Vyasa Veda Vyasa Krishna Dvypaiana Vyāsa Vyāsa : The term Vyāsa means “an arranger”; Veda Vyāsa is the sage who compiled the Vedas. A son of Rishi Parāsara & Satyavati, he was known Krishna Dvaipāyana – Krishna (for his dark skin) of Dvaipāyana (of the dweepa, island in the Yamuna on which he was born). He composed the Mahābhārata with his trikāla-dhrīṣṭi; hence he himself appears in it (as Valmikie in his Rāmāyana). Sri Aurobindo: “We see no reason to disbelieve that the great sage Vyāsa, possessing supreme Yogic powers, was capable of imparting this divine vision to Sanjaya. If we are not incredulous about the wonderful power Western hypnosis, why should we be incredulous about the power of the great Vyāsa with his incomparable knowledge? In every page of history & in every activity of human life there is available ample evidence that a powerful man can impart his power to another. Heroic men of action like Napoleon & Ito prepared collaborators in their work by imparting their own power to fit recipients. Even a very ordinary Yogin having obtained some special power can impart his power to another for a little while or for a special purpose, what to speak of the great Vyāsa who was the world’s most accomplished genius & a man of extraordinary Yogic realisation.” [Introduction to the Message of the Gita, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 2017, p.53]
... Nala and Damayanti Notes Vyasa "Of the Munis I am Vyasa" (Bhagavad Gita 10.37) First among the Munis: such was the place given to the Rishi Vyasa by ancient India. The name of Vyasa is common to many old authors and compiers, but it is especially applied to Veda-Vyasa or Krishna Dvaipayana.He was the son of Rishi Parashara and Satyavati... in the Yamuna), the name Dvaipayana. He was a Rishi himself and is traditionally cited as the author of the Mahabharata and many other works, but he is best known as the compiler of the Vedas (Veda-Vyasa means "the one who arranged the Vedas"). No one knows exactly how many verses the Mahabharata originally contained. Some speak of 4400 verses, some others of 8800, still some others of 26400... Vyasa's art It has been said that Vyasa was the most masculine of writers.What is meant by this statement is that tendencies usually associated, rightly or wrongly, with the feminine temperament such as love of ornament, great emotionalism, excessive sensitiveness to form and beauty, a certain lack of self-restraint and the primacy of imagination over reason, are absent from Vyasa's genius ...
... Lord. According to Manu Smriti, the entire Veda is luminous with knowledge It is believed that in its original condition Veda was one, but it was Rishi Vyāsa who divided it into four parts. For this reason, Rishi Vyāsa is known as Vedavyāsa. The four Vedas have been divided in many ways under the categories of mandala, ashtaka, varga, sukta, anuvāk, khānda, prashna, chhanda, etc.... their ceremonies and rituals. Āranyakas are much more esoteric and Upanishads expound the knowledge contained in the Vedas. Upanishads are also called vedānta. At a later period, Rishi Bādarāyana Vyāsa composed Brahmasūtra or Sariraksutra in order to present the Upanishads in an organised form. At a still later period, Bhagvad Gita was composed as a part of the great Mah ā bh ā rata and it is... an organised information on the the Shākhās of the Vedas Page 90 in Charanavyūha. There are three notable books of Charanavyūha attributed, respectively, to Shaunaka, Kātyāyana and Vyāsa. The total number of Shākhās are believed to be 1131, but at present only 10 Shākhās remain alive. As far as Rigveda is concerned, only one Shākhās, Shākala Shākhās alone remains alive out ...
... in the perspective of some of the world's great poems, if only for its own fuller grasp. Valmiki, the first bom of poets, author of the Sanskrit epic the Ramayana, is the supreme singer; Veda-Vyasa coming after him, the author of the Mahabharata, is the supreme poet-thinker. Anyone versed in Sanskrit would sing the Ramayana in poetic transport and ease, carrying the listeners along with him... the poet like the Vedic Rishis is also a seer, a man who catches through insight an aspect of Reality and transfers its vibrations to the word, with a fusion in it of Valmiki's poetic felicity, Veda-Vyasa's thought-sublimity, though not its extensibility and, in addition, a 20th-century sensibility. Homer possessed of a vision as wide as the world of his day, a sympathy as deep as the heart... Collected Essays, Allen Swallaw, Denver, (1959), p. 421. 11 John Heminges and Henry Condell, the editors of the First Folio. * N.B.: In the first rank of poets Sri Aurobindo puts Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer, Shakespeare. The Future Poetry, SABCL, Vol. 9, pp. 520-21. Page 473 his poetry with; while Shakespeare had no "self to express. The easily-come word was Shakespeare's; ...
... the Puranas from the Supreme Divine; Brahma transmitted it to his four mind-bom sons, one of whom Sanat Kumara transmitted it to Narada, who, in turn, transmitted it to Krishna Dwaipayana, Veda Vyasa. Veda Vyasa composed that knowledge in 18 books; each one of them is called Purana. There are also a number of Upapuranas. Puranas describe the creation of the universe, development of the universe, and... Veda in The Context of Indian Religion And Spirituality The four Vedas (Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda and Atharva Veda) are samhitas, collections or compilations of selections made by Veda Vyasa. There was evidently at that time a larger body of compositions, and since they spoke of the old and new Rishis 1 and of 'fathers' (pitarah), it may safely be inferred that there was at that time ...
... Sri Aurobindo's revelation of the Veda's secret. And if we consider the Vyasa who wrote the epic to be Veda-Vyasa your venture is legitimate. But you must remember that Sri Aurobindo takes Vyasa's epic to consist only of 24,000 lines. According to him, the present Mahabharata is the work of three hands. There is the original Vyasa with his strong, bare, terse, direct style of vivid ideative illumination... Mahabharata . All that is not Vyasa's he has put within brackets. Working on that clue, possibly you can on your own disentangle the three authors. But you must first read Sri Aurobindo's book on Vyasa. You have to steep yourself in what he writes on Vyasa's specific genius and manner of expression, and then read whatever Sanskrit passages he gives as characteristic of Vyasa and, using them as a touchstone... a dumping of goody-goody stuff by various later reciters of the epic. In any case, it is important to ascertain what exactly or approximately is Vyasa's own Mahabharata . Sri Aurobindo showed in detail what portions of the enormous poem came from Vyasa and what from the two inferior sources. I think Page 223 Nolini has transcribed in his own copy of the epic Sri Aurobindo's c ...
... pliable forms of a still earlier human speech. Or the whole voluminous mass of its litanies may be only a selection by Veda Vyasa out of a more richly vocal Aryan past. Made, according to the common belief, by Krishna of the Isle, the great traditional sage, the colossal compiler (Vyasa), with his face turned towards the commencement of the Iron Age, towards the centuries of increasing twilight and final... interpolations, alterations, modernising revisions as have replaced by the present form of the Mahabharata the ancient epic of the Kurus. It is not, therefore, at all improbable that we have the Sanhita of Vyasa substantially as it was arranged by the great sage and compiler. Substantially, not in its present written form. Vedic prosody differed in many respects from the prosody of classical Sanskrit and ...
... is the true epic method—that Vyasa develops his higher ethic which is the morality of the liberated mind. But this is too wide a subject to be dealt with in the limits I have at my command. I have dwelt on Vyasa's ethical standpoint because it is of the utmost importance in the present day. Before the Bhagavadgita with its great epic commentary, the Mahabharata of Vyasa, had time deeply to influence... difficult a style that Vyasa himself could remember only 8800 of Page 282 the slokas, Suka an equal amount and Sanjaya perhaps as much, perhaps something less. There is certainly here no assertion such as Prof. Weber would have us find in it that the Mahabharata at any time amounted to no more than 8800 slokas. Even if we assume what the text does not say that Vyasa, Suka & Sanjaya knew the... unimportant omissions is in that great & severe style which is the stamp of the personality of Vyasa. This once established we argue farther from the identity of style, treatment & personality between the Viratapurva & the Sabhapurva, certain passages being omitted, that this book is also the work of Vyasa. From these two large & mainly homogeneous bodies of poetical work we shall be able to form a ...
