.
The destiny of India will not wait on the faltering or failings of individuals.
SRI AUROBINDO
November, 1965
The Divine gives Itself to those who give themselves without reserve and in all their parts to the Divine. For them the calm, the light, the power, the bliss, the freedom, the wideness, the heights of knowledge, the seas of Ananda. .....Sri Aurobindo,
NOTES
THE material world is, as we all know, three-dimensional; it has a length, a breadth and a depth. In fact every material object is material because it has these three dimensions. That is what we knew till now. But Einstein has added another dimension to complete the picture of material reality. He says, time is the fourth dimension. For along with space, time also is to be taken into consideration for fixing or situating a physical object. Not space alone-with its three dimensions determines the physical character of an object but time also has its share. A material object exists in space; it exists also in time. It occupies a portion of space and it occupies a portion of time. Indeed time, sometimes, becomes a more important factor; for it brings about a change in the spatial dimension.
But dimension, in reality, that is to say, the configuration it gives to an object is a function of consciousness. The four-dimensional aspect of material reality is given or projected by what we call the
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physical consciousness. Material time and material space-are the two norms through which the physical consciousness deploys itself.
But physical consciousness, the consciousness that plays through the senses is only one form of it—the lowest, the most material formation. For there is a ladder of consciousness and in it we rise rung by rung to other—what are known as higher formulations.
As we rise we find that the dimensions increase in number. Our consciousness, our being becomes more and more, multiple. In the physical and material, our perception is limited to the four dimensions because of two factors—one, things are spaced out that is to say, they are separate and discrete from one another. We know the law of material space that two things cannot occupy the same space. Secondly, things or events are separated in time, that is to say, there is the law of succession. But in the higher regions, higher or subtler regions, this separation due to time and space loses much of its ex-elusive force. Things tend to coalesce, even to get identified with each other. The obstructions that time and space offer to intercommunication are minimised more and more as our consciousness or being soars up or dives down into deeper and deeper and higher and higher regions. The dimensions increase in number; that means we begin to apprehend things from many angles and sides at the same time, we have more and more a simultaneous view of the total or global reality of an object. So instead of a four-fold view of things we may have a fivefold, six fold, tenfold, hundredfold view of things depending on our status of consciousness. In the highest status,—we call it Sachchidananda, the infinite and eternal consciousness—things attain infinite dimensions, all merged in the Ultimatum's unitary consciousness.
(2)
All knowledge is within you. Information you get from outside, but the understanding of it ? It is from within. The information from outside gives you dead matter. What puts life into it, light into it is your own inner light.
All education, all culture means drawing this inner light to the front Indeed the word 'education' literally means- 'to bring out.'
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Plato also pointed to the same truth when he said that education is remembrance. You remember what is imbedded or secreted within, you bring to the light, the light of your physical mind, what you have within, what you already possess in your being and inner consciousness. Acquisition is not education. Indeed a miser is not a rich man, rich is he who. knows how to utilise his wealth, even so a possessor of much information is only a carrier of loads.
True education is growth of consciousness. It is consciousness that carries the light and the power of the light. We are born upon earth with this consciousness at the centre of our being. And a growing child is nothing but a growing consciousness. Growth of consciousness means an increasing intensity and an increasing amplitude or wideness of the light. Unfortunately, placed as we are under the circumstances of life as it is, this light of consciousness is. not allowed to grow in its natural and normal way. The external demands of life and the world put a pressure upon it which turns it' away from its straight path. Things are demanded of this light or consciousness which do not belong to its nature, which are not an expression of its nature. As though it is twisted, tortured or smothered under utilitarian necessities.
The brain should "be a flowering of this consciousness, a developing vehicle for the expression of the increasing consciousness. For that a guidance is needed so that one may always turn within and look for that consciousness, feel it growing, and with one's will and thought and act help its growth and development. A brain is not developed by the mass of information that may be pressed into it. Information's are necessary but they should be presented in such a way as to serve as fuel, helpful fuel to the mounting fire, they must not be merely piled up upon and around the fire or be as so many . wet faggots crushing it down with their weight. A true learner is one who seeks sincerely this inner consciousness which is one's own; the true teacher is one who knows how to lead the learner towards this inner light.
(3)
Human language was born out of the necessity of inter-communication among human beings living together. The necessity naturally
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related to the physical life and its demands and requirements. Man being a mental being sought intercommunication through his mind. So mind yoked to the physical demands gave the first form and pattern to human speech.
Language in the beginning must have "been an echo or a graphic expression of man's sense-bound mind. But as the mind developed, became more and more rational and intellectual, language also tended to become more and more abstract and intellectualized. Even so at its best, language could be the vehicle and embodiment of man's mental and intellectual world.
But man moves on, his mind opens on new horizons, his consciousness is not tethered to sense-experiences nor even limited to the region of thought and ideation built or grown in accordance with the mode and schema of sense-experiences.
Man began to possess, to acquire intuitions and inspirations, that is to say, movements of consciousness that lie beyond the frame given by the sense-mind. These new perceptions could naturally be expressed with difficulty through what one may call the earth-nurtured or earthbound language. The aerial luminous character of the mystic consciousness is always said to be beyond speech, beyond even mental formulation.
And yet poets, mystic poets have always sought to express themselves, to express something of their experience and illumination through the word, the human tongue. It is extremely interesting to see how a material, constructed or formed to satisfy the requirements of an ordinary physical life is being turned into an
instrument for luminous and effective communication and expression of other truths and realities in the hands of these seer-creators (kavi-kratuh).
They take the materials from ordinary normal life, familiar objects and
happenings but use them as images and allegories putting into them a new sense
and a new light. Also they give a new, unfamiliar turn to their utterance, a new
syntax, sometimes uncommon construction and novel vocabulary to the language
itself so that it has even the appearance of something very irregular and
twisted and obscure. Indeed obscurity itself in the expression, in the form of
the language has often been taken as the very sign of the higher and hidden
experience and illumination.
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The, Vedic rishis speak of the different levels of speech—the human language is only one form of speech, its lowest, in fact the crudest formulation. There are other forms of speech that are subtler and subtler as one rises in the scale of consciousness. The highest formulation of language, the supreme Word—vāk vak-is 'Om'-Nādā-sābda-brahma: That is the supreme speech-vibration, the rhythmic articulation of the Supreme Consciousness Sachchidananda the expression there is nearest to silence, almost merges into silence.
Our human language cannot expect to attain that supreme height of felicity of expression but wherever something of the vibration has been communicated to it by the magic hand of the creative poet, we have the 'mantra', the supreme, the mantric poetry.
NOLINI KANTA GUPTA
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I
THE REVIVAL OF INDIAN ART
THE MAIN DIFFERENCE
THE greatness of Indian art is the greatness of all Indian thought and achievement. It lies in the recognition of the persistent within the transient, of the domination of matter by spirit, the subordination of the insistent appearances of Prakriti to the inner reality which, in a thousand ways, the Mighty Mother veils even while she suggests. The European artist, cabined within the narrow confines of the external, is dominated in imagination by the body of things and the claims of the phenomenon. Western painting starts from the eye or the imagination; its master word is either beauty or reality, and, according as he is the slave of his eye or the playfellow of his imagination, the painter produces a photograph or a poem. But, in painting, the European imagination seldom travels beyond an imaginative interpretation or variation of what the physical eye has seen. Imitation is the key-word of creation, according to Aristotle; Shakespeare advises the artist to hold up the mirror to Nature; and the Greek scientist and the English poet reflect accurately the mind of Europe.
But the Indian artist has been taught by his philosophy and the spiritual discipline of his forefathers that his imagination is only a channel and an instrument of some source of knowledge and aspiration that is greater and higher; by meditation or by yoga he seeks within himself that ultimate centre of knowledge where there is direct and utter vision of the thing that lies hidden in the forms of man, animal, tree, river, mountain. It is this samyag jñān,
this sāksād darshan, the utter, revealing and apocalyptic vision, that he seeks,
and when he has found it, whether by patient receptivity or sudden inspiration,
his whole aim is to express it utterly and revealingly in "line and colour. Form
is only a means of expressing the spirit, and the one thought of the artist
should be how best to render the spiritual
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vision. He is not bound by the forms that compose the world of gross matter, though he takes them as a starting point for his formal expression of the vision within him; if by modifying them or departing from them" he can reveal that vision more completely, his freedom and his duty as an artist emancipate him from the obligation of the mere recorder and copyist. The ancient Asiatic artists were not incapable of reproducing outward Nature with as perfect and vigorous an accuracy as the Europeans; but it was their ordinary method deliberately to suppress all that might hamper the expression of their spiritual vision.
Reality for its own sake, one of the most dominant notes of Art in Europe, _ Indian artistic theory would not have recognised; for we have always regarded the reality of the Europeans as an appearance; to us the true reality is that which is hidden; otherwise, there would be no need of the prophet, the philosopher, the poet and the artist. It is they who see with the sūksma drsti,
the inner vision, arid not like the ordinary man with the eye only. Beauty for
beauty's sake, the other great note of European Art is recognised by us, but not
in the higher work of the artist. Just as in the first ideal, the tyranny of the
eye is acknowledged, so in the second the tyranny of the aesthetic imagination.
