Roy, Dinendra Kumar : stayed with Sri Aurobindo at Baroda in 1898-99 solely to familiarise him with the Bengali language. In 1923, he published his reminiscences of these days in Bengali in a booklet he titled Aravinda Prasange (q.v.) This booklet was first translated by Prof. Sanat Kumar Banerji as part of his series “Glimpses of Sri Aurobindo”, published in Mother India Dec, 1959 onwards. (Prof SKB, an ex-ICS & former Indian Commissioner at Pondicherry, taught Indian History to senior students of the Ashram School.)
... Remain, 17 Rose of God, 635ff Rowlatt Committee's Report, 200 Roy, Dilip Kumar, 20, 21, 67, 243, 390, 393, 399, 515, 538ff, 575, 599, 604, 607-08, 708, 730, 743 Roy, Dinendra Kumar, 50,51, 207 Roy, Dwijendralal, 76, 538 Roy, M. N., 287, 704fn Roy, Motilal, 367,370ff, 374,381,391,525, 527,540,574 Roy, Rammohan, 13ff, 16,17,19,25,336 ...
... Mother's Chronicles - Book Five 9 Dinendra Kumar Roy Often enough we have taken recourse to Dinendra Kumar Roy's Aurobindo Prasanga ('Topic Aurobindo'). So now let us take a fuller look at it and at him. Dinendra Kumar Roy (1869-1943) was a rising Bengali man of letters. His articles in Bharati, a magazine edited by the Tagores... marvelled D. K. Roy, "unmindful of the intolerable mosquito bites. I saw him seated there in the same posture for hours on end, his eyes fixed on the book he was reading, like Page 96 a Yogi plunged in contemplation and oblivious of all outside happenings. Even if the house had caught fire he would probably have remained unaware!" Warm was the assessment of Dinendra Kumar Roy. "Aurobindo... served as his study. Dinendra Kumar was given another room. Then for two years he had the greatest of good luck to live with his pupil as a companion. He says that he was not called upon to do any Page 86 regular teaching. In the preface of Aurobindo Prasanga (1923) he narrates how he came to write the book in 1911. "My beloved friend," wrote D. K. Roy, "the late Suresh Chandra ...
... Bengali from Dinendra Kumar Roy at Baroda.] No, there were no regular lessons. Dinendra lived with Sri Aurobindo as a companion and his work was rather to help him to correct and perfect his knowledge of the language and Page 43 to accustom him to conversation in Bengali than any regular teaching. [ Another version: ] Sri Aurobindo was not a pupil of Dinendra Kumar; he had learnt... learnt Bengali already by himself and only called in Dinendra to help him in his studies. Sri Aurobindo ... engaged a teacher—a young Bengali litterateur—and started mastering Bengali.... About the learning of Bengali, it may be said that before engaging the teacher, Sri Aurobindo already knew enough of the language to appreciate the novels of Bankim and the poetry of Madhusudan. He learned enough ...
... bungalow. In 1898, when he brought his Bengali teacher, Dinendra Kumar Roy, with him, both lodged at first with the Jadhavs in this bungalow. Page 51 The youngest Jadhav brother, Lieutenant Madhavrao Jadhav, was in the Baroda army. He was trained at a military school in England. "He was the same age as Aurobindo," wrote D. K. Roy in his book, "and they were great friends. Aurobindo was... came up to him dignified and demure. The grave Vice-Principal, revered by all, shook hands with 'the cynosure of neighbouring eyes' and wished him 'Many many happy returns of the day I' " Dinendra K. Roy went on with his description. "Madhavrao mostly spoke in Marathi, and Sri Aurobindo generally Page 52 replied in English. Nine tenths of the time it was Madhavrao who talked,... accident. The carriage was known as a 'victoria,' that is, a low and light four-wheeled carriage with seat for two, a raised driver's seat and a falling top. "Nobody could guess its age," recorded D. K. Roy. "The horse was very big, but in speed it was the elder brother of a donkey! Even a whip could not get it moving faster!" But something could startle it. And then? Then danger. And the vision. It was ...