... Wager of Ambrosia The Debt we Owe to Vyasa Chapter 2 J naneshwar likens the Gita to a rain-bearing cloud. No doubt from its gleaming contents it is the abundant sea that supplies water to the nimbus; but it is the cloud, and not the sea, which pours beneficences on creature-kind. In that sense it proves more gainworthy than the source from... the supreme Person lets himself loose in the rush of a creative delight and one wondrous way to breathe that delight could be through the Truth-Word’s assertive luminosity. That is what the Gita is. Vyasa received it and put it in a metrical form of the Anushtubha. This truly is a marvellous gift to sorrowing mankind who should always be grateful to him. Our best way of being thankful to him would be... are put one above another in a pile of knowledge reaching heaven. This Gita-Palace of Vishnu, gita-vaishnava-prasada , is the exceptional miracle that has come into existence through the genius of Vyasa. Some chant its glory while circumambulating it; some lean against the walls inside the temple and hear its recitations; some others with a copper piece and a betel leaf in their hand as their humble ...
... विराटपुत्रैस्च Virata has therefore several sons, three at least. 7) The simile is strictly in the style of Vyasa who cares little for newness or ingenuity, so long as the image called up effects its purpose. The assonance रराज सा राजवती is an epic assonance altogether uncommon in Vyasa & due evidently to the influence of Valmekie. 8) strong brief & illumining strokes of description which add... & ornamental & an epic assonance. I cannot think however that Vyasa was capable of putting a purely decorative epic epithet in so emphatic a place. It must surely mean either 2 [ i.e. "honourable fighters" ] or "making truth their chariot"; रथः being used as in महारथः etc. The latter however is almost too much a flight of fancy for Vyasa. 12) त्रयोदशस्चैव—agreeing with संवत्सरः which the mind supplies... Mahabharata Early Cultural Writings Notes on the Mahabharata in Detail Udyogapurva Canto I. 1) कुरुप्रवीराः.. स्वपक्षाः. This may mean in Vyasa's elliptic manner the great Kurus (i.e. the Pandavas) & those of their side. Otherwise "The Kuru heroes of his own side" i.e. Abhimanyu's which is awkward 3) वृद्धौ this supplies the reason of their ...
... Notes on the Mahabharata of Krishna Dwypaiana Vyasa prepared with a view to disengage the original epic of Krishna of the island from the enlargements, accretions and additions made by Vyshampaian, Ugrosravas & innumerable other writers. -Aurobind Ghose Proposita. An epic of the Bharatas was written by Krishna of the Island called Vyasa, in 24,000 couplets or something more, less at any ...
... written in so difficult a style that Vyasa himself could remember only 8800 of the slokas, Suka an equal amount and Sanjaya perhaps as much, perhaps something less. There is certainly here no assertion such as Prof. Weber would have us find in it that the Mahabharata at any time amounted to no more than 8800 slokas. Even if we assume what the text does not say that Vyasa, Suka & Sanjaya knew the same 8800... On Literature On Literature On the Mahabharata Early Cultural Writings Vyasa; Some Characteristics The Mahabharata, although neither the greatest nor the richest masterpiece of the secular literature of India, is at the same time its most considerable and important body of poetry. Being so it is the pivot on which the history of Sanscrit literature,... number to be attributed to Sanjaya. Another passage further on in the prolegomena agrees remarkably with this conclusion and is in itself much more explicit. It is there stated plainly enough that Vyasa first wrote the Mahabharata in 24,000 slokas and afterwards enlarged it to 100,000 for the world of men as well as a still more unconscionable number of verses for the Gandhurva and other worlds. In ...
... all great Sanskrit poetry is so, nor do all spiritual compositions give us such poetry; but Valmiki and Vyasa are at first poets as much as they are, unlike Kalidasa, Rishis and the underlying aesthesis of their poetry is overhead. The first quality of this Rishi-hood we recognise in Vyasa is his wonderful sense of detachment, even while remaining in the midst of life's activities. His art, says... indulgent spirit of man. The art of Vyasa is therefore a great, strenuous art; but it unfitted him, as a similar spirit unfitted the Greeks, to voice fully the outward beauty of Nature. For to delight infinitely in Nature one must be strongly possessed with the sense of colour and romantic beauty, and allow the fancy equal rights with the intellect." Romesh Dutt saw in Vyasa only that which is not in ... happy with Vyasa, but he goes far beyond the Johnsonian canons and seizes in his line and metaphor the glowing intensity of a realised utterance. In him there is no tendency of massing of an effect; there is only the discovery of a dense word that releases from its warm rich womb multiple suggestions more in a vertical than horizontal direction. We may perhaps appreciate the merit of Vyasa's art better ...
... excepted, they live rather by what they have said than by what they have made. 31 March 1932 Is the omission of Vyasa deliberate? It was you who omitted Vyasa, Sophocles and others—not I. Page 368 Yes, I plead guilty. But that, I hope, will be no reason why Vyasa and Sophocles should remain unclassified by you. And "the others"—they intrigue me even more. Who are these others... Hugo. Euripides ( Medea, Bacchae and other plays) is a greater poet than Racine whom you want to put in the first ranks. If you want only the very greatest, none of these can enter—only Vyasa and Sophocles. Vyasa could very well claim a place beside Valmiki, Sophocles beside Aeschylus. The rest, if you like, you can send into the third row with Goethe, but it is something of a promotion about which... 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 creation of the mind of a ...
... the same directness and clarity that Sri Aurobindo admired in Vyasa. We do not know whether he had the verses of Vyasa in mind when he wrote the above lines, but the influence is clear. However, Sri Aurobindo gives a new turn to the idea of time in the last two lines in accordance with his philosophy of the divine life. Whereas in Vyasa time is ultimately Death the Ender, in Sri Aurobindo even in... development and immense intellectual power, both moralised." 40 Likewise Vyasa's contains the material world, but almost always subordinated to the idea. Ideas in a poetical world, cannot thrive in pure abstraction, as they do in a philosophical one. The poet has therefore to depict the material background. This Vyasa does effectively "taking little trouble with similes, metaphors, rhetorical... thinking mind only, for they are concrete realities to the experiencing soul. ii) Vyasa and Sri Aurobindo The Mahabharata and the Ramayana, says Sri Aurobindo, "are built on an almost cosmic vastness of plan and take all human life (the Mahabharata all human thought as well) in their scope." 53 Vyasa's epic is "representative throughout of the central ideas and ideals of Indian life ...
... acquired wondrous merit from this remarkable tale given to us by Vyasa. The poet acknowledges the gift of the Rishi. Now, as if zooming his camera, Jnaneshwar comes to the Gita proper which is a part of the Bhishma Parva of the Mahabharata. Churned from the ocean of eternal literature, shabdabrahmabdhi , by the genius of Vyasa, it is the cream of spiritual experiences which the ascetics long... Being. Victory! Victory! W ith this invocation to the Supreme Jnaneshwar begins his poetic composition. The greatness of the Gita is its subject; the leader of the path is none other than Rishi Vyasa himself; the grace of his Guru Nivritti gives him the necessary confidence and capacity to undertake the daunting task; the rapt and attentive audience of saints and simple people encourages him and... alchemic power of the Guru. Now the worthy disciple has found the Guru and the Guru has accepted the disciple. Jnaneshwar bows to Nivritti and turns his attention to the greatness of the tale narrated by Vyasa in his vast Epic of the Bharatas. This is a tale from which issues out every happiness; all the propositions of existence are present in its splendid formulations; the ocean of its nectarine utterance ...
