetry, from mediaeval and modem Bengali poetry, from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, from Bhartrihari, and lastly from Kalidasa. 2 In the matter of translations, Sri Aurobindo seems to... emotion-charged or myth-laden words, and hence absolute accuracy must be out of question when translating even from one contemporary language into another. And when it is a question of turning classical Greek or Latin or Sanskrit into modem English, the difficulties are bound to be greater still. Words like men have histories of their own; and the climate of an age conditions the nuances of meaning hovering ...
... issues of Bande Mataram containing these two scenes were subsequently rediscovered, and in 1955 they were restored to the text.) The plot of Perseus the Deliverer derives of course from the Greek legend of Perseus and Andromeda, the most important surviving classical source of which is the fourth book of Ovid's Metamorphoses . Notable among modern retellings of the story are Corneille's An ...
... curving or serpentine movement; it means strength and force, beauty and splendour, leading and pre-eminence; it developed also certain emotional values which have perished in Sanskrit, but remain in Greek, angry passion on one side, on the other delight and love. The Vedic deity Agni is the first of the Powers, the pristine and pre-eminent, that have issued from the vast and secret Godhead. By conscious ...
... Campbell has observed that Homer could speak of Ulysses' dog Argos as being full of lice without sacrificing all that Arnold claimed for him — rapidity, simplicity, nobility — because the phrase in Greek had a rich rhythm and dignity side by side with its fluent naturalness: "full" there is enipleios and "lice" kynoraiste ô n — both polysyllables combining resonance and splendour with a clear ...
... out but it has fitted in extremely well. It has also at the same time a remarkable combination of the three unities of the Greek drama into which this distant scene, though not too distant, manages to dovetail very well – the unity of one place, sometimes one spot in the Greek play or a small restricted area, one time, one developing action completed in that one time and spot, an action rigorously ...
... found myself continually guided by words or by families of words supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its distant sister, Latin, and occasionally, between the Greek and the Sanskrit. Sometimes the Tamil vocable not only suggested the connection, but proved the missing link in a family of connected words. And it was through this Dravidian language that I came first... functions emerged by means of their activities, their epithets, the psychological sense of the legends connected with them, the indications of the Upanishads and Puranas, the occasional side-lights from Greek myth. On the other hand the demons who opposed them, are all powers of division and limitation, Coverers, Tearers, Devourers, Confiners, Dualisers, Obstructers, as their names indicate, powers that ...
... termination is not त but तृ. I take it as a verbal agent, an archaic derivative from मन् with an archaic connecting gunated उ as in Page 732 तनोति. We find this form surviving from O.A. in Greek forms in ωτƞς. It will mean the thinker or else the giver of thought, the mentaliser. S. quotes Ai. Br. 2.10 अग्निः सर्वा मनोता अग्नौ मनोताः संगच्छंते and says हि shows that the verse is a reference... cross, pass beyond. सहध्यै, an old Vedic infinitive form, expressing the infinitive of purpose; modified into thai ( sthai ) it remained the ordinary middle and passive infinitive termination in Greek. विश्वस्मै सहसे (विश्वस्मै not विश्वाय because विश्व like सर्व is a pronominal word in V.S.); the dative of the object instead of the accusative is a common Vedic idiom. वृषन् Sayana here as ordinarily ...
... national unity broken up by circumstances will always preserve a tendency to recover and reassert its oneness." 8 Sri Aurobindo has given the example of the Greek Empire which has gone the way of all empires, but the Greek nation after many centuries of political non-existence, again possesses its separate body, because it has preserved its separate ego and therefore really existed under ...
... 313 The three or four major orders I speak of in reference to conscious artistry are exampled characteristically in the history of the evolution of Greek poetry. It must be remembered, however, at the very outset that the Greeks as a race were nothing if not rational and intellectual. It was an element of strong self-consciousness that they brought into human culture —that was their special ...
... symbols of thought which we find in the Upanishads, much of the substance of the Brahmanās supposes a period in India in which thought took the form or the veil of secret teaching such as those of the Greek mysteries." 4 And in the Rigveda itself there are certain affirmations to justify the term "Veda" which means "Knowledge" and the title "Rishi" implying seerhood for the hymn-composer. Sri Aurobindo... Manusmriti (X, 42-44) are unequivocal on the point. Also, in the south-east of the Caspian there were the Dahai people 27. Ibid., p. 216. 28. Ibid. Page 115 noted by the Greeks, and Daha is but the Irānian modification of Dāsa, and in Iranian the word 'dahya' was in use, meaning 'country' or 'the countryside' and perhaps serving earlier as a tribal name." In answer ...
... The investigating magistrate, M. Nandot, came to Sri Aurobindo's house with the Chief of Police. But all they found was literature in Latin and Greek. The appropriate exclamation was, "Il sait du latin, il sait du grec!" ("He knows Latin, he knows Greek!") And was it possible that a classical scholar could ever entertain mischief? The prosecutors became friends and admirers. 3 The trouble henceforth... taught them Greek, Latin, French and Italian, and in fact life with Sri Aurobindo was perpetual education, a continual flowering of knowledge and wisdom. As at Calcutta in Shyampukur Lane, here at Pondicherry also, Sri Aurobindo's method of teaching a new language was, not through primers and grammars, but to make the pupil plunge into the living waters of its great literature. Nolini began Greek with the ...
