Archival Notes
IN PONDICHERRY—1910 AND AFTER
This article does not necessarily reflect the views of the publishers of Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research. The writer, a member of the staff of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives and Research Library, accepts full responsibility for the contents of the article, which is the result of his own research and his own interpretation. The purpose of the biographical portions of Archival Notes is to present materials dealing with the period of Sri Aurobindo's life covered by the current instalment of Documents in the Life of Sri Aurobindo. The form of presentation selected is a variety of the classic biographical narrative, one that, owing to the nature of this journal, makes rather heavy use of documentary quotations. Any historical narrative must be written from a particular point of view, and, however much the writer may follow the ground rules of objectivity, this point of view must necessarily be subjective. Evaluations, judgments and conclusions, explicit or implicit, have to be made at every step. The references given in the notes will enable the reader to turn to the sources and, after study, to form his own conclusions.
SRI AUROBINDO'S FIRST MEETING WITH PAUL RICHARD
At the same time that the S.S. Carthage was carrying Sri Aurobindo from Calcutta to Pondicherry, the P & O steamer Delhi was sailing down the Red Sea and across the Gulf of Aden. On board was Paul Richard, a French barrister and writer, who also was bound for the capital of French India (Plate 6). Richard landed in Bombay on 8 April 1910, and a few days later arrived at his destination. He had come to Pondicherry in connection with the French legislative elections, which were to be held on 24 April. But he had another reason for making the journey. In France, he had become interested in occultism and spirituality. He wished to meet an Indian spiritual master, and asked his new acquaintances in Pondicherry whether they could help him. Eventually he was introduced to Sri Aurobindo. The meeting proved to be momentous. When Richard returned to Paris, he told his future wife Mirra about the wonderful yogi he had met. Four years later she came to India and met him herself.
Before going into the circumstances of Paul Richard's first meeting with Sri Aurobindo, we will take a brief look at his life up to 1910.1 Paul Antoine Richard was born on 17 June 1874 at Marsillargues, in the department of Herault, in Languedoc (southern France). After finishing school, he enlisted in the army, and in October 1892 was sent to North Africa, where he served for four years.
1 The account that follows is based on the personal papers of Paul Richard, which are held by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram Archives. It has not been thought necessary to give references to individual documents.
Returning to his homeland in 1897, he settled in Montauban (in the South-West of France), where he took up the study of theology. He preached in Montauban for two years, and in 1900 published a book-length "metaphysical essay", Le corps du Christ apres sa resurrection. Later in 1900 he became a minister of the Reformed Church of France in Lille (in the North-East of France, near the Belgian border). Around this time he married Wilhelmine van Oostveen, a young lady of Amsterdam.
During his six-year stay in Lille, and for several years thereafter, Richard founded or joined a number of philanthropic organizations. His favourite cause was the upbringing and moral education of orphans and other young boys. His humanitarian interests drew him increasingly towards socialism. After hearing a speech of Jean Jaures, probably in 1903, Richard wrote of him as "the lay prophet of the New City". Richard's enthusiasm for secular progress did not at first conflict with his Christian beliefs. The twentieth century, he wrote in a letter of December 1903, would be one of unprecedented enlightenment, in which "science and faith would eventually meet—once science had better sounded the universe and faith better known Jesus". But a few months after writing this, Richard resigned his ministry and dedicated himself fully to humanitarian work. He joined the Ligue des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen, a pro-Dreyfus group with leftist tendencies, and in September 1904 went on a mission to French Guiana to investigate conditions in the penal settlements. Devil's Island, where Dreyfus had been imprisoned, was only one of the colony's notorious bagnes. Back in Lille in 1905, Richard took up the study of law and tried unsuccessfully to enter politics. After his defeat in the general elections of 1906, he moved to Le Vesinet, a suburb of Paris, where he continued his legal studies, supporting himself as a writer for a Paris daily.
Even after his departure from the Church, Richard kept up a lively interest in matters spiritual and occult. In January 1905 he became a Freemason, and at once began to climb the masonic hierarchy. Two years later, in January 1907, he journeyed to Tlemcen, Algeria, to study with a European master of occultism named Max Theon. A letter written on 11 March 1907 shows that Richard was favourably impressed by Theon:
I have passed forty days with the most marvellous man in the world. I feel as if I have climbed a high mountain, from which I have been able to descry the magnificent horizons that I always have dreamed of. It is certain that there always have been men who have come from on high to manifest the divine power and goodness. This confirms what I long have felt. . . . Great things are taking shape.