... subtlety of intellect, in a rare synthesising and integrating power, in a total view of human perfection individual and collective, I could not find anybody except perhaps Veda-Vyasa, the great seer-poet of India. But, Veda-Vyasa has been regarded as a mythical figure by European scholars, for they could not believe that one single person could have written all the various works ascribed to him. They... written some works, but believe that subsequent generations have gone on adding to his works in order to borrow the halo of his genius and authority. But, if ever I believe now in the existence of Veda-Vyasa as one single personality responsible for all the works ascribed to him, it is because I know Sri Aurobindo today. It is not easily possible to believe that one and the same person could have ...
... made by someone about Vyasa and his Mahabharata. He says that Vyasa was greater than Sri Krishna because he had universal sympathy: Vyasa expresses his sympathy with every character he created in the Mahabharata. SRI AUROBINDO: Where does Vyasa say that? This looks like Valmiki's intention to write for the masses. Both poets have kept their meaning a secret! As for Vyasa's universal sympathy, one ...
... with Vyasa, but Vyasa goes for beyond the Johnsonian canons and seizes in his line and metaphor the glowing intensity of a realised utterance. In him there is no tendency of massing of an effect; there is only the discovery of a dense word that releases from its warm rich womb multiple suggestions more in a vertical than horizontal direction. We may perhaps appreciate the merit of Vyasa's art better... all great Sanskrit poetry is so, nor do all spiritual compositions give us such poetry; but Valmiki and Vyasa are at first poets as much as they are, unlike Kalidasa, Rishis and the underlying aesthesis of their poetry is overhead. The first quality of this Rishihood we recognise in Vyasa is his wonderful sense of detachment, even while remaining in the midst of life's activities. His art... spirit of man. The art of Vyasa is therefore a great, strenuous art; but it unfitted him, as a similar spirit unfitted the Greeks, to voice fully the outward beauty of Nature. For to delight infinitely in Nature one must be strongly possessed with the sense of colour and romantic beauty, and allow the fancy equal rights with the intellect." Romesh Dutt saw in Vyasa only that which is not in him ...
... final version in Savitri (1993), pp. 701-2. 3 Mother'sAgenda, Vol. 2, pp. 27-28 (1961). Page 360 interpolated. He expressed his appreciation of Vyasa's manner of telling the story: Vyasa... had one object, to paint the power of a woman's silent love and he rejected everything which went beyond this or which would have been merely decorative. We cannot regret his... that created it, the myth was humanised in the "typal" period of the Mahabharata. As retold by Vyasa, it became a force for the formation of character and the inculcation of a social and ethical ideal. Transmitted, next, to the conventional age of Indian society, it underwent a paradoxical conversion. Vyasa's Savitri, whose beauty and "flaming strength" (tejas) no prince dared to claim, who went out... Mahabharata in Sanskrit In his essay "Notes on the Mahabharata", written around 1901, he explained why, on stylistic grounds, be considered this episode to be an early but authentic composition by Vyasa, the author of the original Mahabharata into whose vast structure so much other matter was later 2 A transcript of these lines has been published in the "Concluding Passage" to "Sri Aurobindo's ...
... Appendices IV Sri Aurobindo on Valmiki and Vyasa A Comparison Vyasa in fact stands at the opposite pole from Valmiki. The poet of the Ramayana has a flexible and universal genius embracing the Titanic and the divine, the human and the gigantic at once or with an inspired ease of transition. But Vyasa is unmixed Olympian, he lives in a world of pure verse and diction... austerity.... A comparison with Valmiki is instructive of the varying genius of these great masters. Both excel in epical rhetoric, if such a term as rhetoric can be applied to Vyasa's direct and severe style, but Vyasa's has the air of a more intellectual, reflective and experienced stage of poetical advance. The longer speeches in the Ramayana, those even which have most the appearance of set, ... the boundaries of ethical and religious outlook. Modern India since the Musulman advent has accepted the politics of Chanakya in preference to Vyasa's. Certainly there was little in politics concealed from that great and sinister spir- it. Yet Vyasa perhaps knew its subtleties quite as well, but he had to ennoble and guide him a high ethical aim and an august imperial idea. He did not, like European ...
... looking back to an ideal past, Vyasa was a man of his time, profoundly in sympathy with it, full of its tendencies, hopeful of its results and looking forward to an ideal future. The one might be described as a conservative idealist advocating return to a better but departed model, the other is a progressive realist looking forward to a better but unborn model. Vyasa accordingly does not revolt from... On Literature On Literature The Poetry of Kalidasa Early Cultural Writings The Age of Kalidasa Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development of the human soul... unfrequently in a state of truly shocking confusion, the Ramayana remains on the face of it the work of a single mighty and embracing mind. It is not easy to say whether it preceded or followed in date Vyasa's epic; it is riper in form and tone, has some aspects of a more advanced and mellow culture, and yet it gives the general impression of a younger humanity and an earlier less sophisticated and complex ...
... tale and the fierce and stern power of an epic. While portraying the characteristics of Vyasa's poetry, Sri Aurobindo dwelt at length on the characteristics of two works which are not parts of the original Mahabharata and are yet by the same hand, Nala and Savitri. Says he: "Here we have the very morning of Vyasa's genius, when he was young and ardent, perhaps still under the _________ " Terminalia... legendary tradition turned to creative use as a significant mythus or tale expressive of some spiritual or religious or ethical or ideal meaning and thus formative of the mind of the people." Valmiki and Vyasa indeed shaped the minds of the Indian people. They were architects and sculptors of life. Their epics contain a deep reflection on life, on human psychology, on society, politics and religion. If the... will tell you about the king Nala who had to bear a greater ordeal than you and who triumphed over his miseries." This is how the story of Nala and Damayanti is introduced to us by the great poet Vyasa in the Vanaparva of the Mahabharata: as a tale of courage and endurance in the face of adversity; as an example of what fate can do to man and what man can do to fate; a lesson of hope given to a man ...
... souls. A comparative tabular analysis of the action of the Upakhyana and of the epic may prove rewarding, and is therefore attempted below: Vyasa's Upakhyana (Tale) Sri Aurobindo Mah ākāvya ( Epic) Canto 1. Aswapati's eighteen- year long austerities; the Goddess Savitri's promise... Page-254 Canto 1. Birth of Savitri, her girlhood, and her being sent by her father in quest of a husband. (Not covered in Vyasa's tale). Book IV, Cantos 1-4; Savitri's birth, her girlhood, and her starting out on her quest. Canto 2. Aswapati with Narad; Savitri's return from her quest; ...
... Sophocles, Virgil and Milton — just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the e1ite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki and Vyasa. Four criteria Sri Aurobindo set up for the absolute first rank. They may be summed up: originality of imagination, power of expression, creative genius, range of subject-matter. The last criterion... implies also scale of work or what we may call quantity of quality. Dante just misses the utter Everest-point and sits crowned on a Kanchanjanga because his work does not have an equal genius with Vyasa's, Valmiki's, Shakespeare's and Homer's for creating a teeming world of living characters and real-seeming situations and "unknown modes of being". An energetic constructiveness Page 262 ... beautiful polish and finish, rarely, if at all, equals. Sri Aurobindo may be said to have been poetically influenced in a basic sense by Homer and Shakespeare from his earliest days and, later, by Vyasa, Valmiki and the mantras of the Rigveda, the Upanishads and the Gita. If any poetry not exactly of the sheer top, though high enough, deeply permeated him, it was Kalidasa's more than Dante's. ...
... goodness, amidst change, the mortal and the evanescent things of the world and sang the Universal in and through the particulars while not being negligent of the particulars themselves. Along with Vyāsa and Vālmiki, Kālidāsa adorns that pedestal of excellence which can hardly be reached by any other poet, for there is something superbly beautiful about his poetry that makes it unique for all times... ani prakāśasitagunā Vyāsena līlalvatī, Vaidharbhī kavitā svayam vritavati Sri Kalidasam varam Vaidharbhī style of poetry, which had its origin from Vālmīki, and was nurtured and educated by Vyāsa, chose Kālidāsa as her bridegroom, out of her own accord. His style is suggestive, suggesting much more than what it expresses; it is devoid of artificiality, laxity and of extravagant descriptions ...