The Indian seeks freedom, and the condition of
freedom is the search of ultimate Truth. But in this search the imagination is
an unsafe and capricious guide; it misinterprets as often as it interprets. 'The
claim of the eye to separate satisfaction can only be answered by the response
of decorative beauty; the claim of the imagination to separate satisfaction can
only receive the response of , fancy playing with scene and legend, form and
colour, idea and dream, for pure aesthetic delight; but in the interpretation of
things the eye and the imagination can assert no right to command, they are only
subordinate instruments and must keep their place. Whenever, therefore, the
Indian artist puts away from him his high spiritual aim, it was to seek
decorative beauty informed by the play of the imagination. Here he held
decorative beauty to be his paramount aim and declined to be bound by the seen
and the familiar. If by other lines than the natural, by subtler or richer
methods than those of outward Nature, our old masters could gain in decorative
suggestion and beauty, they held themselves free to follow their inspiration.
Here,
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too, they often deliberately changed and suppressed in order to get their desired effect. If they had been asked to deny themselves this artistic gain for the sake of satisfying the memory in the physical eye, they would have held the objector to be the bond slave of an unmeaning superstition.
We of today have been overpowered by the European tradition as interpreted by the English, the least artistic of civilised nations. We have therefore come to make on a picture the same demand as on a photograph,—the reproduction of the thing as the eye sees it, not even as the retrospective mind or the imagination sees it, exact resemblance to the beings of objects we know, or, if anything more, then a refinement on Nature in the direction of greater picturesque-ness and prettiness and the satisfaction of the lower and more external sense- of beauty. The conception that Art exists not to copy, but for the sake of a deeper truth and vision, and we must seek in it not the object but God in the object, not things but soul of things, seems to have. vanished for a while from the Indian consciousness. ;
Another obstacle to the appreciation of great art, to which even those Indians who are not dominated by European ideas are liable, is the exaggerated respect for the symbols and traditions which our art or literature has used at a certain stage of development. I am accustomed for instance to a particular way of representing Shiva or Kali and I refuse to have any other. But the artist has nothing to do with my prejudices. He has to represent the essential truth of Shiva or Kali, that which makes their Shiva hood or Kali hood,
and he is under no obligation to copy the vision of others. If he has seen
another vision of Shiva or Kali, it is that vision to which he must be faithful.
The curious discussion which arose recently as to the pro pretty or otherwise of representing the Gods without beard or moustache, is an instance of this literalism which is a survival of the enslavement to form and rule characteristic of the eighteenth century. The literalist cannot see that it is not the moustache or beard or the symbol which makes the godhead, but the divine greatness, immortal strength, beauty, youth, purity or peace within. It is that godhead which the artist must draw and paint, and in the forms he chooses he is bound only by the vision in dhyana. Whether his interpretation will gain an abiding place in the thought and imagination of the race, depends
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on its power to awake the deeper vision in the race. All that we can demand is that it shall be a real God, a real Shiva, a real Kali and not a freak of his imagination or an outcome of some passing samskāra of his education or artistic upbringing. He must go to the fountainhead of knowledge within himself or his claim to freedom does not stand. It has already been said that the condition of freedom is the search for truth, and the artist must not allow his imagination to take the place of-the higher quality.
Indian Art demands of the artist the power of communion with the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision within, of the lover of art it demands the power to see the spirit in things, the openness of mind to follow a developing tradition, and the sattwic passivity, discharged of prejudgments, which opens luminously to the secret intention of the picture and is patient to wait until it attains a perfect and profound divination.
TWO PICTURES
The Modern Review and Prabasi are doing monthly a service to "the
country, the importance of which cannot be exaggerated. The former review is at
present the best conducted and the most full of valuable matter of any in India.
But good as are the articles which fill the magazine from month to month, the
whole sum of them is outweighed in value by the single page which gives us the
reproduction of some work of art by a contemporary Indian painter. To the lover
of beauty and the lover of his country everyone of these "delicately executed
blocks is an event of importance in his life within. The Reviews by bringing
these masterpieces to the thousands who have no opportunity of seeing the
originals are restoring the sense of beauty and artistic emotion inborn in our
race but almost blotted out by the long reign in our lives of the influence of
Anglo-Saxon vulgarity and crude tasteless commercialism. The pictures belong
usually to the new school of Bengali art, the only living and original school.
now developing among us and the last issues have each contained a picture
especially important not only by the intrinsic excellence of the work but by the
perfect emergence of that soul of India which we attempted
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to characterise in an article in our second issue.
The picture in the July number is by Mahomed Hakim Khan, a student of the Government School of Art, Calcutta, and represents Nadir Shah ordering a general
Massac are. It is not one of those pictures salient and imposing which leap at once at the eye and hold it. A first glance only shows three figures' almost conventionally Indian in poses which also seem conventional. But as one looks again and again the soul of the picture begins suddenly to emerge, and one realises with a start of surprise that one is in the presence of a work of genius. The reason for this lies in the extraordinary restraint and simplicity which conceals the artist's strength and sub
utility. The whole spirit and conception is Indian and it would be difficult to detect in the composition a single trace of foreign influence. The grace and perfection of the design and the distinctness and vigour of form which support it are not European; it is the Saracenic sweetness and grace, the old Vedantic massiveness and power transformed by some new nameless element of harmony into something original and yet Indian. The careful and minute detail in the minutiae of the dresses, of the armour of the warrior seated on the right, of the flickering lines of the pillar on the left are inherited from an intellectual ancestry whose daily vision was accustomed to the rich decoration of Agra and
Faithful Sikri or to the fullness and crowded detail which informed the massive work of the old Vedantic artists and builders, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist. Another peculiarity is the fixity and stillness which, in spite of the Titanic life and promise of motion in the figure of Nadir, pervade the picture. A certain stiffness of design marks much of the old Hindu art, a stiffness courted by the artists perhaps in order that no insistence of material life in the figures might distract attention from the expression of the spirit within which was their main object. By some inspiration of genius the artist has transformed this conventional stiffness into a hint of rigidity which almost suggests the lines of stone. This stillness adds immensely to the effect of the picture. The petrified inaction of the three human beings contrasted with the expression of the faces and the formidable suggestion in the pose of their
swerved figures affects us like the silence of murder crouching for his leap.
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The central figure of Nadir Shah dominates his surroundings. It is from this' centre that the suggestion of something terrible coming out^of the silent group has started. The strong proud and regal figure is extraordinarily impressive, but it is the face and the arm that give the individuality. That bare arm and hand grasping the rigid upright scimitar are inhuman in their savage force and brutality; it is the hand, the finger, one might almost say the talons of the human wild beast. This arm and hand have action, murder, empire in them; the whole history of Nadir is there expressed. The grip and gesture have already commenced the coming massacre and the whole body behind consents. The face corresponds in the hard firmness and strength of the nose, the brute cruelty of the mouth almost lost in the moustache and beard. But the eyes are the master-touch in this figure. They overcome us with surprise when we look at them, for these are not the eyes of the assassin, even the-assassin upon the throne. The soul that looks out of these eyes is calm, aloof and thoughtful, yet terrible. Whatever order of massacre has issued from these lips, did not go forth, from an ordinary energetic man of action moved by self-interest, rage or blood-thirst. The eyes are the eyes of a Yogin but a terrible Yogin; such might be the look of some adept of the left-hand ways, some mighty Kapalik lifted above pity and shrinking as above violence and wrath. Those eyes in that face, over that body, arm, hand seem to be those of one whose spirit is not affected by the actions of the body, whose natural part and organs are full of the destroying energy of Kali while the soul, the witness within, looks on at the sanguinary drama tranquil, darkly approving but hardly interested. And then it dawns on one that this is not so much the Nadir of history unconsciously perhaps the artist has given a quiet but effective delineation of the Scourge of God, the man who is rather a force than a human being, the Asura with a mission who has come to do God's work of destruction and help on the evolution by carnage and ruin. The soul within is not that of a human being. Some powerful Yogin of a Lemurian race has incarnated in this body, one born when the simian might and strength of the vānara
had evolved into the perfection of the human form- and brain with the animal
still unilluminated, who having by tapasya and knowledge separated his soul from
his
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nature has elected this reward that after long beatitude, prāpya punyakrtām lokān usitvā sāsvatīh samāh, he should reincarnate as a force of nature informed by a human soul and work out in a single life the savage strength of the outward self, taking upon himself the foreordained burden of empire and massacre.
From Nadir the coming carnage has passed into the seated warrior and looks out from his eyes at the receiver of the order. The gaze is contemplative but not inward like Nadir's, and it is human and indifferent envisaging massacre as part of the activities of the soldier with a matter-of-fact approval. The figure is almost a piece of sculpture, so perfect is the rigidity of arrested and expectant action. The straight strong sword over the shoulder has the same rigid preparedness. There is a certain defect in the unnatural pose and obese curve of the hand which is not justified by any similar detail or motive in the rest of the figure. We notice a similar motiveless strain in the position of Nadir's left arm, though here something is perhaps added to the force of the attitude. standing figure receives the sanguinary command. The folded hands and the scimitar suspended in front are full of the spirit of ready obedience and there is an expression of pleasure, almost amusement which makes even this commonplace face terrible, for the decree dooming thousands is taken as lightly as if it were order for nautch or banquet. The three mighty swords by a masterly effect of balanced design, fill with death and menace the terrace on which the the men are seated. Behind these formidable figures is a part of the palace gracious with the simple and magical lines of Indo-Saracenic architecture and in the distance on the right from behind a mass of heavy impenetrable green a slender tapering tower rises into the peaceful quiet of Delhi.