Back in Paris, Richard became involved with Theon's organization, the Groupe Cosmique.2 It was at this time that he met Mirra Morisset (nee Alfassa), an active member of the Groupe Cosmique, whom he later would marry.
There is no need to write here at length about the life of Mirra Alfassa. All readers of this journal are well acquainted with the early history of the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Born Blanche Rachel Mirra Alfassa on 21 February 1878, she was the daughter of Moise Maurice Alfassa, of Adrianople (the modern
2 We hope to write at some length on this organization in a future issue.
Edirne, in what is now European Turkey) and Mathilde Ismalun Alfassa, of Alexandria (Egypt). Mirra passed her entire youth in her native Paris. Her father, a wealthy banker, had her educated at home and later at a small private school. He also provided her with lessons in drawing and painting, and when she was about fifteen enrolled her in the Academie Julian, a noted art school. Over the next twelve years Mirra got to know many of the painters and sculptors who had made Paris the unquestioned capital of the world of art—Matisse and Rodin among them. Her own paintings were exhibited in the prestigious Salon de la Societe Nationale des Beaux Arts in 1903, 1904 and 1905. In 1897 Mirra married Henri Morisset, a talented painter who had been a student of Gustave Moreau. The next year she bore him a son, Andre.
From around 1904 to around 1907 Mirra played a central role in the Paris chapter of the Groupe Cosmique. In 1905 she met Max Theon in Paris, and in July of the next year she went to Tlemcen to study under him and his wife. Both M and Mme Theon recognized Mirra as an initiate of the highest order. During her youth she had had many experiences of an occult and spiritual nature. Two sojourns at Tlemcen (July-October 1906 and the same period in 1907) helped her develop into a trained and experienced adept.
Sometime during this period Mirra met Paul Richard in Paris. After her divorce from Henri Morisset in March 1908, she grew increasingly close to Richard. She "led him to the knowledge of the occult", and at the same time helped him prepare for his law examination. (The Mother once remarked: "I learned law at the same time as he did. I could have passed the examination.")
Richard was awarded his law degree from the Academic de Lille in July 1908. Shortly afterwards he became a barrister (avocat) at the Paris Court of Appeals. He was still eager to enter politics, and in February 1910 joined the Ligue de Defense et de Propagande Republicaine Radicale et Radicale-Socialiste, a party that combined a leftist ideology with a conservative financial programme (and a strong masonic influence). It was apparently this party that sent Richard to Pondicherry in March 1910 to assist in the electoral campaign of Paul Bluysen, who was contesting the Pondicherry seat in the Chamber of Deputies.
Three of the documents published in this issue state that Richard came to Pondicherry not to help Bluysen's electoral campaign, but to get elected himself. According to S. Srinivasachari, "This time the Hindu leaders . . . put up as their candidate, Paul Richard ..." (Document 7). The British Consul in Pondicherry wrote after the election: "... when Mons[ieur] Richards [sic] came out to this colony in the hope of the Depute-ship ..." (Document 5). These two authoritative statements are supported by the anecdotal account of Suresh Chakravarty (Moni): "Mr Richard came to Pondicherry in order to contest the seat for French India in the Chamber of Deputies, and entered the fray in the hope of being selected as candidate of the Hindu party" (Document 8). Taken together these three documents seem convincing, but they are contradicted with respect to this matter by three other documents. The official declaration of the results of the election (Document 6) does not list Richard as one of the candidates. This does not in itself prove that he did not attempt to be elected: local politicians may have kept his name off the ballot. But two-other authoritative documents—both of them
statements by the Mother—indicate that Richard did not go to Pondicherry to stand for election. Before the publication of the first edition of A. B. Purani's Life of Sri Aurobindo (1954), the Mother made corrections to a page of Purani's manuscript. The author had written: "Paul Richard came to Pondicherry this year [1910] for election to the French Chamber. He wanted to be elected to the Chamber from India, but was defeated."3 The Mother altered this to read: "Paul Richard came to Pondicherry this year on behalf of Mon. Paul Bluyson [sic] for the election to the French Chamber. He [i.e. Bluysen] was elected." The Mother also wrote this marginal note to Purani: "This is not correct. He came on behalf of Paul Bluyson who got elected."4 In 1961, in a recorded conversation, the Mother touched on the same subject: "He [Richard] entered politics . . . and he was sent here, to India, to assist in the election of a certain person who could not manage it himself." These two statements are clear as far as they go. It is possible, however, that Richard's situation in Pondicherry was more ambiguous than the Mother was aware. Richard may not have kept her fully informed. In 1914 Richard definitely did stand for election to the Pondicherry seat in the French Chamber—against Bluysen and two other candidates. What he did in 1910 remains somewhat unclear.