... pliable forms of a still earlier human speech. Or the whole voluminous mass of its litanies may be only a selection by Veda Vyasa out of more richly vocal Aryan past. Made, according to the common belief, by Krishna of the Isle, the great traditional sage, the colossal compiler ( Vyasa ), with his face turned towards the commencement of the Iron Age, towards the centuries of increasing twilight and final ...
... Writings A Proposed Work on Kalidasa Chapter I. Kalidasa's surroundings. Chapter II. Kalidasa & his work. The Malavas—the three ages, Valmekie.. Vyasa.. Kalidasa.. materialism & sensuousness..] the historic method.. psychological principles of criticism.. variety of Kalidasa's work.. probable chronological succession of his works. Chapter III. ...
... swabhāva . It promotes superior and richer values, gracious merits which the soul cherishes and carries with itself from life to life. That is the true basis of the Upakhyana. When did Vyasa compose his Savitri-story? Sri Aurobindo remarks that it belongs to the poet's early days, still fresh "with the glow of the youth and grace over it". It looks as though the later compilers of the ... are exactly 300 shlokas or 600 hemistichs covering the entire story. A shloka is an unrhymed Sanskrit couplet, of 32 syllables in 4 equal divisions, and is the most common form used for a narrative. Vyasa's recitation of Savitri in this metre moves forward with epic grace and swiftness, rushing from event to event with confident ease. Divided in seven sections, the little heroic poem has metrical power... Savitri-tale as a tale of a faithful and chaste woman, without recognising the fact that it is an episode of a very rare and singular spiritual personality who has met and triumphed over the God of Death. Vyasa was fully aware of the profound and mystical contents of the story and what he wrote with the élan of an inspired Rishi has the luminous power to lend to the legend symbolic and supernatural substance ...
... Vyasa's Savitri Vyasa's Savitri R Y Deshpande ********* Publishers' Note The work being presented here had first appeared in Mother India, the monthly review of culture, Sri Aurobindo Ashram Pondicherry. We are thankful to its editor for serialising it in his periodical. Our thanks are also due to M/S Amravan Group ...
... totally unpoetic American. Even otherwise the total Mahabharata is not what its traditional author Vyasa actually composed. Of course it is all interesting and instructive as a picture of the Indian consciousness in its numerous aspects down the ages. But the original epic attributable to whoever is named Vyasa can be deduced from two passages in the Prolegomena (Adiparva, 118 and 102-107) to have been a... Tradition attributes it to Krishna of the Island called Vyasa who certainly lived about this time and was an editor of the Vedas; and since there is nothing in this part of the poem which makes the tradition impossible and much which favours it, we may, as a matter both of convenience and of probability accept it at least provisionally.... "...Vyasa is the most masculine of writers. When Coleridge spoke... caught something of the surge and cry of Valmekie's Oceanic poetry. Vyasa in fact stands at the opposite pole from Valmekie.... "Strength and a fine austerity are Then the two tests which give us safe guidance through the morass of the Mahabharata; where these two exist together, we may reasonably presume some touch of Vyasa; where they do not exist or do not conjoin, we feel at once the redactor ...
... 61-238; publication dates of, 242; context of the original upakhyana, 240-244; the Mahabharata story, 244-251; character of Savitri as seen by other writers, 252-253; Vyasa's Savitri, 254-255; Nala and, 256; comparative analysis of Vyasa's tale and, 257-259; Sri Aurobindo's contribution in, 260-265; Vedic significances in, 274-279; symbolism in, 284-285; symbolism of the characters... Vidyapati 45 Vijayatunga J. 18 Virgil 33, 54, 309, 376, 380, 381, 383, 384, 395, 417 Vivekananda, Swami 4, 5,19 Viziers of Bassora, The 47, 49, 318 Vyasa 135,137,209,257,258,261,262, Wadia,B.P.77 Walker, Dr. 7 Wallace, Alfred 252 Whitehead, A.N. 33, 34 Whitman, Walt 377,387-389 394 Willey ...
... Sophocles, Virgil and Milton - just as all these stood above Goethe who too, according to Sri Aurobindo, was among the elite. At the sheer top there was nobody except Homer, Shakespeare, Valmiki and Vyasa. Four criteria Sri Aurobindo set up for the absolute first rank. They may be summed up: originality of imagination, Page 205 power of expression, creative genius, range of... implies also scale of work or what we may call quantity of quality. Dante just misses the utter Everest-point and sits crowned on a Kanchanjanga because his work does not have an equal genius with Vyasa's, Valmiki's, Shakespeare's and Homer's for creating a teeming world of living characters and real-seeming situations and "unknown modes of being". An energetic constructiveness on a grand scale rather... rarely, if at all, equals. Page 206 Sri Aurobindo may be said to have been poetically influenced in a basic sense by Homer and Shakespeare from his earliest days and, later, by Vyasa, Valmiki and the mantras of the Rigveda, the Upanishads and the Gita. If any poetry not exactly of the sheer top, though high enough, deeply permeated him, it was Kalidasa's more than Dante's. ...
... quest is described by Vyasa in the three stanzas at the end of the first canto, and it is only from the retrospective narration that we learn about her meeting and falling in love with Satyavan. But Sri Aurobindo lingers with affection on the meeting, and tries to probe behind the minds of Aswapati, Narad and Savitri in the tense scene described with shining succinctness by Vyasa in the second canto... is Dharma as well, and follows him as he carries away Satyavan's life, and compels the law of predestination itself to yield ground and submit to the imperatives of Savitri's love for her husband. Vyasa has treated this part of the story with more subtlety and elaboration than the earlier parts, for it covers about one-fourth of the whole poem. What, exactly, is the writ of Fate? Are we to take it ...
... been in correspondence with Dr. K. K. Nair (Krishna Chaitanya), the eminent philosopher and litterateur, apropos his comment apropos the Peter Brook film on the Mahabharata, "Anticipating Buber, he (Vyasa) saw history as the encounter of the temporal and the eternal, the empirical and the transcendental; and anticipating Berdyaev, he saw in history a divine programme for divinising human existence."... Kurukshetra where only nine men survived out of 18 vast armies. I am afraid Aurobindo's inflated rhetoric does not see the terror and the tears at the heart of things. I must confess your casual rating of Vyasa and Berdyaev vis-a-vis Aurobindo shocked me." Coming from someone who is an acknowledged name in these matters, this needs an answer from you. To provide you with some insight into this argument... the grievous lack and sorrowful strain which man in his imperfection suffers and to assure him of the possibility of overcoming them. Has Berdyaev, to whom both you and Nair refer, or even the great Vyasa ever written words like the following in a letter of Sri Aurobindo's to a disciple? — "No, it is not with the Page 214 Empyrean that I am busy: I wish I were. It is rather with the ...
... Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Virgil, Kalidas, Shakespeare, Dante, Milton and Goethe. From the point of view of essential force and beauty, Homer and Shakespeare stand above all the rest, although Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharta is greater in his range than Homer in the Page 11 Iliad. Similarly, Valmiki has a greater range than Homer in Odyssey. Both Vyasa and Valmiki... as well in 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 though not inferior are not greater than either the English or the Greek poet." 1 Homer has given the presentation of life always at a high intensity of impulse and action and ...
... runs into about 1400 pages and Page 94 contains more than 50 selected letters and articles written by various authors since the appearance of Savitri in 1950.) Vyasa's Savitri : R Y Deshpande (This is a verse-by-verse rendering into English of the tale of Savitri as we have in the Book of the Forest of the Mahabharata. The original Sanskrit text is also given ...