... and he must have felt this deficiency during his visits to Bengal. So he arranged with his maternal uncle that Dinendra Kumar Roy, a well-known writer in Bengali, should come and stay with him as a companion at Baroda so that Sri Aurobindo could practise speaking with him in the vernacular. Roy stayed at Baroda for two years, from 1899 to 1900, and later wrote a charming little book of reminiscences in... you keep an account?" He replied quietly, "God keeps my account. Why should I worry when he is taking care of me?"' Finally, a few more revealing sketches of Sri Aurobindo from the pen of Dinendra Kumar Roy: 'He was not in the habit of dressing up. I never saw him change his ordinary clothes even while going to the Maharaja's court.... Like his dress, his bed was also ordinary and simple. The iron... not the least contamination from the luxury and dissipation, the glitter and glamour, the diverse impressions and influences, and the strange spell of Western society.' The portrait drawn by Dinendra Kumar is truly astonishing. Fourteen of the most formative years of his life Sri Aurobindo had spent in England and yet within a few years of his return he had become an Indian to the core. This could ...
... Baroda College until he left the State Service in 1906; at the time he was the Acting Principal of the College. By the time Dinendra Kumar Roy came to Baroda in late 1898, A. Ghose, then twenty-six years old, was already a well-known figure at the College. D. K. Roy found that "Aurobindo was revered and adored as a god by Baroda's student community. The students were charmed by his manner of teaching... and D. K. Roy's observations converged: it was Sri Aurobindo's non-attachment to money. Sri Aurobindo disclosed how it happened. "When I Page 196 joined the Baroda State Service," he said, "as I was not accustomed to getting money I got the tendency to gather and save money. I saved some money, and then suddenly spent away the whole sum at a time." That is what D. K. Roy and R. N.... R.N. Patkar, a former student of Sri Aurobindo's, who later became an advocate at Baroda, called up the past in 1956, independently confirming in the process many observations made by D. K. Roy. "In these days he did not take any cooked food in the evening but used to take fruit —mostly plantains — and a cup of milk. This kind of austere life continued to the day he left Baroda." For active ...
... gave even a remote hint," wrote an overwhelmed Dinendra Kumar Roy, "of all the sleepless nights he kept vigil over my sickbed." He was speaking of how Sri Aurobindo took care of him in 1899, when he was stricken with high fever. They were then living at Mir Bakarali's wada, at Baroda. A military doctor treated him, and "Aurobindo nursed me." D. K. Roy said, "When day after day I lay unconscious owing... visions of a minor kind. "Thirdly, I began to have a very rapid flow of poetry. Formerly I used to write with difficulty; for a time the flow would increase, then again it would dry up." This Dinendra K. Roy had already observed, when he noted that Sri Aurobindo "was not a fast writer." But now the flow "revived with astonishing vigour and I could write both prose and poetry at tremendous speed." ... he spent sleepless nights nursing me.... All I understood was that without his nursing care I would not have survived.... When, after a long spell, the fever left me, he said to me one day, smiling, 'Roy, this time you have scraped through by the skin of your teeth. This "Baroda fever" is a terrible sickness; it is very difficult to escape from its grip. So I thought I might not be able to save you this ...
... in oil, Sri Aurobindo gave several sittings at the Guest House. Roy says that Sashikumar Hesh was really a very good artist as, just with a few strokes of his brush, he was able to bring out Sri Aurobindo's serene brightness. What happened to that oil painting? We don't know. Nor have we come across a photo of Dinendra Kumar Roy with Sri Aurobindo taken by Fadke. * * * "Why,... Of an evening, recalls D. K. Roy, the artist —who looked like an Italian —would drop in on them, driving in style in a brougham with liveried coachman and a groom behind. There was quite a distance between the royal Guest House and Baroda Camp which was then the residence of A. Ghose. Sometimes Hesh would invite both of them to take a drive with him. According to Roy the only daily exercise Sri Aurobindo... Swadeshi vow from that date. Prof. Ghose also spoke and we were enamoured of his Rhetorics full of sentiments and ardour. Every syllable that he spoke was full of patriotic spirit." Dr. Sarat Kumar Mullick, a reputed physician, was an enthusiastic patriot. He was perhaps the first to take the initiative in forming an army of Bengalis by inducting Bengalis into the Bengal regiment; similarly he ...