On another page of the same review we have a picture by one of the greatest Masters of European Art, Raphael's vision of the Knight. The picture is full of that which Greece and Italy perfected as the aim of Art, beauty and such soul-expression as heightens physical beauty. It is a beauty that is expressed in the robust body and the feminine face of the armed youth both full of an exquisite
languor of sleep, in the sweet face, the voluptuous figure, the gracious pose of the temptress offering her delicate allurement of flowers,
Page-16
in the other's grave strong and benign countenance, the vigorous physique and open gesture of promise and aspiration extending a book and a fine slender sword, in the delicacy of the landscape behind and the tree under which the dreamer lies. There is a suggestion but it is the suggestion of more and more beauty, there is the harmony and relation of loveliness of landscape as a background to the loveliness- of the nobly-grouped figures. There is an attempt to express spiritual meanings but it is by outward symbols only and not by making the outward expression a vehicle for something that comes from within and overpowers impalpably. This is allegory, the other is the drawing and painting of the very self of things. Only in tha delicate spiritual face of the Knight is there some approach to the Eastern spirit. This is one kind of art and a great art, but is the other less ? Beauty for beauty's sake can never be the spirit of art in India, beauty we must seek and always beauty, but never lose sight of the end which India holds more important, the realisation of the Self in things. Europeans create out of the imagination. India has always sought to go deeper within and create out of the Power behind imagination, by passivity and plenary inspiration in Yoga, from Samadhi.
INDIAN ART AND AN OLD CLASSIC
We have before us a new edition of Krittibas's Ramayan, edited and published by that indefatigable literary and patriotic worker Sj. Ramananda Chatterji. Ramananda Babu is well known to the Bengali public as a clear minded, sober and fearless political speaker and writer; as editor of the Modern
Review and the Prabasi he has raised the status and quality of Indian periodical literature to an extraordinary extent, and has recently been doing a yet more valuable and lasting service to his country by introducing the masterpieces of the new school of Art to his readers. His present venture is not in itself an ambitious one, as it purports only to provide a well-printed and beautifully illustrated edition of Krittibas for family reading. With this object the editor has taken the Batatala prints of the Ramayan as his text and reproduced them with the necessary corrections and the omission of a few passages which offend modern idea of decorum. Besides, the book is liberally illustrated with reproductions of recent pictures by artists of Bombay and-Calcutta on the subjects chosen from the Ramayan.
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The place of Krittibas in our literature is well established. He is one of the most considerable of our old classics and one of-the writers who most helped to create the Bengali language as a literary instrument. The sweetness, simplicity, lucidity, melody of the old language is present in every line that Krittibas wrote, but, in this recension at least, we miss the racy vigour and nervous vernacular force which was a gift of the early writers. Our impression is that the modern editions do not faithfully reproduce the old classic and that copyists of more learning and puristic taste than critical imagination or poetical sympathy have polished away much that was best in the Bengali Ramayan. The old copies, we believe, reveal a style much more irregular in diction and metre, but more full of humanity, strength and the rough and natural touch of the soil. In no case can our Ramayan compare with the great epic of Tulsidas, that mine of poetry, strong and beautiful thought and description and deep spiritual force and sweetness. But it must have been greater in its original form than its modern dress.
The great value of the edition lies however in the illustrations. All the pictures are not excellent; indeed we must say quite frankly that some of them are an offence to the artistic perceptions and an affliction to the eye and the soul. Others are masterpieces of the first rank. But in this collection of pictures, most of them now well-known, we have a sort of handy record of the progress of Art in India in recent times. Turning over the pages we are struck first by the numerous reproductions of Ravivarma's pictures which were only recently so prominent in Indian houses and, even now, are painfully common, and we recall with wonder the time when we could gaze upon these crude failures without an immediate revolt of all that was artistic within us. Could anything be more gross, earthy, un-Indian and addressed purely to the eye than his "Descent of Ganges", or more vulgar and unbeautiful than the figure of Aja in the "Death of
Indu mati", or more soulless and commonplace than the Ahalya, a picture on a level with the ruck of the most ordinary European paintings for the market by obscure hands ? Some of these efforts are absolutely laughable in the crudeness of
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their conception and the inefficiency of their execution; take for instance the fight between Ravan and Jatayu. Raja Rukmangad's Ekadashi is one of the few successes, but spirited as the work undoubtedly is, it is so wholly an imitation of European workmanship that it ^establishes no claim to real artistic faculty. All that can be said for this painter is that he turned the Indian mind to our own mythology and history for the subject of art, and, that he manifests a certain struggling towards outward beauty and charm which is occasionally successful in his women and children. But he had neither the power to develop original conceptions, nor the skill to reproduce finely that which he tried to learn from Europe. He represents in Art that dark period when, in subjection to foreign teaching and ideals, we did everything badly because we did everything slavishly. It is fortunate that the representative of this, period was a man without genius; otherwise he might have done infinitely more permanent harm to our taste than he has done.
The art of Sj M. V. Durandhar shows a great advance. The basis is European but we see something Indian and characteristic struggling to express itself in this foreign mould. Unlike Ravivarma Sj. Durandhar has always a worthy and often poetic conception, even when he fails to express it in line and colour. In the stillness and thoughtfulness of figures in the second illustration of the book there is a hint of the divine presence which is suggested, and Indian richness, massiveness and dignity support this great suggestion. There is augustness and beauty in the picture of Rama and Sita about to enter Guhyaka's boat. Others of his pictures are less successful. Another intermediate worker in the field who is very largely represented, is Sj. Upendra Kishor Ray. This artist Jias an essentially imitative genius whose proper field lies in reproduction. There are attempts here to succeed in the European style and others which seek to capture the secret of the new school, especially where it is original, strange and remote in its greatness; but these are secrets of original genius which do not yield themselves to imitation and the attempt, though it reproduces some of the mannerisms of the school, often ends merely in. grotesqueness of line and conception.
We have not left ourselves the space to do justice to the really great art represented in the book, the wonderful suggestions of landscape
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in Sj Abanindranath Tagore's "Slaying of the Enchanted Deer", the decorative beauty of the "Last Days of Dasarath", and the epic grandeur and grace and strange romantic mystery of "Maha-dev receiving the Descent of the Ganges", a We would only suggest to the readers whose artistic perceptions are awakened but in need of training, to use the comparative method for which Sj. Ramananda Chatterji has supplied plentiful materials in this book; for instance, the three illustrations of the Kaikayi and Manthara incident which are given one after the other,—Sj. Nandalal Bose's original and suggestive though not entirely successful picture, Sj Durandhar's vigorous and character-revealing but too imitatively European work, and Sj. U. Ray's attempt to master the new style with its striking evidence of a great reproductive faculty but small success where originality is the aim. Finally, let him look at the few examples of old art- in the book, then at the work of the new school, especially the two pictures against page 22 and last at Raja Ravivarma's failures. He will realise the strange hiatus in the history of Indian Art brought by the enslavement of our minds to the West and recognise that the artists of the new school are merely recovering our ancestral heritage with a new development of spiritual depth, power and originality, which is prophetic of the future.
SUPRABHAT : A REVIEW
The paper Suprabhat, a Bengali monthly, edited by Kumari Kumud ni Mitra,
daughter of Sj. Krishna Kumar Mitra, enters this month on its third year. The
first issue of the new year is before us. We notice a great advance in the
interest and variety of the .articles, the caliber of the writers and the
quality of the writing. From the literary point of view the chief ornament of
the number is the brief poem Duhkhabhisar, by Sj. Rabindranath Tagore. It is one
of those poems in which the peculiar inimitable quality of our greatest lyric
poet comes out with supreme force, beauty, sweetness. Rabindrer Babu has a'
legion of imitators and many have been very successful in catching up his less
valuable mannerisms of style and verse, as is the manner of imitators all the
world over. But the poignant sweetness, passion and spiritual depth and mystery
of a poem like this, the haunting cadences subtle with subtlety which is not of
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technique "but of the soul, and the honeyladen felicity of the expression, these are the essential Rabindranath and cannot be imitated, because they are the things of the spirit and one must have the same sweetness and depth of soul before one can hope to catch any of these desirable qualities. We emphasise this inimitableness because the legion of imitators we mention are doing harm to the progress of our poetry as well as to the reputation of their model and we would suggest to them to study this poem and realise the folly of their .persistent attempt. One of the most remarkable peculiarities of Rabindrer Babu's genius is the happiness and originality with which he has absorbed the whole spirit of Vaishnava poetry and turned it into something essentially the same and yet new and modern. He has given the old sweet spirit of emotional and passionate religion an expression of more delicate and complex richness voice full of subtler and more penetratingly spiritual shades of feeling than the deep7 hearted but simple early age of Bengal could know. The old Vaish-nava bhāva there is no English word for it,-was easily seizable, broad and strong. The bhāua of these poems is not translatable in any other language than that the poet has used,-a striking proof is the unsatisfactory attempt of the poet himself, recorded in another article in this issue, to explain in prose his own poem, Sonar Tari. But while the intellect tries in vain to find other intellectual symbols for the poet's meaning, the poetry seizes on the heart and convinces the imagination. These poems are the essence of poetry and refuse to be rendered in any prose equivalent. Poetry is created not from the intellect or the outer imagination but comes from deeper source within to which men have no means of access except when the divine part within seizes on the brain and makes it a passive instrument for utterance the full meaning of which the brain is unable-at the moment' to grasp. This is the divine mania and enthusiasm, which the subtle spiritual discernment of Plato discovered to be the real meaning of what we call inspiration. And of this unattainable force the best lyrics of Rabindranath are full to overflowing.