... impatience of the Gaul. Moreover their whole character was moulded in a grand style, such as has not been witnessed by any prior or succeeding age—so much so that the striking description by which the Greek ambassador expressed the temper of the Roman Senate, might with equal justice be transferred to the entire people. They were a nation of Kings: that is to say, they possessed the gift of handling the ...
... been such as the modern mind could easily grasp, if the symbols of the sacrifice were still familiar to us and the names of the Vedic gods still carried their old psychological significance,—as the Greek or Latin names of classical deities, Aphrodite or Ares, Venus or Minerva, still bear their sense for a cultured European,—the device of an interpretative translation could have been avoided. But India ...
... booklet was entitled or who its author was. Two memories have stayed with me: Sri Aurobindo was credited with the power of being in several places at once and he was described as a great linguist, having Greek and Latin at his tongue's tip and knowing French like a Frenchman - apart from being, of course, a master of English. I don't know which of the two siddhis - multi-presence and polyglottism - appealed ...
... possible—You are going back very near Egypt—Oh, horribly symbolic, mystic, hieroglyphic—I think not—I don't accept your authority—You authorise yourself to authorise for her. Cleopatra is not Egypt—that is Greek easternised—Certainly not—She had none—She was all prana & imagination given up to the impulses of the prana—Charming—Yes—I can't say precisely just now; I only feel that they have come often together ...
... have already touched upon. But in general we may say that their functions are according to the nature of the language they derive from. Polysyllables in English poetry derive mostly from Latin and Greek which have resonance and weight. The work they do, therefore, is to vivify things in their aspect of stability and wideness and splendour. Monosyllables in English poetry derive mostly from Anglo-Saxon ...
... typal realities, essential form-movements, fundamental modes of consciousness in its universal and transcendent status. It is this that the Indian artist endeavours to envisage and express. A Greek Apollo or Venus or a Madonna of Raphael is a human form idealized to perfection, – moulded to meet the criterion of beauty which the physical eye demands. The purely æsthetic appeal of such forms consists ...
... asleep, and thus being marked "missing". If that happened, my niece was there, wide awake, to stir me into consciousness. We felt as if we had entered into some "prophet cavern" or some ancient Greek temple where Eleusinian mysteries were being performed, the Mother being the presiding Priestess. Amal said, "This is exactly the impression I had. I told it to the Mother and I used the word ’ancient’ ...
... a moved language no poetry can exist, just as no poetry can exist without the wings of the imagination in the word. Both may be controlled, both may be let loose - but they must be present. In the Greeks and Romans, in Dante and Milton, Corneille and Racine, they are controlled, though often very intense - and the controlling actually adds at times to the effect of the intensity. In the Elizabethan... Page 85 might become so in less powerful hands. The result is that their poetry lacks that element of strict prolonged thought which gives an additional strength not merely to the great Greeks but to such writers as Racine and Goethe, whose strictly poetical power owes a great deal to the hard thought which has preceded composition and is indeed transcended in the poetry, but none the less... absent in the new Romantics. In relation to their work Sri Aurobindo 6 has written: "English poetry has got away from the Elizabethan outbreak nearer to a kinship with the mind and manner of the Greek and Latin poets and their intellectual descendants, though still, it is to be noted, keeping something, a subtle and intimate turn, a power of fire and ether which has become native to it, a legacy ...
... with a detachment of sepoys, discover the documents, search the rooms and finally come upon Sri Aurobindo’s table—the only table—to find a scattering of books in Greek and Latin ... and walk out, throwing up his hands in the air: “He knows Greek! He knows Latin!” Such a man obviously could not make bombs. And Moliere, somewhere between the Rig-Veda and Aristophanes, burst out laughing. All of life was... was there amidst the piles of Sanskrit, English, German and Italian books scattered about his room and right on his cot, for they were too poor to afford even a cupboard. Or else He taught Italian, Greek and Latin (Antigone, Medea, The Aeneid) to one of them who proved particularly interested in literature—this was Nolini, Sri Aurobindo’s oldest disciple, who would become the General Secretary of ...
... May 1932 I find it rather surprising that you should regard what the Mother said to you or what I wrote as a recommendation to relax aspiration or postpone the idea of any kind of siddhi till the Greek Kalends! It was not so intended in the least—nor do I think either of us said or wrote anything which could justly bear such an interpretation. I said expressly that in the way of meditating of which ...
... which belongs to "Mitra of the purified discernment". दीदयत्. S. shines in the Nights that desire or else "illumines the Nights". दक्षाय्यः. S. समर्धयिता or दाता. दक्ष means discernment, cf Greek δóξα, δοχέω, etc, skill, capacity, cf दक्ष, दक्षिण or else strength. The original sense is to "divide", & from this we can get the sense of discerning, that of destruction and therefore of martial strength ...
Share your feedback. Help us improve. Or ask a question.