... would mingle filling the air with joy; for, both grandfather and grandson were full of roaring laughter. When Dinendra Kumar Roy first went to Deoghar in 1898, the old man was already bedridden, but had lost nothing of his scintillating spirit nor his ringing laugh. A wonderstruck D. K. Roy remarked to Boromama Jogindra, "Your father can laugh a lot. I haven't met anyone who can laugh in such an op... 'Auro-dada' in a Bengali magazine, Galpa Bharati. Sri Aurobindo was very close to her family, and whenever he passed through Calcutta he always dropped in to see his aunt Lilabati, 'Na-mesi,' and Krishna Kumar Mitra, his 'Na-mesi,' at their residence. K. K. Mitra and Lilabati were married at Calcutta in April 1881. A large number of guests attended the marriage party, but the bride's father, Rajnarain Bose... published in the Karmayogin in August 1909 is very interesting. We quote a good part of it, "The paper Suprabhat, a Bengali monthly edited by Kumari Kumudini Mitra, daughter of Sj. Krishna Kumar Mitra, enters this month on its third year. The first issue of the new year is before us. We notice a great advance in the interest and variety of the articles, the calibre of the writers and the quality ...
... language and to learn to speak it. Dinendra Roy tried to learn French and German from Sri Aurobindo. The study that Sri Aurobindo did with Roy was not of the nature of regular lessons, but was more of an informal arrangement. It happened at times that he would read and converse for a day and then for days there would be no learning at all. One day Dinendra Kumar asked Sri Aurobindo why he was not... maintain a certain high standard of living. Manmohan is married and marriage is an expensive luxury!" In the autumn of 1898 Sri Aurobindo managed to get Sj. Dinendra Kumar Roy as his paid tutor in order to familiarise himself with spoken Bengali. Roy came to Baroda after the Puja holidays. As already stated, Sri Aurobindo had commenced learning Bengali while at Cambridge, and he read many authors during... knowledge was his sole mission in life." (3) "Aurobindo is not a man of this earth, he is a god come down from heaven by some curse." These three quotations are from Aurobindo Prasanga by Dinendra Kumar Roy,¹ a Bengali writer who stayed with Sri Aurobindo during 1898-99 in order to familiarise him with the Bengali language. Life at Baroda was full, though the political career that followed was like ...
... mention the sweet secret Purani shares with us. He says that Sri Aurobindo "had with him for many years an illustrated edition of the Arabian Nights which he had himself selected as a prize." Dinendra Kumar Roy, who was in Baroda for two years to help Sri Aurobindo improve his Bengali, recalls with enthusiasm the deluxe edition of the Arabian Nights. "Never before had I seen such a voluminous edition ...
... Italian," and a little Spanish; among the Indian languages were Sanskrit and Bengali, Gujarati and Hindi, some Tamil, and Marathi which "he spoke better than Bengali," remarked his Bengali teacher Dinendra Kumar Roy. 1. Pandit Ishwarchandra Vidyasagar (1820-91), was an eminent educationist and social reformer. His Bengali prose works earned for him the title of father of Bengali prose literature ...