... seas Among the farthest Hebrides, or else, Or hear old Triton blow his wrèathed horn are indeed the highest peaks of English poetry. Sri Aurobindo has said that Vyasa is the most masculine of poets. Echoing his words we may say that Wordsworth is the most masculine of English poets. This classification of poets into "masculine" and "feminine" was made by the poet... play of melody, while the masculine has immobility, like the stillness of sculpture, the stability of a rock. This is the difference between the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, between the styles of Vyasa and Valmiki. This too is the difference between Wordsworth and Shelley. The Ramayana has always been recognised Page 101 for its poetic beauty; Valmiki is our first great poet, ...
... an earnest effort to attain expertise (in the science of life) so that he could become a bestower of life to human beings. Charakasamhita *** All the observations made by the sage Vyasa in all the eighteen Puranas may be-summed up in the two statements: to do good to others is a virtuous act and to afflict others is a vicious one. Page 185 ...
... Savitri II 'The Growth of the Flame' Vyasa is succinctness itself when he records in the Mahabharata: "And, in course of time, the girl (Savitri) attained maidenhood". Just that. But Sri Aurobindo is nothing if not elaborate, richly yet relevantly elaborate. The child grows into the girl, and the girl becomes a young woman. A common enough ...
... Vyasa's Savitri Request from the Citizens of Shalwa to Dyumatsena to Return and to Rule over the Kingdom, the Coronation Ceremony, and the Fulfilment of the Boons by Getting a Hundred Sons and a Hundred Brothers. Page 85 Markandeya said: When the night was over and the solar ...
... And there are also the translations included in Vyasa and Valmiki. The sheer masculinity of Vyasa, his massive intellectual sweep, his rich experience of men and affairs, his superb grasp of the minutiae of politics and morals, his infallible insight into the dark caverns and his familiarity with the sunlit peaks of human nature, all made Vyasa an "unmixed Olympian". With his own wide-ranging... g interests, it was not surprising that Sri Aurobindo felt more often attracted by Vyasa - he was more often engaged by Vyasa - than even by Valmiki. These renderings from the Mahabharata were, however, clearly of an earlier date than those from the Ramayana. Sri Aurobindo tries here Heroic (rhymed) verse, which considerably shackles his freedom and makes him coin words like "famousest"... with a core of purposeful spirituality that places it almost - almost if not quite - in the category of mystical poetry. V From Sri Aurobindo's draft manuscripts, a volume entitled Vyasa and Valmiki was published posthumously in 1956.35 This volume contained a valuable inquiry into "The Problem of the Mahabharata", some very stimulating "Notes on the Mahabharata" and a luminous fragment ...
... Arnold, Essays in Criticism. Page 234 or else, Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn are indeed the highest peaks of English poetry. Sri Aurobindo has said that Vyasa is the most masculine of poets. Echoing his words we may say that Wordsworth is the most masculine of English poets. This classification of poets into "masculine" and "feminine" was made by the poet... play of melody, while the masculine has immobility, like the stillness of sculpture, the stability of a rock. This is the difference between the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, between the styles of Vyasa and Valmiki. This too is the difference between Wordsworth and Shelley. The Ramayana has always been recognised for its poetic beauty; Valmiki is our first great poet, a di-kavi. In the Mahabharata ...
... Homer, Shakespeare and Dante..." * * * "Many centuries after these poets [Valmiki and Vyasa], perhaps a thousand years or even more, came the third great embodiment of the national consciousness, Kalidasa. There is a far greater difference between the civilisation he mirrors than between Vyasa's and Valmiki's. He came when the daemonic orgy of character and intellect had worked itself out... Selected Episodes From Raghuvamsam of Kalidasa Appendices Passages from the writings of Sri Aurobindo on Kalidasa "Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India; if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history. Their poems are types and exponents of three periods in the development ...
... story, Page 602 bringing out thereby the broad lines of its "drama of integral self-realisation" through judicious and eloquent quotes. The question of the original content of Vyasa's story in the Mahabharata and Sri Aurobindo's modifications thereof is dealt with in several of these approaches, but most completely in Deshpande's essay. The biographical context, equating Savitri... himself to the social psychology of the modem. Purani's comparative discussion of epical form stands out for its analytical insight: he marks a difference between the early epic of Homer, Valmiki or Vyasa, where a vast and complex outward action is the subject; and the departure towards subjectivism introduced by Dante and strengthened in Milton. Savitri could be seen as a modern efflorescence of ...
... consciousness is not that of an inborn or indwelling Divinity. This is the distinction we can gather from the Gita which is the main authority on this subject.” 4 Among the Vibhutis may be counted: Veda Vyasa, Hatshepsut, Moses, Pericles, Socrates, Alexander, Confucius, Lao Tse, Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon, Shankara, Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and ...
... All is Dream-Blaze (1992) Under the Raintree (1994) Paging the Unknown (2000) Passing Moments (in the Press) Prose The Ancient Tale of Savitri (1995, 1996) Vyasa's Savitri (1996) "Satyavan Must Die" (1996) Sri Aurobindo and the New Millennium (2000) All Life is Yoga (2000) The Wager of Ambrosia (in the Press) Nagin-bhai Tells Me (2001) ...
... engender relations of mutuality and unity, each is perfected by the other and creativity is endless. This particular monograph is entitled Nala and Damayanti. This ancient story by the poet-Rishi Vyasa recounts how heroism guided by wisdom enabled two human beings, crushed by adverse circumstances, to emerge victorious from a terrible ordeal. Because they were intensely pure and sincere, they could ...
... leaves of grass and not a rich and meritorious garland of flowers, as was prepared by Vyasa to worship him. But the Lord is candid, courteous, affable. Will he then despise his humble offering, ridicule the presents he has brought for him with such tender love and devotion? He has already accepted the words spoken by Vyasa, and will he then reject or say no to him just because of the lowly gifts that are... He has to expound the yogic philosophy of the Great Dialogue the sage of the Mahabharata has given to us in majesty of the classical diction and speech. He is also quite conscious of the fact that Vyasa’s work is not an ordinary dialogue at all; it is the supreme Word, the benedictive Assurance coming from a person no other than the Avatar of Kurukshetra himself. It is the most benevolent Word for the... whole creation and how can a crude and rustic vernacular tongue approach anywhere near the nobility and dignity of the classical expression? It will be wrong to compare the Marathi composition with Vyasa’s revelatory narration that has the elevated deportment of Sanskrit itself. But then there is consolation, even a possibility of fulfilment. It cannot be surpassed and there is no doubt about it, but ...
... Kalidasa, the man who thus represents one of the greatest periods in our civilisation and typifies so many sides and facets of it in his writing, we know if possible even less than of Valmekie and Vyasa. It is probable but not certain that he was a native of Malwa born not in the capital Ujjaini, but in one of those villages of which he speaks in the Cloud-Messenger and that he afterwards resorted... but external facts we have none. There is indeed a mass of apocryphal anecdotes about him couching a number of witticisms & ingenuities mostly ribald, but these may be safely discredited. Valmekie, Vyasa and Kalidasa, our three greatest names, are to us, outside their poetical creation, names merely and nothing more. This is an exceedingly fortunate circumstance. The natural man within us rebels ...
... Vyasa's Savitri The Marriage of Satyavan and Savitri; by her Work and Service Savitri's Keeping the In-Laws and Everybody Happy and Pleased. Markandeya said: Then the King paid attention to the details of giving his daughter in marriage; by arranging for the needed ...
... Savitri strikes her beholders as a being verily divine; and so men are content to worship, and are afraid to ask her hand in marriage. Such is the simple statement in the old legendary narrative. Vyasa adds further that king Aswapati, finding that there are no suitors for Savitri, becomes sad in consequence. He accordingly asks her to look for herself and choose a husband who may be worthy of her ...