The article Shantiniketan Rabindranath by Sj. Jatindranath Banerji is another
feature of great interest. The writer has a good descriptive gift and the
passages which describe the Shantiniketan are admirable; but the chief interest
naturally centres in the conversation
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with the poet which is recorded with great fullness. The private talk of a rich and gifted nature with power of conversational expression is always suggestive and we await with interest the future issue of this article. We hope Jitendra Babu will give us a fuller view of the remarkable educational experiment which this original mind is developing in the quiet shades of Bolpur. The brief hints -given of the moral training and the method of education followed point to a system far in advance of the National Council of Education which is still tyrannised over by tradition and method not only European, but un progressively European. A brief instalment of Sri Aurobindo Ghose's Karakahini is also given which describes the identification parades of the Bomb Case, gives some glimpses of the approver Noren Gossain and deals with the personal character of some of the jail officials. Nanak Charit by Krishna Kumar Mitra, the first instalment of which is given in this issue, commands interest both by .its subject and the name of its writer. The two chapters given are full pf interesting details of Nanak's birth and childhood and promise an attractive biography of one of the greatest names in religious history. An article of minor importance is the continuation of Sj. Jadunath Chakravarti's Ekannabarti Paribar o Strisiksha, which is of considerable merit. The author has seized on two of the great advantages of the joint family system, its ideal of a wider brotherhood . and unity and its ample training in morale and capacity. Dainik Bal and the poem Bodhan seem to us to be failures, but there is no other feature of this number which is without merit or interest.
We have left to the last Dr. P. C. Ray's long article on "the Bengali Brain and its misuse". It is a long indictment of past and present Bengal, covering sixteen pages of the magazine. Dr. P. C. Ray is a name which is already a pride to the nation to which he belongs and his deep scientific knowledge, original research and creativeness are one of the most conspicuous instances of that strong, acute and capable Bengali intellect which he admits to be inferior to none. Any article from his pen must be of great interest and cannot be without value. But it is one of the unfortunate results of the denationalising influence of our past education that a mind like Dr. Ray's should be without intellectual sympathy for the old culture whose Inherited tendencies his own character, life and achievements illustrate in so distinguished
Page-22
a manner. If it had not been for the past which Dr. P. C. Ray condemns, such noble -types as the last fifty years of Bengal teems with, would not have been possible. As to the necessity of far reaching changes in the future we do not greatly differ with the writer. The immediate
Past
has been a period of contradiction and the reservation of
strength, the future will be a period of expansion and the liberation and
expenditure of strength. The structure of the new age must necessarily differ
from that of the old. But the spirit of the article is narrow
.and intolerant. It is couched in that general spirit of self-depreciation and
indiscriminate fault-finding which was a characteristic of our people when
national hope and energy were at nadir. There are all the stock denunciations
with which we were familiar before the recent resurgence. Such writings void of
the note of hope, encouragement and energy, will not help a nation to rise but
rather depress it and push it back into the past. Moreover Dr. Retraces the same
mistake which European writers made when they condemned the Middle ges wholesale
because they were a period of contraction and not of expansion. That mistake has
now been recognised in Europe and justice has been done to that which was
praiseworthy as well as to that which was bad in. the "Dark Ages". We in India
are recovering from a similar error and if there are those who go to the
opposite extreme and see nothing good outside the mediaeval Hindu culture and
forms, the Slime thing happened in Europe and for the same reason, as a reaction
from that very intolerance and sweeping denudation which are the spirit of Dr.
Ray's article. It cannot last any more than it lasted in Europe. Some of the
strictures we hold to be . too much at second hand; especially in his criticisms
of religion the writer seems to us to be wandering outside the province in which
he can speak with authority. After all one must enter into the spirit, of an age
and civilisation before one can profitably criticise it, otherwise we miss the
meaning of history and falsify its values. Nevertheless the article is ably
written and should be studied as a complete expression of the Europeanised
standpoint in looking at Indian problems. As to the present, Dr. Ray lays too
much stress on the survivals of the end of the nineteenth century when the
national consciousness touched bottom and" ignores the youthful strength and
energy. which is preparing -the twentieth.
Page-23
II
EUROPE: NATIONALISM, IMPERIALISM AND
THE LIBERAL TRADITION
NOTES
A GREAT OPPORTUNITY
11 ''HE end of the great struggle between the last representative - of European autocracy and the insurgent Demos, is not yet. At present the Czar holds the winning cards. The mismanagement of the" Revolution by a people unaccustomed to political action has put advantages into his hands to which he has no right. But it is significant that the revolution still smolders. As Carlyle wrote of the French Revolution, it is unquenchable and cannot be stamped down, for the fire-spouts that burst out are not slight surface conflagration but the flame's of the pit of Tophet. Murder and hatred rising from below to strike at murder and tyranny striking from above, that is the Russian Revolution. Had another man than a Romanoff, the race obstinate and un teachable, sat on the throne at St. Petersburg, the victory of the autocracy after such imminent and deadly peril would have been surely used to prevent, by healing measures and perfectly spontaneous concessions, a repetition of the sanguinary struggle. It is probably the last opportunity Fate will " concede to the Czar Nicholas and it is a great opportunity. But he will not take it and in the shadow forces are again gathering which are likely in the end to destroy him. The Czarina is sleepless in deadly anxiety for the safety of her child the Czar leaving her behind, enters Italy and is guarded by an army. In Russia the Ministry balances itself on the top of a frail edifice crowning the volcano that still sputters below. One wonders why they should think it worth their while to bolster up sanguinary injustice for a season at so huge a cost.
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EUROPE; NATIONALISM, IMPERIALISM AND THE LIBERAL TRADITION
THE DEATH OF SENOR FERRER
The extraordinary commotion in Europe over the execution of the enthusiast and idealist Ferrer,—a judicial murder committed by Court Martial,—has revealed a force in Europe with which statesmen and Governments will have very soon to deal on pain of extinction. We have no sympathy with the philosophy or practice of Anarchism, holding as we do, that the Anarchist philosophy is some millenniums ahead of the present possible evolution of humanity and the Anarchist practice some millenniums behind. But Senor Francisco Ferrer was no mere anarchist. He was a man of high enthusiasms and ideas, engaged, at great sacrifice and, as it turns out, risk to himself, in freeing the Spanish mind by education from the fetters of that bigoted Clericalism which has been the ruin of Spain. For a man of this kind—a man of eminent culture and unstained-character, the friend and fellow worker of distinguished men all over the occidental world,—to be shot without any reputable evidence by a military tribunal regardless of universal protest, was an outrage on civilisation and an insult to European culture. Such an incident, however, might have happened formerly with no result but a few indignant articles in the Continental Liberal Press. This time it has awakened a demonstration all over the Western world which is, we think, un precedence in history. The solidarity and deep feeling in that demonstration means that the huge inert Leviathan, on whose patient back the aristocratic and middle class of Europe have built the structure of their polity and society, is about to move. When he really uplifts his giant bulk, what will become of the structure ? Will it not tumble into pieces off his back and be swallowed up in the waters of a worldwide revolution ?
LORD HONEST JOHN
On the converse side a passage from Mr. Algernon Cecil's "Six Oxford Thinkers" is instructive. He dwells on the self-contradictory and ironic close of John Morley's life. "He the philosophic Liberal, the ardent advocate of Home Rule, the persistent foe of war and coercion, is closing his fine record of public service with
Page-25
a coronet on his head as the ruler of India, of the child of Clive and Warren Hastings, of the creature of strife and fraud; as one might say, a benevolent despot in an absolute constitution, imposed and administered by an alien race." We in India are sure of the despotism but have some doubts about the benevolence. Nor can we accept the phrase, absolute constitution, as anything" but an oxymoron, a "witty folly", a happy and ironical contradiction in terms. But for the rest the implied criticism is just.