In any event, Richard's political activities were, in retrospect, less important than his meeting with Sri Aurobindo. Moni suggests that Richard came to India as much to meet a yogi as to take part in the election. Srinivasachari goes even further, having Richard tell him "that he took interest in occult matters much more than in politics which in the present instance offered him a chance to visit India". The Mother's oral account makes it still clearer that the elections were not the primary reason for Richard's coming:
And since he [Richard] was interested in occultism and spirituality, he took advantage of the occasion [of the election] to come here [to Pondicherry] and to search. He was searching for a "Master", a yogi. He arrived. The first thing he said, rather than occupying himself with politics, was: "I am looking for a yogi." Someone told him, "You're really in luck. The yogi has just arrived." Sri Aurobindo had just arrived. Someone said to Sri Aurobindo, "There is a Frenchman who wants to see you Sri Aurobindo was not altogether happy, but the coincidence seemed rather interesting, and he received him.
When the Mother wrote in Document 6 that the circumstances of the meeting between Sri Aurobindo and Richard were "very interesting and peculiar", she must have been referring at least in part to the "coincidence" of their almost simultaneous arrival in Pondicherry.
The Mother had little to say about the outward circumstances of the meeting (she was of course not present). The accounts of the British Consul (here obviously based on hearsay), of Moni, and of Srinivasachari all differ as to how the meeting came about. (The one common element in the three versions is the central role they
3 Purani's source for this statement was probably Moni's Smritikatha, which Purani is known to have used. The other documents cited above were not available to him.
4 MO MS file 31:40.
assign to Zir Naidu.)5 Since Srinivasachari was an eyewitness and participant, his version must be given priority in all but one respect. Srinivasachari says that the meeting took place a few months after Sri Aurobindo's arrival in Pondicherry (4 April 1910). This seems rather unlikely. Srinivasachari himself says that the meeting took place shortly after the election results were announced. We know from Document 6 that the elections took place on 24 April and that the results were announced on 4 May. This would induce us to conclude that the meeting took place early in May 1910. It must be noted, however, that both the Mother and Moni say that Richard spoke about his spiritual interests "the first thing" after his arrival. 1 do not believe that their statements were intended to be taken literally. Neither the Mother nor Moni was an eyewitness. More value must be given to Moni's earlier statement that the meeting took place "a short time", that is, "five or six or at the most fifteen days after" Sri Aurobindo's arrival. It must be remembered, however, that Moni's book, which is written in a highly literary style, does not pretend to be a precise historical document. Richard could not have arrived in Pondicherry before 10 or 11 April. He may conceivably have met Sri Aurobindo a few days afterwards, but it seems more likely that the meeting took place after 24 April, that is, three or four weeks after Sri Aurobindo's arrival.
The accounts of Srinivasachari and Moni agree with that of the Mother in stating that Sri Aurobindo was at first less than anxious to meet the French barrister. Srinivasachari's claim that it was his and Bharati's intervention that made Sri Aurobindo change his mind seems plausible. Srinivasachari also claims to have interpreted for Sri Aurobindo and Richard, because the latter "could not understand English very well". This too seems creditable. Sri Aurobindo knew French well, and he presumably could have spoken to Richard in that language; but it is not unlikely that Sri Aurobindo consented to have Srinivasachari interpret in order to facilitate the interview.
Srinivasachari's statement that Richard made a drawing of Sri Aurobindo before actually seeing him calls to mind other reports that Richard gave Sri Aurobindo some occult sign of recognition (provided, according to some, by the Mother) when the two first met. This matter has already been discussed in these pages.6 Our conclusion was that the Mother certainly did not give Richard any symbol to show or questions to ask Sri Aurobindo (the Mother said clearly "I never gave him any questions to be solved"), but that there still might be "some veracity" to the story (the Mother did say "Not I, probably Richard himself may have asked Sri Aurobindo questions).
It is not known how long Richard stayed in Pondicherry. Srinivasachari says that after meeting Sri Aurobindo, he left "by the next steamer". But a letter among Richard's papers addressed to him in India from France bears the date 1 August 1910. The letter, of course, may have missed Richard in Pondicherry and been redirected; but it seems more likely that Richard remained in India long enough to
5 Little is known about this man. A political pamphlet dated July 1909 gives the following: "fils du sieur Douressamynaidou, de caste cavare, proprietaire". His calling card, from the same period, reads as follows: "de Zir / Vice-President de la Societe progressiste / Membre du Comite consultatif / de jurisprudence indienne / (DEMOS-VILLA) PONDICHERRY".
