... used with so much power and sincerity as in the work of the Indian poets. Other Vaishnava poetry does not use the Krishna symbol, but is rather addressed in language of a more direct devotion to Vishnu or centres sometimes around the Rama Avatar. The songs of Tukaram are the best known of this kind. The Vaishnava poetry of Bengal avoids except very rarely any element of intellectualising thought and ...
... the Tantras and the Puranas, as also in the figures of the Vaishnava poet. It is also notable that a certain element of this tradition appears even in the modern poetry of Tagore. Just as the Vaishnava poetry of Bengal uses images and figures which to the devout mind communicate the love of he human soul for God, even though to the profane they may appear to be nothing but a sensuous and passionate... and luminous figures is being fought so as to arrive at the home of the Truth and the Page 78 home of immortality. The Vedic method, however, differs somewhat from the method of Vaishnava poetry in the fact that the Vedic imagery and symbolism constitute only a translucent veil so that it is easier to lift it and pass to the open revelation. Both in regard to the substance and the ...
... life. The same uniting alchemy and fusion can take place between truth of philosophy and poetic truth and it is continually found in Indian literature. And so too all the old Rig Veda, all the Vaishnava poetry of North and South had behind it an elaborate Yoga or practised psychical and spiritual science, without which it could not have come into birth in that form. Today much of the poetry of Tagore ...
... support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spirituai import: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are placed in the foreground ...
... 103 Turya 14 Tyrrhenian 35 U Uchathya 9 Uma 18 Upanishad 37 Upanishadic Assurance 53 Upanishadic Rishis 8 V Vaishnava Poet 78 Vaishnava Poetry 91 Valmiki 13, 40, 103, 104 Varna 15 Varuna 1, 4, 5, 6, 31 Vashishtha 8 Vayu 13 Veda 8, 13 Vedantins 34, 56 Vedantic mysticism 56 Vibhutis 93 Vijnana ...
... of these desirable qualities." Furthermore: "One of the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu's genius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into something essentially the same and yet new and modem. He has given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of more delicate and complex richness ...
... of these desirable qualities." Furthermore: "One of the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindra Babu's genius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into something essentially the same and yet new and modern. He has given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of more delicate and complex richness ...
... support, a pointer or symbol of the spiritual import. And the mysticism lies precisely in the play of the two, a hide-and-seek between them. On the other hand, as I said, the greater portion of Vaishnava poetry, like a precious and beautiful casket, no doubt, hides the spiritual import: not the pure significance but the sign and symbol are luxuriously elaborated, they are placed in the foreground in ...
... distinctive local characteristics as well. Many years later, Sri Aurobindo brilliantly defined as follows the unique quality of this poetry: The desire of the soul for God is there [in Bengali Vaishnava poetry] thrown into symbolic figure in the lyrical love cycle of Radha and Krishna, the Nature soul in man seeking for the Divine Soul through love, seized and mastered by his beauty, attracted by his ...
... not the flame of earth's desire. Heaven takes up the symbols of the earth-life, but there is not the bringing of the Divine into the normal hues of our sight and our feeling which is the aim of Vaishnava poetry. Crystal is a favourite epithet of the poet, and there is here something crystalline, a rainbow prism of colours in the whiteness of shining stalactites. There is at first even some impression ...
... is taken throughout and used with such realism and consistency that while it indicates to those who possess it the spiritual experience, it means only the external thing to others,—just as the Vaishnava poetry of Bengal makes to the devout mind a physical and emotional image or suggestion of the love of the human soul for God, but to the profane is nothing but a sensuous and passionate love poetry hung ...
... the modern mind. In the past indeed there have been hieratic and religious ways of approaching the truths of spirit which have produced some remarkable forms in art and literature. Sufi poetry, Vaishnava poetry are of this order, in more ancient times the symbolic and mystic way of the Vedic singers, while the unique revelatory utterance of the Upanishads stands by itself as a form of inspired thought ...
... one spirit could build great universal works of combined architecture, painting and sculpture or in literature the epic or romantic cycles or lyric cycles like the Vedic Mandalas or the mass of Vaishnava poetry. Even when there are definite schools marked by a common method, we do not find, as in the old French romance writers or the Elizabethan dramatists or the poets of the eighteenth century, a spiritual ...
... following difficulty:—". The News of the Month This brief-lived feature was halted after the second issue of the Arya , September 1914. South Indian Vaishnava Poetry Sri Aurobindo published these essays on Andal and Nammalwar, two of the alwars or Vaishnava devotional poets of Tamil Nadu, in the Arya in May and July 1915. In the same issues ...
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