THE FAILURE OF EUROPE
Mr. Cecil sees in this ending of Honest John as Lord Morley the failure of Liberalism; and it must be remembered that the failure of Liberalism means the abandonment of the gospel of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity as a thing unlivable, and that again means the moral bankruptcy of Europe. "Liberalism in any intelligible sense cannot last another generation. In a score of years the strange adventure on which the nations of Europe embarked in 1789 will be concluded, and we shall revert, doubtless with many and formidable changes, to an earlier type. The principles of unchecked individual liberty and unrestricted competition have, to use the ancient phrase, been tried in the balance and found wanting. The golden dreams which so lately cheated the anxious eyes of men have tarnished with time. Their splendour has proved illusive and they have gone the way of other philosophies down a road upon which there is no returning. The old aristocrats have been swept away and some malicious spirit has given us ones bathed in the most material sort of golden splendour. And Misery, Vice and Discontent stalk among the drudges of society much as they did before." Mr. Cecil like most Europeans sees that European liberalism has failed but like most Europeans utterly misses the real reason of the failure. The principles of 1789 were not false, but they were falsely stated and selfishly executed. Europe had not the spiritual strength, nor the moral force to carry them out. She was too selfish, too short sighted, too materialistic and ignorant. She deserved to fail and could not but fail. It is left for Asia and especially for India to reconstruct the world.
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EUROPE: NATIONALISM, .IMPERIALISM AND THE LIBERAL TRADITION
COOK VERSUS PEARY
It is with somewhat sardonic sense of humour that we in India, whom that' eminently truthful diplomat, Lord Curzon, once had the boldness to# lecture on our mendacity and the superior truth of the Occidental, have watched the vulgar squabble between Dr. Cook and Commanded Peary about the discovery of the North Pole. Long ago, most of the romance and mystery had gone out of the search for the Pole. The quest, though still extremely difficult and even perilous to an incautious adventurer, had no longer the charm of those gigantic dangers which met and slew the old explorers. It was known besides that little was likely to reward the man who succeeded, and there was small chance of anything but ice and cold being discovered at the North Pole. What little of the interesting and poetic was left in the idea, has now gone out of it-for ever, and only a sense of nausea is left behind, as the controversy develops and leaves one with a feeling that it would have been better if the goal of so many heroic sacrifices had been left undiscovered for all time, rather than that it should have been discovered in this way. The spectacle of two distinguished explorers, one, we suppose from his title, an American naval officer and the other a savant not unknown to fame, hurling at each other such epithets as liar and faker, accusing each other of vile and
dishonorable conduct, advancing evidence that when examined melts into thin air, citing witnesses who, when questioned, give them the lie, while all Europe and America join and take sides in the disgusting wrangle, is one that ought to give pause to the blindest admirer of Western civilisation and believer in Western superiority. We certainly will not imitate the general run of European writers who, arguing smugly from temporary, local or individual circumstances, talk in the style of self-satisfied arrogance, of Oriental barbarity, Oriental treachery and mendacity, Oriental unscrupulousness; we will not say that the continents of Europe and America are peopled by nations of highly civilised liars, imposters and fakers of evidence without any sense of truth, honour or dignity although we have as good cause as any Western critic of Asia; but at any rate the legend of European superiority and the inferior morals of the Asiatic has, by this time, been so
Page-27
badly damaged that we think even the Englishman might think twice before it bases its opposition to national aspirations' on the pretensions of the Pharisee. It is evident that we are as good as the Europeans; we think we are in most respects better, we certainly could not be worse.
BRITISH FEARS
The genesis of the Imperial Press Conference is to be found in that feeling of insecurity which is driving England to seek allies on the Continent and gather round her the children of her loins beyond the seas. During the better part of the nineteenth century after her triumph over Napoleon and her amazing expansion in, India, she felt too strong to need extraneous assistance. Mistress of the seas, enormously wealthy, monopolist almost of the world's commerce, -she followed on the Continent a policy of splendid isolation broken only by the ill-starred alliance with the third Napoleon. She fought for her. own hand everywhere and felt strong enough to conquer. Her Colonies she regarded only as a nuisance. They were a moral asset, probably but hardly a material. They assisted her in no way, they excluded her commerce by tariffs, they took her protection without payment and yet exacted internal independence with an inordinate and querulous jealousy of her interference and unwillingness to allow even the slightest iota of British control to mar the perfection of her autonomy. But a change has come over the spirit of her dream. Mighty powers have arisen in the world, young, ardent, ambitious, rapidly expanding, magnificently equipped moving with the sureness and swiftness of material forces towards empire and aggrandisement. Their armies are gigantic forces against which England's would be as helpless as a boy in the hands of a Titan. Their wealth increases. They are beating England out of the chosen field of her commercial expansion, and it is only by bringing out all the reserves of her old energy that she can just keep a first place; worst of all, their navies grow and if they cannot keep pace with her in numbers, equal it in efficiency. On the other hand India, her passive source of wealth, strength and prestige is struggling in her turn. to exclude British commerce and assert autonomy without British control. England is uneasy; she cannot slumber at night for
Page-28
thinking - of her precarious future. To her excited imagination German airships fill the skies and myriad tramp of the Teuton is heard already marching on London, while huge conspiracies spring up like mushrooms in India and evade the eager grasp of the Police with a diabolical skill which leaves behind only arrests and persecution of innocent men, hard judicial comments, a discredited C. I. D. and a desperate weeping Englishman. One can no longer recognise the strong, stolid, practical, invincible Britishers in the emotional, hysterical, excitable, panic-stricken race dancing to the tune of its newly liberated Imagination.
THE JOURNALISTIC WAR COUNCIL
It is not surprising under such circumstances that leading Englishmen should call a Press Conference and turn it into" a War Council full of such themes as military conscription and naval expansion and always looking out of the corner of its eye at Imperial Federation. The aid and backing of the Colonies has now become a necessity to British imagination. England seeks an American alliance and hungers after the unity of the Anglo-Saxon world, but there are hostile elements in America which militate against that dream. Parting with her old friends of the triple Alliance she embraces France, her ancient and traditional enemy; she courts her bug-bear Russia and many of her publicists are ready to excuse and condone the most savage merciless and inhuman system of tyranny in the world provided she gets a friend in need. But these are uncertain and transitory supports, while the Colonies are bound by ties of blood and interest. The objective of the Press Conference is there- . fore the Colonies, the union of the English throughout the Empire. And although Srijut Surendra Nath has been led to the gathering in gilded fetters and is "the most picturesque figure" in the Conference, that is all he is, a picture, even if a speaking picture,—nothing else. For the rest it is Anglo-India that has been called to the great journalistic War Council, not India. The real India has no place there. We wish Srijut Surendra Nath could have realised it. It might have prevented him from indulging in rhetorical hyperboles about- "the wise and conciliatory policy of Lord Morley"—forgetful of the
Page-29
nine deportees, forgetful of the many good and true men in jail for Swadeshi, forgetful of Midnapur and all it typifies.
FORGOTTEN EVENTUALITIES
It is strange that British statesmanship should be blind to certain possibilities which will follow from their new" Colonial policy. Among the first results of the new idea has been the federation of Australia and the federation of South Africa. The former event is not of such importance to the world as the latter. The referendum in Natal is indeed an event of the first significance, but what it portends is the rise of a new and vigorous nation, perhaps a new empire in South Africa,—certainly not the consolidation of the British Empire. Great organisms like these tend inevitably to separate existence. The one thing that stands in the way is the present inability of these organisms to defend their separate existence. Australia lies under the outstretched sword of Japan to say nothing of the subtler, less apparent but more ominous menace of Germany. Canada is kept to England by the continuity of a powerful, well-organised and expanding foreign State. South Africa on the other hand is occupied by a strong military race with a stubborn love of independence in its very blood. In the last war it has become aware of its supreme military capacity but also of its inability to hold its freedom without a navy. Yet the main cry of England now is that the Colonies should organise military and naval defence in order to lighten the burden of England and help her in her wars ! They are not satisfied with the contribution of a Dreadnought. They want an Australian navy, a South African navy. Surely, God has sealed up the eyes and wits of those Imperialistic statesmen. They have eyes but they cannot see; they have minds but they are allowed only to misuse them.
THE RECOIL OF KARMA
There is a general law that Karma rebounds upon the doer. Associated in the Hindu philosophy mainly with the individual and the theory of re-birth, this truth has also been recognised as equally
Page-30
applicable on other lines to the present life and to the destiny of nations. The Karma
of the British people in India has been of a mixed quality. So far as it has
opened the gates of Western knowledge to the people of this country it has been
good and in return the thought and knowledge of India has poured back upon
Europe to return the gift with over measure. Had they in addition consciously
ideas up and educated the whole people, all the fruits of that good Karma would
have gone to England. But the education they have given is bad, meagre and
restricted to the few, and their sympathy for the people has been formal and
deficient. In consequence the main flood of the new thought and knowledge has
been diverted to America, tile giant of the future, .which alone of the nations
has shown an active and practical sympathy and understanding of our nation.