... supposed to have written in Baroda around 1900, even before he took up Yoga. There is evidence for and against the hypothesis that such a version existed. Its basis is a passing remark by one Dinendra Kumar Roy, who stayed with Sri Aurobindo for some time in Baroda and later wrote that he had seen him writing an English poem on the tale of Savitri and Satyavan. But it has been plausibly suggested that... a poem on this subject, or else a translation of the Mahabharata episode, which may have been lost, so that it had no direct relation to what he began to write in 1916. This would agree with Dinendra Kumar Roy's report without contradicting Sri Aurobindo's own words. For there would be no need for him to mention such a version in referring to the beginnings of the poem he was working on in the 1930s ...
... Mother's Chronicles - Book Five 12 Lotus and Lotus Dinendra Kumar Roy remarked that in 1900 "Aurobindo was eager to get married." In fact, Sri Aurobindo advertised in Calcutta newspapers for a bride. He was twenty-nine years old and he selected a girl of fourteen for his bride. Her name was Mrinalini Bose. Curiously enough 'Mrinalini' ...
... offer to the reader the intimate pen-picture of Sri Aurobindo by Dinendra Kumar Roy, which we have promised. 56 Dinendra Kumar was a distinguished man of letters in Bengal. He was sent by the maternal uncle of Sri Aurobindo to help him learn the Bengali language, particularly its colloquial form and pronunciation. Dinendra Kumar stayed with Sri Aurobindo in the same house for a little over two... But, as Dinendra Kumar Roy 18 records in his Bengali book, Aurobindo Prasanga, it made no difference to Sri Aurobindo whether he lived in a palace or a hovel. Where he really dwelt, no tiles ever burned, nor did rain water leak. He was, to use an expression of the Gita, aniketah, one who had no separate dwelling of his own in the whole world. But it was different with Dinendra Kumar. What... deliberate thoughts and public actions. We are giving below an English version of some portions of Dinendra Kumar's Bengali book, Aurobindo Prasanga. "My beloved friend, late Suresh Chandra Samajpati, 57 once told me: 'When Aurobindo was at Baroda very few 56. "Dinendra Kumar Roy lived with Sri Aurobindo in Baroda as a companion and his work was rather to help him to correct ...
... novels of Bankim Chandra and the poetry of Madhusudan. Indeed, Sri Aurobindo went further still, for in 1898 he engaged a teacher Page 49 — a young Bengali litterateur by name Dinendra Kumar Roy — perhaps as a companion more than as a teacher, for his work was merely "to help Sri Aurobindo to correct and perfect his knowledge of the language and to accustom him to conversation in... his regret, a Bengali audience in their own mother tongue. l8 That price, at any rate, he had to pay for his long a d enforced separation from the Mother. It is to the Bengali tutor, Dinendra Kumar Roy, that we owe some particulars regarding Sri Aurobindo's everyday life at Baroda. After all, they lived together in terms;, of friendly companionship, and the tutor had every opportunity of... to Himself. At any rate He does not keep me in want; then why should I worry?" 20 He had always enough, and never less than enough, and never more than enough. "He was alone", writes Dinendra Kumar Roy with reference to 1898-9, the time he spent with Sri Aurobindo), "he did not know what it was it was to run after pleasure, he never spent even a paisa in the wrong way, and yet at the ...
... but immature and unripe, had passed that serious stricture upon Him. What was yoga? 169Book II, Canto X, page 257. 170Dilip Kumar Roy was fairly well known in his time. He was the son of the famous Dinendra Nath, a well-known writer. Dilip Kumar Roy was a singer. Later in life, he established an ashram in Pune, which still exists. He was a close disciple of Sri Aurobindo and was the recipient ...
... effect of food Page 184 depends more on the occult atmosphere and influences that come with it than on anything in the food itself." Sri Aurobindo was frugal in his eating. Dinendra Kumar Roy described in his book the food they were served, and noted in passing that Sri Aurobindo took more of bread and less of rice; but the less said about the food served the better! Sri Aurobindo's ...