6 "The Symbol of Sri Aurobindo", A & R 3 (1979): 212.
receive it. The first positive evidence of his presence in France is an entry in the diary of Alexandra David-Neel under the date 19 December 1910: "Diner chez les Richard".
According to Srinivasachari, Richard told Sri Aurobindo that when he returned to India he might be accompanied by a woman who was "spiritually more advanced than himself". In France, Richard showed the Mother a picture of Sri Aurobindo and told her that he would take her to Pondicherry when he was able. Richard was not a man of spiritual realization, and he never saw the spiritual side of Sri Aurobindo. Still, from the first (according to the Mother) he looked on Sri Aurobindo as one who knew. This impression he conveyed to Mirra. When in 1914 she came and met Sri Aurobindo herself, she recorded her own impressions in her diary. The well-known passage bears re-citation:
It matters little that there are thousands of beings plunged in the densest ignorance, he whom we saw yesterday is on earth; his presence is enough to prove that a day will come when darkness shall be transformed into light, and Thy reign shall be indeed established upon earth.
O Lord, Divine Builder of this marvel, my heart overflows with joy and gratitude when I think of it, and my hope has no bounds.
My adoration is beyond all words, my reverence is silent.
THE UTTARA YOGI
Sri Aurobindo remained in Shankara Chettiar's house for about six months— from April to October 1910. He did not publicly announce his presence in French India until November, but even before then a number of people were aware that he had come to Pondicherry. Among them was Kodiyalam V. Rangaswami Iyengar (Plates 2 & 3), head of a prominent zamindar family of Kodiyalam, a village in the Tiruchchirappalli District. The family's large holdings in land entitled them to representation in the British government's Council of State. But Rangaswami Iyengar and his brother Srinivasa Iyengar also were ardent patriots. When Rangaswami Iyengar heard that Aurobindo Ghose, the famous Swadeshi leader of Bengal, had come to south India, he sent his protege and friend V. Ramaswami to make enquiries (Document 2). Ramaswami came to Pondicherry and, with the help of Subramania Bharati, met Sri Aurobindo at Chettiar's house. Later Rangaswami Iyengar himself came and met him.
The Kodiyalam family were devoted to a siddha yogi known as Sri Vasudeva or the Nagai Swami (Plate l).7 Born in 1829 in a village in the Thanjavur District, Vasudeva Iyengar (the family title later was discarded) left home while still a young man and spent several years as a wandering sadhu. Eventually he settled down in Nagai, a village near the temple-town of Mannargudi, in the Thanjavur District.
7 Our thanks to Mr S. Ranganathan of Mannargudi for providing us with information on his great-uncle V. Rangaswami Iyengar and on Sri Vasudeva, to whom he and his family are still devoted. Plate 1 is a photograph of a painting of Sri Vasudeva that is in the possession of Mr Ranganathan. It is a conventionalized representation, not done from life, but perhaps depicting something of Sri Vasudeva's actual appearance. The markings on his body are the dvadasa pundram (twelve sacred markings or namams.)
Here he devoted himself to solitary sadhana. Attracted by his tapasya, people from the surrounding area gathered around him and adopted him as their guru. He taught them a special form of japa (mantra-repetition), which combined elements of the Gayatri mantra and the astaksara mantra popular among southern Vaishna-vites and others." The congregation of those who did this japa at Nagai came to be known collectively as the Nagai Japata. (Japata means in this context a circle of people doing japa together.) As head of the congregation, Sri Vasudeva was known as the Nagai Swami,9 and also was referred to as the Uttara Yogi (supreme yogin). As the congregation grew, the village of Nagai developed into a small fortified town. At its centre, sign of the spiritual practice that was the heart of its activities, was built a special place of meditation, the Kusumakaram.
The Kusumakaram clearly was intended by its builders to be a sort of yantra. It consists of four masonry platforms placed one above the other. The lowest and largest is a figure of sixteen sides. Next there is a circle, and at the same level as the circle and mostly covering it, a regular hexagon. Finally comes an octagon surmounted by a wood and tile roof. The last platform, on which presumably the Nagai Japata sat during group meditations, has in its cement surface a spiral design that reminds some of a conch (sankha) and others of the sacred syllable OM written in Tamil:
The Kusumakaram still stands (Plates 4 & 5), but all other evidences of the Nagai Japata community have disappeared. The mansion once used as a second residence by the Kodiyalam Iyengar family has fallen to ruins; the surrounding countryside, once lush and productive, has turned to desert; the sacred pond Mandakini, once famous for its milk-white water, is choked with green algae. A
8 OM namo narayanaya
9 In the accounts of Sri Vasudeva given in Document 14 and in A. B. Purani's Life of Sri Aurobindo, Sri Vasudeva himself is referred to as Nagai Japata. According to Mr S. Ranganathan, "Nagai Japata" was the name of the congregation at Nagai. Sri Vasudeva was called, among other things, "Nagai Swami". Nevertheless in Document 15, S. Ranganathan himself occasionally refers to Sri Vasudeva as the Nagai Japata, and we may assume that others also followed this practice.
visitor to the place is hard put to imagine that this was once the centre of a thriving spiritual community. Yet it is certain that collective meditations were once held at the Kusumakaram, and that the benefits of this sadhana were carried over into the lives of the people of Nagai.