British karma in India has been bad in so far as it has' destroyed our
industries and arrested our national development, This Karma is also beginning
to recoil, patently in Boycott and unrest, much more subtly in the growing
demoralizations of British -politics. Already the jealous love of liberty is
beginning to wane in the upper classes in England, political thinkers are
emerging who announce the failure of democracy, the doctrine of the rule of the
strong man is gaining ground and the temptation to strengthen the executive at
the expense of the liberty of the citizen is proving too powerful even for a
Radical Government. It seems impossible that even a despotism or a virtual
oligarchy should ever again rule in England, yet stranger things have happened
in history. The change may come by the growth of Socialism and the seizure of
the doctrine of State despotism by masterful and ambitious minds to cloak an
usurpation the ancient and known forms of which would not be tolerated, just as
the Caesars, while avoiding the detested name and form of' kingship, yet ruled
Rome under the harmless titles of Princes and Imperator, first man of the state
and general, far more despotically than Tarquin could have done. Under whatever
disguises the change may steal upon the people, one thing is certain. that if
Lord Morley and the Anglo-Indian proconsuls succeed in perpetuating absolutism
in India, it will recoil from India to reconquer England.
The Nationalists of this country are fighting not only for the liberties of
India but for the liberties of England.
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LIBERTY OF EMPIRE
It is an ancient and perpetually recurring choice which is now being offered to the British people, the choice between liberty and empire. The two are incompatible except by the substitution of a free federation for a dominion. Rome was offered the choice. She won an empire and lost her liberty. External expansion has always been accompanied by a concentration of internal power in King or oligarchy. Athens, the only people who attempted to be imperial and despotic abroad and democratic at home, broke down in the attempt. In English history we find that the great expansion in the eighteenth century led to the reactionary rule of the third George, and it was not till England after the severe lesson in America adopted her present colonial system that expansion and democracy went hand in hand. That system was not an imperial system but a loose collection of free states only nominally united with the British Crown. The Indian problem is the test of British Liberalism. The colonial system as it stands cannot obtain between two States which are not mother and daughter. The one would not tolerate it, the other would not be content with it. But if England can bring herself to extend in a different form the principle of a collection of free States to India, she may keep her position in the world and her liberty together. Despotic Empire and liberty she cannot keep; she must either yield up absolutism abroad or renounce liberty at home.
SRI AUROBINDO
Page-32
(ORIGINAL FRENCH)
I
OUI, Mère Divine, Grâce Suprême, c'est vrai, je suis complètement superglue. C'est Toi seule... seulement Toi dans cet être Ton têmple sacré. Tu m'as déjà dit une fois que ma vie entière doit être un seul Darshan. Et il faut toujours comprendre Tes mots dans leur sens Ce n'est. pas une allégoric Le temple et le Darshan continuel, credit être ma vie, Et c'est, encore une fois, un nouveau pas en avant. O ma Mere Divine, Vérité Suprême, permets que -je puisse dresser un temple pur et que jamais je ne permette à l'ignorance de le violer. Je me prosterne devant Toi, tout mon être se prosterne. Reste avec moi, ne t'en vas pas. Je me donne à Toi, je me rends, je me soumets. Mon amour T'implore — reste.
II
Ma Mére, Amour Suprême, donne-moi 1'Amour total pour Toi — pour Toi dans toutes les formes, tous les événgement, dans Tout. Permets que ma soumission devienne totale et que mon ego disparaisse. Oh ma Mére Bien Aiméé, je suis étendue devant Toi, devant Ta lumineuse vibration d'Amour; mon être tout entire avec tous ses centres est étendue comme sur une table pour que Tu puisses bien voir cet instrument qui T'implore de le purifier et de le remplir d'Amour. Je suis comme le canevas avec tous ses fills etendue sur le métier à tisser, attendant avec vigilance, concentration et une aspiration ardente que Tes mains pleins d'Amour viennent le toucher.
Tu es ma Mère et Tu es le Très-Haut. C'est seulement et uniquement de Ta grâce que dépend mon
être tout entire. Fais de moi ce que Tuvalu, dqnne-moi ce que Tuvalu. Je sais que tout ce qui est nécessaire dans Ton jeu arrivera. Mon
âme est en
paiyet depuis hier je sens que Tu me tiens dans Tes bras et que Tu me regardes
Page-33
toujours. Tes yeux me pénètrent jusqu'au fond de l'âme. Je me prosterne à Tes pieds sans cesse et tout mon être s'ouvre, s'étend et par toutes ses parcelles Te boit — Toi et Ta grace. Je ire donne à Toi, je me rends...je me rends. .
Tu me donnes paix et repos. Je n'ai plus de souei, plus de tour ment. Tu es ma Mere. Je suis Ton enfant. Je me tiens blottie dans Tesbras, je ferme les yeux, je cache ma tete suf Ton seined je me fonds en Ton Amour supreme.
Mère, Présence Divine, Créatrice de l'Univers, je m'abandonne, je m'abandonne. Permets que je devienne de plus en plus Ton enfant-seulement, essentiellement.
Tu es le Très-Haut. Je me prosterne à Tes pieds avec toute I'humilité quill mest possible d'avoir aujourd'hui. Je T'implore : purine cette forme qui s'étend devant Toi en un don sincère.
Donne-moi plus d'humilité encore affine que je puisse être en Toi. Tu es le Très-Haut et le Très Pur. Tu es le Suprême.
(TRANSLATIONS)
I
Yes, Mother Divine, Grace Divine, it is true, I am wholly unnecessary. Thou alone...only Thyself in this being must be Thy sacred temple. Thou sadist to me once that my whole being must be one single Darshan. And Thy words must always be understood in their concrete sense. It is not an allegory. The rumple and the continual Darshan—that must be my life. It is once more a new step forward. O Mother Divine, Truth Supreme, let me erect a pure temple and let me not allow the Ignorance to violate it. I prostrate -before Thee, my whole being prostrates— stay with me, do not depart. I give myself to Thee, I surrender. I submit. My love implores Thee...stay !
II
My Mother, Love Supreme, give me a total love for Thee
Page-34
in all forms, in all happenings, in everything. May my surrender be total, may my ego disappear. O, my Mother Beloved, I lay myself before. Thee, before the luminous vibration of Thy love : my whole being with all its, centre is stretched as on a table for Thee to see this, instrument that implores Thee to purify it, fill it with love. I am a carpet, as it were, with all its thread stitched on the form, awaiting with vigilance, concentration and an ardent aspiration so that Thy hands filled with love may come and touch it.
Thou art my mother and thou are the Most High. My whole being depends only and solely upon Thy grace. Make of me what Thou wilt, give me what Thou wilt. I know whatever is necessary for Thy play will happen. My soul is in peace and from yesterday I am feeling that Thou holdest me in Thy arms and art looking at me. Thy eyes enter into the very depth of my soul. I prostrate at Thy feet ceaselessly and my whole being opens, widens and through all its pores drinks Thee in—Thee and Thy grace. I give myself ta Thee, I surrender, surrender.
Thou givest me peace and rest. I have no more care, no more trouble. Thou art my mother. I am Thy child. I nestle in Thy arms, I close my eyes-, I hide my head in Thy bosom, I melt in Thy supreme love.
Mother, Presence Divine, Maker of the Universe, I give myself over, I give myself up. Let me become more and more Thy child solely and in essence.
Thou art the Most High. I prostrate at Thy feet with all the humility possible for me to have today. I implore Thee : purify this form which lies before Thee in a sincere self-giving.
Give me more and yet more humility so that I may be in Thee. Thou art the Most High and Most Pure. Thou art the Supreme.
Page-35
FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT
WESTERN LITERATURE
FRENCH LITERATURE (Continued)
THE age of Louis XIV is a landmark in European -history. It saw France, then a more or less backward country, harried and torn by civil wars for over three decades, suddenly rise to an un precedence greatness in culture and civilisation, literature and arts, manners and social refinement, and become a pattern for other countries to follow. Her culture spread far and wide, and her affluence percolated into the inmost layers of Western civilisation.
Louis XIV, though himself a man of no great intellectual endowment, was a lover and patron of the arts and the trappings of culture. He was very fond of the drama, and very generous in his help and encouragement to the artists and men of letters. The French Academy was founded in his reign and, sponsored and patronised by him, it imparted a sense of honour and prestige to those who professed the arts and literature. Painting, architecture, sculpture, furniture-making and gardening, all basked and thrived in the light of royal favour. The salons
in which enlightened, intel- lacteal ladies look the leading part were veritable
nurseries of new styles of poetry, prose, drama and music. In short, there was a
splendid flowering of the aesthetic spirit of France which entitled it to be
called the cultural leader of the whole of Europe and the age of Louis XIV as
the Grand Siecle. Modeled upon the ancient Greek and Roman classics, French
literature, painting etc. gave the go-by to the Baroque and cultivated
simplicity, clarity, harmony, vigour, and an austere restraint in expression.
French literature began -to be widely read and its tone and temper emulated by
many a country in Europe.
Page-36
Pierre Corneille (1606-1684) can be called the father of modern French drama. His tragedy, Le Cid, combined what was best in the mystery and miracle plays of the Middle Ages and in the ,plays produced during the Renaissance after the pattern of Seneca tragedies. it was a happy union of art and vigour. But his characters lack the intimate touch and throb of life. His romantic genius was in leading strings to the classical standards of the age, and so it failed to express itself in its native accents. Starting with comedies, . he swung over to-tragedies, and ended with romantic melodrama. intellectual rather than emotional, interested more in action than in the psychological motives behind it, master of the resources of language, bur inclined, like Descartes, more to the direct, simple and rational effect than to the poetic and imaginative appeal, Corneille created a verse-form which contained the essential elements of modem French. His romanticism, which he had to curb in deference to the literary canons of his age formulated by the French Academy, Was more classical than romantic, as we understand the word now. But the heart of modem French language beat in his style and gathered force for a fuller expression in his successors.