... world of the legend and the past, Sri Aurobindo to the world of the symbol and the future. No Aurobindonian will show a lack of respect towards the world of the Rishis, of the Mahabharata and of Veda Vyasa but, however great, they belong to the "lower hemisphere" just like all the rest of the bygone history of humanity. In the first three Books of Savitri Sri Aurobindo, "in the front of the immemorial ...
... Upanishads will be as necessary to an universal culture as a knowledge of the substance of the Bible, Shankara's theories as familiar as the speculations of Teutonic thinkers and Kalidasa, Valmekie & Vyasa as near and common to the subject matter of the European critical intellect as Dante or Homer. It is the difficulties of presentation that prevent a more rapid and complete commingling. Page ...
... produced Janaca, Valmekie & Buddha, nor the bold intellectual temperament, heroic, ardent and severe, of the Page 152 Central nations which produced Draupadie, Bhema, Urjouna, Bhishma, Vyasa and Srikrishna; neither were they quite akin to the searchingly logical, philosophic & scholastic temperament of the half Dravidian southern nations which produced the great grammarians and commentators ...
... n of one or more elements of our nature. When illumination and heroism join and engender relations of mutuality and unity, each is perfected by the other and creativity is endless. Valmiki, Vyasa, and Kalidasa are the three greatest poets of India, and one cannot have a living experience of Indian culture without some direct experience of the works of these three great poets. Kalidasa is the ...
... frightening and terrible abysses of space; in it will be shaped destiny. It will be therefore worthwhile if we can get some idea about this very significant meditation of Savitri. In the story of Vyasa, as given in Vana Parva of the Mahabharata, Savitri is described as one who was an adept in the Yoga of Meditation, dhyānyogaparayaṇā. Just before going to the forest on the fated day she pays her... decisive. She forgets herself. In a swift occult action she discards all the heavy sheaths, disburdens herself from what would hold her back to the gross earth. Savitri 2 R. Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, pp. 31-32. 3 Savitri, p. 578. The Mother tells the following: In sleep you reach a stage when you are on the borders of form. There everything stops, all vibrations subside... towards her victory. As we have already seen, Savitri's entering into her House of Meditation is reminiscent of a similar situation, though at a somewhat different point of the narrative, in Vyasa's episode of Savitri. The day of Satyavan's death has arrived. Savitri has successfully completed the difficult three-night vow of fasting and standing at one single place throughout, trirātra vrata ...
... idea and we have the canto the Birth and Childhood of the Flame, a whole canto that had been inspired by a single term in Vyasa: kanya tejasvini. This and the following the Growth of the Flame are the Aurobindonian Pillai-t-tamizh for us. Besides, unlike the Upakhyana of Vyasa, Savitri's poem is cast in the epic scale, a Devi Kavyam, a Golden Poem. Hence we have also to grow along with the idea... mute Force Where she lay in the featureless and formless hush Guarding from Time by her immobile sleep The ineffable puissance of his solitude. 8 In the original Upakhyana of Vyasa the power of the Supreme as Action (Prakriti) comes to Aswapati with the promise of a daughter described by Goddess Savitri as kanya tejasvini, though the king had prayed for sons at first (putra... aspirant-Rishi's mantric meditation. As in days of old when the various gods and goddesses descended to the earth to answer the call of the Vedic seers, Mother Savitri appeared now before Aswapati. In Vyasa's description of the goddess no details are given except that she was a rūpini: Then, O Yudhistira, rising from the sacrificial flames in her splendid form she appeared in front of the King ...
... grandeurs from subtle dimensions of Nature to cast an interpretative light on the world-pageant through a rich packed poetry could very well be true of ancient epics like Valmiki's Rāmāyana and Vyasa's Mahābhārata or mediaeval ones like Kalidasa's Kumārasambhavam and Raghuvamsam . The last phrase about man's word being upraised to neighbour a divine utterance, rather than itself becoming... ages to reveal Page 54 here and now the arcane Eternal, the masked Absolute. Yes, the poems spoken of in our earlier quotation are like the masterpieces of Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa rather than like the Vedic hymns, the Upanishadic slokas or that super- Vyasan rarity — the Gita — in the midst of the Mahābhārata . But these too, in Sri Aurobindo's imagination ...
... Vyasa's Savitri Savitri's Firm Decision to Marry Satyavan. Markandeya said: O Yudhishthira, on one particular occasion, afterwards, the King, the ruler of the Madra country, was in the company of Narad; seated in the royal Hall, he was engaged in conversation with him. Then, about the same time Savitri, after visiting ...
... Vyasa's Savitri The Three-Night Vow of Savitri and, with the Permission of the Parents-in-Law, her Going to the Forest along with her Husband. Markandeya said: O Yudhishthira, with the rolling of several lunar" days as the time was passing, the fated hour when Satyavan was to ...
... divine achievement, the hero in the Carlylean sense of heroism, a power of God in man. "I am Vasudeva (Krishna) among the Vrishnis," says the Lord in the Gita, "Dhananjaya (Arjuna) among the Pandavas, Vyasa among the sages, the seer-poet Ushanas among the seer-poets," the first in each category, Page 160 the greatest of each group, the most powerfully representative of the qualities and works... draw an inexorable line between the being and nature of the Divine and our human being and nature; it is the sense of the divine in humanity. But still the Vibhuti is not the Avatar; otherwise Arjuna, Vyasa, Ushanas would be Avatars as well as Krishna, even if in a less degree of the power of Avatarhood. The divine quality is not enough; there must be the inner consciousness of the Lord and Self governing ...
... single god of Dharma, Yama. There is an echo of this use in the Vishnu Purana when it is said that Vishnu is born in the Satya Yuga as Yajna, in the Treta as the Chakravarti Raja, in the Dwapara as Vyasa. In the Satya Yuga mankind is governed by its own pure, perfect and inborn nature spontaneously fulfilling the dharma under the direct inspiration of God within as Yajna, the Lord of the Dharma. In ...
... which belongs to the domain of sky, is a vast one. No known eagle can be so vast as to be comparable to the storm that the poet is describing. The poet is alluding to the mythological Garuda whom Vyasa in the Mahdbh ā rata describes as colossal and as having eyes like lightning and whose exploits in the heavenly regions he recounts at great length. Although the word "heaven" has a value for the ...
... style, to the power of its unifying harmony. Highet's pointed emphasis on Milton's style in Paradise Lost is by no means misplaced. The hexameter of Homer and Virgil, the anustup of Vyasa and Valmiki, the terza rima of Dante, the symphonic blank verse of Milton, the crystalline iambic pentameter of Savitri, all play no mean part in charging these great epics with life and movement ...
... 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 14 Vishwamitra 8 Vyasa 103 W Western Powers 83 White Goddess 77 Wordsworth 16, 39, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103 Y Yama I Yoga 33 Yogis 83 Yuga-sandhi 91 Yves Bonnefoy ...
... functionally the merit of the path of righteousness. Although it may seem to have the colouring of an ethical illustration, the story is spiritually charged. Even in the simple 2 R.Y. Deshpande, Vyasa's Savitri, p. 55. narrative of the Mahabharata we see a purpose behind the story. In it we notice the seeds of a brighter world taking birth. This birth of a bright world may... purport of mrityuloka, becomes clear. Yama shall thus prove to be the true Upholder of the Worlds. He shall then be pitrarājastām bhagavān, the beneficent King-Father and Lord of Creatures, as Vyasa says. Sri Aurobindo utilises this legend to give mantric form to his yogic experiences and realisations, to his avataric work. His Savitri is therefore not only a legend and a symbol, a symbol... there. In fact it is she who works out that possibility. She 6 Ibid., p. 383. 7 The Mother, SABCL, Vol.25,p.23. takes birth as a radiant daughter,— kanyd tejasvini as Vyasa puts it. She keeps on coming as the princess of Madra, the daughter of the timeless king Aswapati. For, hers is an eternal birth which is also the birth in eternal Time. Thus the fascinating Story of ...