Sri Vasudeva presided over the activities of the Nagai Japata community until his mahasamadhi, which seems to have taken place sometime around 1870. Before his passing, he informed his disciples that some thirty years later a yogi from the North (uttara yogi) would come to the South, and that his coming would be of great spiritual significance (Documents 9, 14,15: these documents all give different, but not necessarily contradictory accounts of what this significance would be). The yogi could be recognized by three utterances that he would make.
After Sri Vasudeva's passing, the Nagai Japata community gradually broke up, but its traditions were preserved in the Kodiyalam Iyengar family. Kodiyalam Vasudeva Iyengar, who was born just before,Sri Vasudeva's passing, and who became a devotee of the yogin after his marriage to the youngest sister of Sri Vasudeva's wife, told his sons Rangaswami and Srinivasa about Sri Vasudeva's prophecy concerning the uttara yogi. When Rangaswami Iyengar heard that Sri Aurobindo had come to Pondicherry, he remembered what his father had said. When he met Sri Aurobindo, he became convinced that he was the yogi whose coming had been prophesied by Sri Vasudeva. Everything seemed to fit: Sri Aurobindo had come from the North, the time of his arrival was approximately right, and he had made a declaration that consisted of three statements. In a letter written to his wife in 1905, Sri Aurobindo had spoken of "three madnesses" that differentiated him from other men.10 This letter had been used as evidence in the Alipore Trial, and had subsequently been published.
When Rangaswami Iyengar learned that Sri Aurobindo had no stable source of income, he promised to help him out. Unlike other would-be benefactors, Rangaswami made good his promise, and gave Sri Aurobindo substantial sums over a number of years. In a letter of 1912, Sri Aurobindo wrote that he had received Rs 2000 (then quite a significant amount) from "a certain gentleman" for the period October 1910 to October 1911.11 The gentleman in question almost certainly was Rangaswami Iyengar. In the same letter Sri Aurobindo wrote that there were "great difficulties" in the way of continued support from this source. Rangaswami Iyengar evidently had to take care to avoid attracting the attention of the British police. Despite the danger, he continued to give financial assistance to Sri Aurobindo even as late as 1916, as the following letter shows. It was written by Sri Aurobindo to Sri K. R. Appadurai, brother-in-law of Subramania Bharati. (Parts of the letter have been damaged; doubtful words are printed within square brackets.)12
10 Letter to Mrinalini Ghose, 30 August 1905 (English translation published in A. B. Purani, The Life of Sri Aurobindo (1978), 81-83). The "three madnesses" were (1) the belief that "the accomplishments, genius, higher education and learning and wealth that God has given me are his", (2) that "by whatever means I must have the direct vision of God", (3) that "while others look upon their country as an inert piece of matter... I look upon my country as the Mother".
11 Letter to Motilal Roy, n.d. Published in Supplement (1973), 427.
12 We would like to thank Mr R. Padmanabhan, scholar and writer of Villupuram, for permission to reproduce this letter.
13th April, 1916
Dear Mr. Appadurai,
Thanks for the money. About the Raja of Pittapur, the difficulty is that I do not know Pundit Sivnath very well, and secondly we [have] never associated politically. I am even afraid [that his] having a letter of mine might do a disservice, if, as I think, the Pundit belongs to the Moderate school of politics; it might cause him to look upon Mr. K. V. R. [K. V. Rangaswami] as an extreme politician to be avoided rather than supported. However, if you don't mind taking the risk, you can use the letter which I send.
Kindly ask Mr K. V. R. to send me money from time to time if he can for a while as just at present my sources of supply in Bengal are very much obstructed and [I am] in considerable difficulty.
Yours sincerely,
AUROBINDO GHOSE
One of the ways that Rangaswami Iyengar helped Sri Aurobindo was to publish for him the book Yogic Sadhan. The story behind the "reception" and publication of this book was told in some detail in an earlier issue of this journal.13
P.H.
13 A & R 10 (1966): 56, 106-7