Moliere (1622-11673) introduced a true aesthetic sense and a chastening restraint into French drama. He depicted in his comedies the social life around him with all its eccentricities and extravagances, its die-hard traditions of the Mediaeval chivalry and turgid conventions as well as its transitional culture in the reign of Louis XIV. We get in his comedies the sparkle of a subtle wit, the breath of April blitheness, and the overflowing lark and laughter of the burlesque; but so consummate is his skill and so sensitive his aesthetic sense that nowhere do we come across any falsetto note, or any transgression of the salutary canons of a perfect art. His realism, his sense of proportion, his keen perception of the contours of human nature invest his characters with a vividness and vitality unsurpassed except by Shakespeare in the whole range of modern European drama. His plots are sometimes loosely constructed and his language gives an impression of occasional unevenness and even flatness, but the pulse and passion of his art and the force of his genius sweep the reader off his feet on a wave of bubbling hilarity and lambent satire. An unfailing good humour plays upon his
Page-37
characters, and virtue and vice are both decked out in such farcical garb as put to the blush the concept of the snob" and the prig, and lights up the furrowed brow of depressed humanity. Moliere is the greatest creator of modern French comedy—great by the variety and complexity of his creations, great by the inexhaustible freshness and flavour of his gaiety, and great by his unstinted, large-hearted, human sympathies.
Racine (1639-1699) is considered the supreme creator of French tragedy. Where Corneille is lofty, intellectual, sententious," and ideal, Racine is simple and natural. He carries in himself the realistic spirit of the modern times. His fundamental approach to drama is practically the same as of Moliere, but while Moliere - delineates the comical, farcical aspect of human psychology, and throws a gentle light upon the tragic consequences of undisciplined life, Racine stakes the emotions of the human heart, particularly, almost exclusively, the feelings and emotions of love, and by a subtle analysis of Rs intensities, its facile credulities and gullibility's, its blind follies and sublime nobilities, portrays an arresting picture of their inherent tragedy as the brute facts of life attest. His robust, penetrating realism, his superb poetical gifts, and the beauty and charm of his style mark him out as the most consummate dramatist of the age of Louis XIV and one of the greatest in modern European literature.
La Fontaine (1621-1695) was an exquisite poet, lyricist, wit, story teller,
master of an engaging, sensitive, polychrome, colloquial style, and a man of
smiling benevolence towards all beings. He loved the ancient classical spirit
and respected its essential canons, but tempered them with the characteristic
elements of modern literary art. He loved Nature in all her varying moods, and
felt an inner kinship with her. He represents to a remarkable degree the limpid
clarity, simplicity, lightness of touch, subtle irony, precision of observation,
a rich and supple language and a splendour and harmony of rhythm which have gone
to the making of the most artistic of modern creations. He is a true successor
of Moliere and a forerunner of Voltaire. His appeal is universal, because his is
a democratic spirit, and the French find in his Fables, unlike in Aesop's, which
are rather dry and didactic, a perennial fount of artistic enjoyment.
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There is perhaps no other literary artist whom the French regard with so much love and devotion. The secret of this unfading popularity lies in the fact that La Fontaine embodies the true French ethos, the* very cultural and literary individuality of France, and his poetry glows with common human feelings which overflow the frontiers of .any particular country and nation. He is at once a typical Frenchman and a wide-visioned cosmopolitan—a rough sketch of the man of tomorrow.
RISHABHCHAND
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(Continued)
30th September 1962
Q : Does the spiritual remedy exclude non-spiritual remedies"?
A : No. You have to take the spiritual remedy as opposed to outer and material remedies. "Spiritual" remedy is the- inner remedy, depending upon nothing outside oneself, as opposed to outer, external remedy for which one has to take help of others. For example, a political or social or economic remedy would require cooperation of many persons and also an organisation. Even these can be related to spirituality if the basis of the effort is psychological that is spiritual. Such activity is undertaken primarily for its spiritual results in oneself and secondarily for any outer change.
The distinction is drawn in case of persons who do not believe in spiritual remedies. There are people who believe only in outer and material remedies.
Q" Why do you suggest only spiritual remedy ?
A : Because, the nature of the crisis is psychological, and therefore spiritual. We do not want to exclude other remedies. In fact, we support all activities that move in the direction of the same goal, e.g. towards human Unity or man's fulfilment as a Divine being.
The nature of the crisis may seem to some to be external but that would only be too shallow a view. The breakdown in the western culture took place in collective life and its various organisations; therefore some people may be tempted to set right the outer collective
* Third lecture at the Community Church, New York. Discussion following the Talk: "Spiritual Remedy."
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life (which can be done). But the question one has to answer is : wherein lies the true fulfilment of the collective life of man. Does it consist in a constantly rising economic standard of life ?
Q: But don't you think that the progress of science and its application to life'—for example, the use of atom-energy, man's conquest of space etc. might bring about the solution ?
A :Hardly, because all such progress is to be utilized by man and so long as man is driven by ambition and ego, he will invite conflicts, difficulties and catastrophes.
The change that is repaired is in man's nature. The centre of the crisis is the individual. The west has lost many of the values it had evolved during two hundred years after two bloodbaths during a generation. The East, equally, has lost and is losing its own values—of man's spiritual greatness under the impact of western Scientific progress applied to life. One sees the domination of the basic western outlook everywhere on earth. Man is facing a spiritual crisis.
Q: What is Man?
A : The age-old question ! One may even feel that even as he is, imperfect and ignorant, man has made progress—he has banished superstition, ignorance and starvation from many parts of the globe, and man seems to be moving towards a goal which even the most brilliant period in the past never envisaged.
But it is futile to make such comparisons, the present or the past or even the future is not in itself important. Not what man 'did'—that is only a part of himself, but what man "is" and, more important, what man "can become" that matters.
We have therefore to answer the question : what is man? Is he a little particle of dust, mere insignificant matter ? Is he merely a complex of inconscient forces brought into being by their mechanical play ? We know that man is body, he is life and he is mind. Is he something more than these?
There is a vision in which the universe is the creation of an
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Omnipresent dynamic Reality of which man, as an individual and a collective being, is the term of manifestation. Man is essentially a soul using mind, life and body as his instruments.
Q : But where is the necessity of accepting a soul? The mind of which you have spoken is capable of acquiring knowledge, man is capable of an idealism or an ethical endeavour which leads him to noble acts of self-sacrifice in his efforts to reach individual or collective perfection. So, would it not be correct to say that the true remedy is ethical, or, intellectual, idealism—its practice and propaganda ? For instance, equality, service, non-possession, self-control, non-violence etc. if these are practised then the problem may be solved.
A : All these are noble means. They are, in fact, contributory to the spiritual remedy; but they are not themselves the remedy. They strengthen the spiritual forces in the individual and in the collectivity, and we support them as we support the political, cultural and other forces man can generate or muster by creating an outer organisation. For instance, the U. N. O. and its allied activities, or other efforts in the direction of bringing about the unity of mankind.
But the real thing we have to try is to resort to the spiritual remedy because it is the one remedy by which one can create (even as an individual) the most intense power that can resolve the crisis. It evokes the higher power in man. The remedy is independent of the atmosphere—it is the one way that leaves the individual to act freely.
Q : How tan one man's effort resolve such a great crisis ? It is a work which requires the cooperation of many, if not all, men.
A : It is true, but it is not possible to start with the whole community or the race. In trying social, political, economic and other remedies one is compelled to depend upon the cooperation of other men and there the outer method of propaganda and organisation have a place. But in case some greater inner truth one starts with the individual and then the truth slowly spreads to the community,
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or it" may be, that the pursuit of the same truth tends to create a community of men.
Take for instance, the suppression of slave-trade. One man Where force, took it up^as a personal problem and worked hard for years before he succeeded in making it illegal. Hampton individually challenged the power of the British Crown to levy tax without the consent of the-parliament.
Q : How can I help in this crisis ? Can my help be real—dynamic and effective ?
A : The centre of the power is there in the individual. But we must know that there are people who do not feel the existence of the crisis as we see it. For them the question of resolving it does not arise; others believe and resort to outer remedies—they may succeed in the measure of their sincerity.
„ But for one who has felt the crisis as his own the first thing he has to know is that all true dynamism is from the soul, all creative movements, even the so called outer material and scientific progress are from the soul, the Divine Spark in man.
Q : Is that not the language of faith ? Perhaps mind may raise a doubt—there may be many who do not believe in the Divine.
A : In order to try the spiritual remedy it is not indispensable to believe in the Divine unless one feels called upon to believe in him.
But every intelligent man in modern times must ask himself: have I some "Values" in my life ? That is to say have I arrived at some ideal or conception that has become a ''value" to me ? For instance, have I some conception of Truth in my mind or heart ? Do I feel that certain way of feeling and doing is Right ? Is beauty a value for me ? Have I ever felt the power of true Love? Have I some ideal for which I can sacrifice myself?