... or feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast oceanic stillness and the cry of the cuckoo Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides or it may enter again into Vyasa's A void and dreadful forest ringing with the crickets' cry Page 143 Vanam pratibhayam śūnyam jhillikdgananāditam 1 or remember its call to the soul of man Anityam... work will be to express adequately and constantly what is now only occasionally and inadequately some kind of utterance of the things above, 1 In Savitri Sri Aurobindo has brought in Vyasa's line thus: some lone tremendous wood Ringing for ever with the crickets' cry. (K.D.S.) Page 144 the things beyond, the things behind the apparent world and its external ...
... Significance of Indian Yoga Notes and References ' It is believed that in its original condition Veda was one, but it was Rishi Vyasa who divided it into collections, Samhitas, Rig Veda, Yajur Veda, Sama Veda, and Atharva Veda. The antiquity of the Veda has been a subject of discussion and dispute. But it is acknowledged that it is the oldest available record in ...
... Psychic Being and never the self-centered body. The moderns may ask: "Is it obligatory that one should have a great soul in order to be, a great poet?" In the hoary past it was almost so. Valmiki, Vyasa and Homer rightly deserve to fall into that category. But the ancient Latin Catullus, the French poet Villon of the medieval age, most of the 'Satanic' poets of the Romantic age, and Oscar Wilde and ...
... flowed on. Down the bed of Time it flowed, ever widening, ever enriched. Of the few epics that have come down to us, two are written in Sanskrit: the Ramayana of Valmiki, and the Mahabharata of Vyasa. In the hands of Kalidasa at a later age, it became a thing of grace. But Sanskrit was not the language of poets only, of philosophers only, it lent itself equally well to the needs of science and ...
... from the seers who have seen the face of this Truth, have heard its word and have become one with it in self and spirit. "All the Rishis say this of thee and the divine seer Narada, Asita, Devala, Vyasa." Or else one must receive it from within by revelation and inspiration from the inner Godhead who lifts in us the blazing lamp of knowledge. Svayañcaiva bravīṣi me , "and thou thyself sayest it to... light of the idea and sound of the word, is Myself luminous in the mortal; I am Ushanas among the seer-poets. The great sage, thinker, philosopher is My power among men, My own vast intelligence; I am Vyasa among the sages. But, with whatever variety of degree in manifestation, all beings are in their own way and nature Page 364 powers of the Godhead; nothing moving or unmoving, animate ...
... gesture, movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate or vehement, of sensation, passion, emotion is directly expressed); intellectual mind (as in Vyasa, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante and Milton, where the poetic vision markedly brings out thought-values of whatever is caught up from subjective or objective existence). The Future Poetry would be written ...
... modern technique. The combination is risky, but not impossible. In the spiritual domain the Gita achieved this miracle to a considerable degree. Still, the power of intelligence and reason shown by Vyasa is of a special order: it is a sublimated function of the faculty, something aloof and other-worldly – "introvert", a modern mind would term it – that is to say, something a priori, standing in its... And if there is something in the creative spirit of Sri Aurobindo which tends more towards the strenuous than the genial, the arduous than the mellifluous, and which has more of the austerity of Vyasa than the easy felicity of Valmiki, however it might have affected the ultimate value of his creation, according to certain standards,¹ it has illustrated once more that ¹". . .it cannot be said ...
... Dwapara, Brahma's creatures had gone a long, long time from him. The idea and the spirit no longer ruled the roost. Form and rule became the true governors of ethics and society. It was the age of Vyasa, the great codifier and systematizer of knowledge. In Dwapara everything was codified, ritualized, formalized. It was then that came Sri Krishna, the Iconoclast. He mocked at the strong hold rule had... of Mithila, a Kshatriya king of the Solar dynasty, was a seer, and Brahmins came to him to learn the supreme knowledge. Satyakamajabala became the guru to the purest and highest blood in the land. Vyasa's mother Satyavati was the daughter of a fisherman. King Shantanu of the Kurus, married her. There are hundreds and hundreds of such examples. Nobody was shut out of spiritual truth and culture on the ...
... specimens Nehru put into Shaw's hands are known by botanists to have had at least five thousand years of ancestors behind them, in the land of Arjuna and Tilak, Kapila and jagadish Chunder Bose, Vyasa and Tagore, Sri Krishna and Sri 'Aurobindo. Page 88 Further, the mango is fraught with the flavour and bouquet of the typical Indian genius. This genius combines in its unity a large ...
... with the tradition and cultures of the East and the West and 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 ...
... while the dramatic situation derives from the Mahabharata original, the dialectic in which Savitri and Death (Yama) engage begins increasingly to assume a distinctly Aurobindonian hue and cast. In Vyasa's epic, Savitri is the pure wife whose deathless love for her husband moves Yama—who is also Dharma Raja or Lord of Righteousness—to compassion as well as admiration, till at last he readily grants her ...
... seers returned again, in a more chiselled and polished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening age—Vyasa and Valmiki. Upama Kdliddsasya— Kalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and ...
... seers returned again, in a more chiselled and polished and stylised manner, in the classical poets. The Upanishads in this .respect have a certain kinship with the early poets of the intervening age – Vyasa and Valmiki. Upamā Kālidāsasya --Kalidasa revels in figures and images; they are profusely heaped on one another and usually possess a complex and composite texture. Valmiki's images are simple and ...
... Vyasa's Savitri The Grief-Stricken Parents, the Rishis Consoling Them and Giving Them Assurances, the Return of Satyavan and Savitri, and Savitri's Narration of the Reasons for their Coming Back Late. Page 72 Markandeya said: At about the same time ...
... blessedness, but with Jnaneshwari a whole new world of devotional life opened out for them. The first Marathi poet combined in himself the lyrical mysticism of Valmiki and the spiritual classicism of Vyasa to build the foundation of a larger collective social order. The method of the poet is reiterative, emphasising each idea or concept with the help of several examples. It does amount to a kind of poetic ...
... What is this superstition? At that rate Sophocles, Chaucer, Milton, Wordsworth are not good poets, because their poetry is not Page 165 full of images? Is Kalidasa a greater poet than Vyasa or Valmiki because he is fuller of images? 18 February 1936 Poetry does not consist only in images or fine phrases. When Homer writes simply "Sing, Goddess, the baleful wrath of Achilles, son... lines so compressed in thought and speech (although the normal style of the poem is of a crystal clearness,) that even the divine scribe Ganesha, lord of wisdom and learning who wrote the poem to Vyasa's dictation, had to stop and cudgel his brains for minutes to find out their significance,—thus giving the poet a chance to breathe and compose his lines. For the condition laid down was that the inspiration... thrilling to these things but that it is sadly wrong in thrilling to them only. It means that your plexus will remain deaf and dead to most of the greater poetry of the world—to Homer, Milton, Valmiki, Vyasa, a great part even of Shakespeare. That is surely a serious limitation of the appreciative faculty. What is strange and beautiful has its appeal, but one ought to be able also to stir to what is great ...
... sustained poetic quality, only the Shah-Nameh of Firdausi, the Ramayana of Valmiki and the Mahabharata of Vyasa exceed it in length — three works which, like it, are products of the East. And indeed Page 127 Savitri stands with the masterpieces of Valmiki and Vyasa in more than one respect. It has been conceived with an affinity to the ancient Indian temperament which not only ...
... gesture, movement and action); vital mind (as in Kalidasa and Shakespeare, where the vibrant play, delicate or vehement, of sensation, passion, emotion is directly expressed); intellectual mind (as in Vyasa, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante and Milton, where the poetic vision markedly brings out thought-values of whatever is caught up from subjective or objective existence). The Future Poetry would be ...