... whatever came. Then I discovered that what people call tasteless and bad food has got its own taste." During this period (1924-1926) Sri Aurobindo used to prepare cooked fish for the cats. . ¹ Dinendra Kumar Roy speaks of this in his Aurobindo Prasanga ; a similar attitude towards money can be seen in Mr. Patkar's statement (p. 62). . ² Cf. Purani, Evening Talks , First Series, p. 81 Page 208... issues the French magazine was discontinued. Once Sri Aurobindo wrote to a disciple about the Arya : "It will be the intellectual side of my work for the world.” ¹ In another letter to Dilip Kumar Roy he said : "And philosophy! Let me tell you in confidence that I never, never, never was a philosopher – although I have written philosophy which is another story altogether. I knew precious little... Aurobindo as well as the two journals Prabartak and The Standard Bearer were being published by the Prabartak Samgha. Motilal and others had been expecting that when Sri Aurobindo ¹ Dilip Kumar Roy, Among the Great (Bombay: Jaico Publishing House, 1950), pp. 337-39: See Appendix II, pp. 306-08. Page 178 returned to British India to start his work in the external field ...
... the secret societies in the Bombay Presidency, with which he had been already connected. Himself took the oath of the organisation. 1898-99 Learning spoken Bengali with Dinendra Kumar Roy, the well-known Bengali litterateur. 1899 Passing away of his maternal grandfather Rajnarayan Basu in 1mhose memory Sri Aurobindo wrote a poern. 1901 ... Tamil Nation- alist weekly. February: In response to an Adesh (Command) from the Divine Sri Aurobindo secretly left Calcutta and came to Chandernagore where at the house of Matilal Roy he spent a month and a half in Yogic contemplation, after which, again commanded by the Divine, he came to Pondicherry on April 4 by the steamer Dupleix. Thirty years ago a Tamil Yogi had predicted ...
... twofold: he wanted to converse with his relatives in their own language, and he was becoming more and more involved in the political situation in Bengal. He therefore hired a Bengali teacher, Dinendra Kumar Roy, ‘a distinguished man of letters in Bengal.’ Aurobindo also perfected his knowledge of Sanskrit, of which the elementary notions, along with those of Bengali, had been part of the I.C.S. ... went hand in hand with a critical re-evaluation of them. This resulted, for instance, in the foundation, in 1828, of the reformist Brahmo Samaj by Rammohan Roy. Having learned to look at their own religion through the eyes of Christian Westerners, Roy and his contemporaries wanted to discard its superfluous and superstitious excrescences and to return to the fundamentals. Fundamental was the One God (... Charu Chandra Roy refused to give shelter to Aurobindo although he was bound by oath to do so. He had been a member of the secret society and one of the accused in the Alipore Bomb Case, but he had now developed cold feet and suggested to Aurobindo that he should leave India and go to France. There was no room in that inn. However, Aurobindo was welcomed into the house of Motilal Roy, another young ...
... without names. Each part had a series of Books. The first Book was called Love. Then it was named Quest, and Love became the second Book. In some * The Mother, About Savitri. 'Dinendra Kumar Roy was a Bengali literary man and was brought to Baroda to live with Sri Aurobindo to assist him in Bengali conversation. early versions we have Cantos instead of Books. Later the... and by a young friend Sudha as assistant, my readers would have had to remain content with just a bare outline. The apology submitted, let the rash venture begin. Savitri, according to Dinen Roy 1 was started by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda. From all the extant versions, for there are quite a number, it appears that originally, the scheme of the poem consisted of two parts: I Earth, II Beyond ...
... "It is incomparable; it is truth in its plenitude, the Truth Sri Aurobindo brought down on the earth." × Dinendra Kumar Roy, a Bengali literary man who was brought to Baroda to live with Sri Aurobindo and assist him in Bengali conversation. × ... than a poet — and by a young friend as assistant, my readers would have had to remain content with just a bare outline. The apology submitted, let the rash venture begin. Savitri, according to Dinen Roy, 1 was started by Sri Aurobindo in Baroda. From all the extant versions, for there are quite a number, it appears that originally the scheme of the poem consisted of two parts: I Earth, II Beyond ...
