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Notes on the Texts
Record of Yoga: July 1914. The Record for this month was kept in the small, thick, handbound notebook already used for the Record of 10-30 June 1914. The heading "July 1914" is written on an otherwise blank page following the entry for 30 June. The Record of 1-31 July occupies the next 67 pages of the notebook.
In July 1914, Sri Aurobindo sometimes used the Sanskrit word "Vachas" to refer to what he normally called "sortilege" (i.e., printed or written words found by chance, as by opening a book at random, and then interpreted). The sources of the Sanskrit sortileges in this instalment of Record of Yoga are identified below.
TABLE OF SANSKRIT SORTILEGES
A Speech Delivered by the Maharaja of Baroda. This speech was delivered on 15 December 1902 by Maharaja Sayajirao III of Baroda at the Industrial Exhibition held in Ahmedabad in conjunction with the 1902 session of Congress. It was written by Sri Aurobindo. He identified it as his composition in 1940, when one of his disciples commented: "a speech he [the Maharaja] made at the Industrial Exhibition was marvellous." After ascertaining that it was the Ahmedabad exhibition that was meant, Sri Aurobindo drew a chorus of laughter by remarking, "That was the speech I prepared for him." (Talk of 12 December 1940. Nirodbaran, Talks iv, p. 276). This speech was apparently not the only one Sri Aurobindo wrote for the Maharaja. The Maratha historian Govind Sakharam Desai, who served as an officer in Baroda State at the same time as Sri Aurobindo, wrote in his book Sayaji Rao Gaekwar Yancha Sahavasat (Poona, 1935, p. 20): "sometimes men like Aravind Babu [Sri Aurobindo] used to pen out lectures for him [the Maharaja]." Sardesai related an anecdote concerning a speech written by Sri Aurobindo to be delivered by the Maharaja at a social conference. This may have been the speech that the Maharaja gave at the Social Conference held after the Bombay Congress in 1904. |