... contained in time past. In contrast to this, we have even in a simple verse of Vyasa the sure touch when he speaks of the Truth by which the saints lead the sun, the askesis by which they uphold the earth, and in whom all the three divisions of Time find refuge. Both are incantatory no doubt, but the deep calm one feels in Vyasa's almost Overmental stanza is missing in the inner mental lines of Eliot. Savitri's... Allured to her lashes by his passionate words Her fathomless soul looked at him from her eyes— more romantic than Kalidas would ever get; Ringing for ever with the crickets' cry— reminding us of Vyasa; A casual passing phrase can change our life— moving smoothly with epic ease; Sight's sound-waves breaking from the soul's great deeps— occultly packed with the supernatural; She seemed burning ...
... Indian Review of Madras. The text of Sri Aurobindo's essay consists of: (1) an elaborate title page with "proposita"; (2) an introductory passage headed "Vyasa; some Characteristics"; (3) a longer passage mostly on the same subject beginning "Vyasa is the most masculine of writers"; (4) a long passage beginning "It was hinted in a recent article in the Indian Review", dealing, among other... some revisions. Bankim Chandra Chatterji was first published in book-form by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1954. Some of the material on the Mahabharata was first published in book-form in Vyasa and Valmiki by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in 1956 and 1964. In 1989 all the material on the Mahabharata, augmented and reorganised, was published in volume 13 of Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research ...
... , Pradyumna, and Aniruddha, and I listened with rapt attention. On the subject of incarnation, he cited instances of the philosophic and practical types of manifestation, explaining in detail that Vyasa was the philosophic type and Sri Krishna the practical. He freely expounded the Upanishadic principles... "His continued stay at a place might cause the secret to leak out, and we talked about ...
... characteristic of the Hindu spirit not in its best and most self-realising epochs. They were written in an age of decline, and their present form is the result of a literary accident. The Mahabharata of Vyasa, originally an epic of 24,000 verses, afterwards enlarged by a redacting poet, was finally submerged in a vast mass of inferior accretions, the work often of a tasteless age and unskilful hands. It... tendencies, inspirations, ideals. Yet are these great figures, are Rama, Sita, Savitrie, merely patterns of moral excellence? I who have read their tale in the swift and mighty language of Valmekie and Vyasa and thrilled with Page 131 their joys and their sorrows, cannot persuade myself that it is so. Surely Savitrie that strong silent heart, with her powerful and subtly-indicated personality ...
... Parvati's Tapasya Notes Kalidasa's life "Valmiki, Vyasa and Kalidasa are the essence of the history of ancient India", said Sri Aurobindo, "if all else were lost, they would still be its sole and sufficient cultural history." Yet, of the life of these three great poets we know very little. And the three plays and four poems of Kalidasa tell us nothing... literature (mainly the Ramayana and Mahabharata), great philosophical systems, codes and ethics, codes of statecraft, as also great sciences and arts, began to develop during this period. Valmiki and Vyasa are the great representatives of that period. Then, Many centuries after these poets, perhaps a thousand years or even more, came the third embodiment of the national consciousness, Kalidasa. ...
... single tear came to her eyes. By making her weep, he took away the very strength on which Savitri was built. PURANI: He wanted to make the story realistic, perhaps. SRI AUROBINDO: He thought Vyasa had made a mess of it. Even present-day Bengalis are fond of weeping. They expect everybody to weep. When Barin was condemned, they reported that Sarojini wept and that when I met Sarojini I too began ...
... expression, but a wrong statement. Even if one has knowledge of the many, it doesn't mean he has knowledge of the all. That is, he may know what he has to know or wants to know. DR. MANILAL: Like Vyasa's shadow-reader who could by studying someone's shadow tell his past and present, etc. SRI AUROBINDO: Oh, he can say everything! (Laughter) DR. MANILAL: Nirod says that by knowledge of the subliminal ...
... even if they have failed in their universal mission, have there not been some sons of man who have conquered death for all time ? Thus Utnapishtim of the Babylonian legends and Ashwa-thama, Vali, Vyasa, Hanuman, Vibhishana, Kripa and Parashu- 1 Vide D. Mérejkovsky, op. cit., chapter entitled "Gilgamesh et l'arbre de vie." 2 Mérejkovsky, op. cit., section II: Babylone. ...
... of mrityuloka , becomes clearer. Yama shall thus prove to be the excellent Upholder of the Worlds. He shall then be pitrarājastām bhagavān , the beneficent King-Father and Lord of Creatures, as Vyasa would say. Sri Aurobindo utilizes this legend to give mantric form to his yogic experiences and realizations, to his avataric work. His Savitri is therefore not only a legend and a symbol, a ...
... silence of the seas Beyond the farthest Hebrides, and Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn, are indeed two of the highest peaks of English poetry. Sri Aurobindo has said that Vyasa is the most masculine of Page 443 writers. Echoing his words we may say that Wordsworth is the most masculine of English poets. This classification of poets into "masculine" and "feminine"... play of melody, while the masculine has immobility, like the stillness of sculpture, the stability of the hill. This is the difference between .the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, between the styles of Vyasa and, Valmiki. This too is the difference between Wordsworth and Shelley. The Ramayana has always been recognised for its poetic beauty; Valmiki is our first great poet, a di-kavi. In the Mahabharata ...
... beauty out of man's outward life and action and stops there. Shakespeare rises one step farther and reveals to us a life-soul and life-forces and life-values to which Homer had no access. In Valmiki and Vyasa there is the constant presence of great Idea-Forces and Ideals supporting life and its movements which were beyond the scope of Homer and Shakespeare. And beyond the Ideals and Idea-Forces even there ...
... ic eye by which he could see all the events taking place on the battlefield; thus he could narrate the happenings to the blind king Dhritarashtra. This was a gift he had received from. Vyasa. We are also told in the Gita that the "human eye can see only the outward appearances of things or make out of them separate symbol forms, each of them significant of only a few aspects of the eternal ...
... Have you seen the latest issue of Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual? It contains an early essay of Sri Aurobindo's, entitled Vyasa: Some Characteristics and part of his Notes on the Mahabharata proposing to disengage almost in its entirety the original epic of Vyasa in about 24,000 slokas from the present mass of 100,000. 1, The phrase "no trace of human weakness to conquer" is rather ...
... feeling and hearing, it may be said, the vast oceanic stillness and the cry of the cuckoo Breaking the silence of the seas Among the farthest Hebrides or it may enter again into Vyasa's A void and dreadful forest ringing with the crickets' cry Vanam pratibhayarh sunyam jhillikdgananaditam 1 or remember its call to the soul of man Anityam asukham... powerful passages in Shakespeare, Virgil or Lucretius or the Mahabharata and Ramayana, not to speak of the Gita, the Upanishads or the 1 In Savitri Sri Aurobindo has brought in Vyasa's line thus: some lone tremendous wood Ringing for ever with the crickets' cry. (K.D.S.) Page 209 ...
... ā h-N ā meh, the R ā m ā yana and the Mah ā bh ā rata exceed it in length—three works which, like it, are products of the East. And indeed Savitri stands with the masterpieces of Valmiki and Vyasa in more than one respect. It has been conceived with something of the ancient Indian temperament which not only rejoiced in massive structures but took all human life and human thought into the spacious... The colonnade's dream grey in the quiet eve, The slow moonrise gliding in front of night, or with a powerful haunting suggestion as in that transference into English of a phrase of Vyasa's: some lone tremendous wood Ringing for ever with the crickets' cry. Glimpses of the human situation mix often with those of natural objects as in that simile cosmically sublime in ...
... satisfy these criteria in a greater or smaller measure. Sri Aurobindo chooses eleven poets for the sheer first class, but even these he distributes into three rows. In the top row he puts Valmiki, Vyasa, Homer and Shakespeare as equals. In the middle' row come Dante, Kalidasa; Aeschylus, Sophocles, Virgil and Milton. In the third stands in solitary grandeui:Goethe.1 Those in the first- row have ...
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