... remarked about Sri Aurobindo's translations from the epics: "Had I seen them before, I would never have published mine. It "now appears that my translations have been child's play beside yours." (Dinendra Kumar Roy, Arabinda Prasanga, pp. 38-9) Page 81 foreground drama. Only a few fragments chosen as if at random - An Aryan City: Dasaratha's Speech to the States-General: A Mother's Lament:... Aurobindo seems to have held the not unreasonable, if perhaps unorthodox, view that mere literalness or word for word equation was not the ideal to be aimed at, and in fact he once wrote to Dilip Kumar Roy: "A translator is not necessarily bound to the exact word and letter of the original he chooses; he can make his own poem out of it, if he likes, and that is what is very often done." 3 But... e, the starlit sky, the sea. It was in 1909 that Sri Aurobindo's translation of Bankim's song, Bande Mataram, appeared in Karmayogin; and years later, in 1941, his translation of Dwijendralal Roy's Mother India was published in the Modern Review. When Sri Aurobindo wrote his series of articles on Bankim in 1893-4, although he made a casual reference to Anandamath, there was no mention of ...
... Salutation to Sri Aurobindo, he has left an imperishable testimony to the deep respect he had for him." Rabindranath had read some of Sri Aurobindo's writings, heard much about him from Dinendra Kumar Roy, a man of letters, who had lived with Sri Aurobindo for some time at Baroda, and followed his brilliant career with growing admiration. He was also acquainted with Sri Aurobindo's thoughts... "I now complain against 1. Barendra Kumar Ghosh [Barindra Kumar Ghose] 2. Indu Bhusan Rai 3. UllaskarDutt Page 292 4. Upendra Nath Banerji 5. Sishir Kumar Ghose 6. Nolini Kumar Gupta [Nolini Kanta Gupta] 7. Sachindra Kumar Sen 8. Poresh Chandra Maullik 9. KunjaLalSaha 10. Bijoy Kumar Nag 11. Narendra Nath Buxi 12. Purna... products... in the days of heated Anti-Partition agitation, it acquired a new force and vitality on account of its close political associations. In this mental climate Krishna Kumar Mitra's96 call for Boycott 96. Krishna Kumar Mitra, Sri Aurobindo's maternal uncle, was in close touch with Sri Aurobindo, even when the latter was in Baroda, and it is quite possible that he shared many of Sri Aurobindo's ...
... outward appearances, Sri Aurobindo's life in Baroda pursued its even course. Nevertheless, some of the images of his home life at Baroda, etched from memory years later by his Bengali companion Dinendra Kumar Roy in Aurobindo Prasange, are themselves significant and bespeak a power containing itself with effort, a power waiting, watching - with more than human concentration and more than the gods' casual ...
... bears plausible confirmation of Savitri as a composition of that time, around 1900. There is also a reasonable and hence quite acceptable corroboration of it from a Bengali literary man Dinendra Kumar Roy who lived with Sri Aurobindo in Baroda to assist him in Bengali conversation. 63 In a letter written to Amal Kiran in 1931 Sri Aurobindo mentions that there was "a previous draft" which would... World could be like at that time, so it could not enter into the scheme. As for expressing the supramental inspiration, that is a matter of the future." 60 Then, in 1948, he writes to Dilip Kumar Roy: "Savitri is going slow, confined mainly to revision of what has already been written, and I am as yet unable to take up the completion of Part II and Part III which are not finally revised and ...
... is not possible to ascertain if it was the first draft. The writer of "On Editing Sri Aurobindo", (see, Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research, V. 2, p. 190, note) rejects the testimony of Dinendra Kumar Roy who lived with Sri Aurobindo in Baroda and has written that around 1900 Sri Aurobindo was composing a poem on Savitri and Satyavan. However there is a strong probability of its being true when ...
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