That is enough to begin the spiritual remedy. One should not merely hold an idea or an ideal in the mind only, but one must live it in his life. One must take—accept life as an opportunity to
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live it,—it must become the primary concern and every thing else secondary. It would be the main occupation not one to be attempted at leisure. Such an earnest effort will create an atmosphere around you in which the value will become real.
Q : It is found that this often leads to conflict; truth of one idea or ideal with the opposite Truth held by another. '
A : It can happen and sometimes growth towards the reality may be through such conflict.
But it is not inevitable, if one can keep his being open to a gradually ascending aspect of the Truth, the Right, the Beautiful, the noble etc. That is to say there is some Truth in each aspect of two conflicting truths. A mind open to the growing value moves on a line of infinite progression along which the true spiritual aim of collective life will dawn on him and also the true fulfilment of the individual.
It will be found that man is more than man,—more than what he appears to be, a mere piece of matter. There is an Omnipresent Reality at work in the universe; it can come down—descend—into human life and change it into an image of divine perfection.
Man is free to remain as he is, or to go on trying whatever means he finds legitimate. It is man who shuts himself in and avoids the action of the Reality. He accepts only the partial aspect of the Reality that comes to him through his devotion to higher "values". In pursuing these values as an individual he must have faith that he is contributing to the solution of man's problem, to the resolution of the crisis, let us remember that the universe is like a spider's web and the whole web can be raised or lowered—however infinitesimally by the weakest filament.
When the freedom of man leads him to the voluntary act of surrender to Universal Purpose then he will comprehend the will and purpose working in life. Then is man fulfilled in realising the Divine will in himself as an individual and as a race.
"...Our unfolding has its roots in the soil of the physical life; its growth shoots up and out in many directions in the stalk and branches of the vital being; it puts forth the
opulence of the buds of mind
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and there, nestling in the luxuriant leaves of mind and above it, out from the spirit which was concealed in the whole process must blossom the free and infinite soul of man, the hundred—petalled rose of God" (Future Poetry 267) Sri Aurobindo.
A. B. PURANI
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EDUCATION
XV
PSYCHIC AND SPIRITUAL EDUCATION (Contd)
THE soul or the psychic, being the central and everlasting reality of man, his mind, life and body have to be regarded only as its instruments of self-expression in the material world. But in his ignorance he identifies himself with his instrumental being, which is a constructed, perishable self, and does not care to know his immortal reality. .The education devised and developed by him is, therefore, even at its best, an education of his instrumental being. It cannot be productive of any abiding and salutary result so long as he persists in ignoring or denying the truth and reality of his being. Even from the instrumental being he singles out his mind as the most important and educable part—mind with its intellect, reason' and judgment etc.— and assigns a subordinate position to his life and body. He concentrates all his energies on the education of his mind in various ways. Thanks to the phenomenal scientific and technological advance in modern times, the humanities have been dislodged from their old predominance, theory has been coupled with considerable practical laboratory experiment, and the balance has tilted in favour of experimental practice. This is a swing of the pendulum in the reverse direction. But it is now being more and more realised that this preponderating importance given to technology has led man to neglect the moral and cultural side of education and look upon himself only as a physical being whose ideal in life, if any such thing is at all deemed necessary, should be to carve out a successful career and spend himself in all kinds of profitable work, profitable to his physical well-being1 and conducive to his position, power and prestige. In this scramble for power and position, in this frenzied pursuit of work for its own sake, breathless and nerve-shattering, he comes to develop a sort of contempt for those who appear to him to bother over much about culture
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and refinement, morality and self-control, poise and harmony in their lives. The right balance between these two extremes, the right correlation, has not been found, because the central and centralising truth and reality of his life has not been discovered. The imbalance, the fitful shift in choice and inclination, the unsteady, exclusive stress, the protean working of his nature, torn between the three warring gunas, sattwa, rajas and tamas, is the invariable stamp of normal human existence. There is no calm, no settled happiness in such a life. "For, how can there be happiness in a perpetual turmoil of the dualities, a convulsive tension of the opposites ? It is the soul alone, the psychic, that, fully awakened to its innate royalty, and with the reins of government held firmly in its grasp, can place each element in its place, introduce order and harmony into its chaotic nature, and teach it to work in a perfect coordination among its various parts, and along the lines of its true evolution. The discovery of the soul is, therefore, of primal and paramount importance in education. The soul has an infallible intuition of the Divine With in it, a sure divination of what is true and right in the complex functioning of its instrumental nature and its faculties. It has a knowledge of the potentialities of its being and the limitless ranges of its latent powers. It is not chained to the brute facts and material circumstances of its earthly existence, nor is it possible for the reason of the mind or the feelings of the heart to define its evolutionary progress or deflect it from its true course. It is sovereign in its will and invincible in its action. Once in possession of its instruments, it can overhaul and change them, quicken them with a new, more fruitful life, lead them to an undreamt-of splendour of spring-tide blossoming, and make them function in a flawless rhythm and harmony of federated autonomy. "Every human being carries hidden within him the possibility of a greater consciousness beyond the frame of his normal life through which he can participate in a higher and vaster life. ...What the human mind does not know and cannot do, this consciousness knows and does. It is like a light that shines at the centre of the being radiating through the thick coverings of the external consciousness."1 ..."In most cases this presence acts, so to say, from behind the veil,
1 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education.
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unrecognised and unknown; but in some it is perceptible and. its action recognisable; in a few among these, again, the presence becomes tangible and its action quite effective. These go forward in their life with an assurance and a certitude all their own, they are masters of their destiny. It is precisely with a view to obtain this mastery and become conscious of the psychic presence that psychic education has to be pursued."1
What happens when the psychic deals directly with its instruments and knits them together in a dynamic, corporate economy? The mind evolves powers and capacities far beyond those ordinarily conceived as human. Its imagination, for instance, sheds its usual tendency to conjuring up mere visionary or fanciful shapes and becomes a faculty of creative image-making, lit up with intuition. Reason remains no longer a doubting Thomas, endlessly making and unmaking theories and dogmas out of a clutter of percepts and concepts. Its hypotheses, which are always coloured by its presuppositions and preferences, give place to a lucid ordering, a compact organisation of what knowledge it receives from the higher reaches of human consciousness. Its judgments are no more founded on the shoddy scraps of dubious conclusions arrived at by. a toilsome process of weighing the pros and cons of each problem, but proceed upon an integral view which deals with parts not as separate or disparate integers, but as correlates of a composite, homogeneous whole. This whole view is in sharp contrast to the fragmentary or sectional approach of all mental perceptions. Its memory becomes automatic and immediate, as if a finger of light called up a unit out of a well-arranged store-house of past impressions. There is, is short, a general, pervasive play of intuition in all the faculties and operations of the mind replacing their habitual uncertain groupings and vague findings in a dusky light. The faculty of discrimination, likewise, knows with a spontaneous immediacy what to choose at each moment out of a tangle of truth and falsehood, right and wrong, the divine and the undivine. And many a faculty and power which lies unsuspected in latency evolves and acts in a faultless concert of the integrated whole.
1 Sri Aurobindo and the Mother on Education.
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Man, who is complacent as a mental being and proud of the paltry achievements of his mind, will be startled out of his conceited complacency when, under the direct inspiration and guidance of the psychic, his whole being flowers into a divine glory. Nothing in him will be suppressed or overlooked, nothing will be snipped off or whittled down," but all will be galvanised, heightened, expanded and enriched, all will undergo a marvellous transformation, a radical conversion. Will man regret this change, this unimaginable deepening and heightening ? Will he lose anything ? Nothing at all, except the jarring conflicts, the harassing confusions, and the limitations and squalor of his normal nature. It will be a many-sided, many-hued, synthetic, development of the very stuff and structure of his life.
Similarly, in regard to the workings of his heart, man will change beyond recognition. The habitual tumult of his heart's feelings and emotions, the rocking storms of his passions, all will be reduced to a felicitous order and rhythm, a radiant play of harmonies, attuned to , the psychic diapason. Joy and sweetness will flow like sap through every fibre of his emotional being and impart an unfailing glow and thrill to his manifold self-expression in life.
The above is just an indication of the tremendous outcome of discovering the psychic being and making it the leader and active agent of our education. I have not mentioned the spiritual gains of it, which are beyond the scope of my present theme, but only what a psychic-directed education can achieve in human life.
(To be continued)
RlSHABHCHAND
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WITH
PADAPATHA** AND COMMENTARY „
THERE are twenty-four sections in the First Book of the Seer-hymnodists, Satarchins. Barring the twelfth hymn at the end, the Rishi of the first three Sections is Madhucchandas of the line of Vishvamitra. The Rishi of the twelfth hymn is Jeta, son of Madhucchandas. The metre is Gayatri for the nine hymns commencing with agnim īle up to gāyanti tva. The first Section consists of three hymns. And the first hymn with nine Riks (stanzas) known as agnimile is devoted to the Deity Agni. And of the nine this is the first : I. OM agnim] purohitarh yajñasya devam rt'vijam, hotāram ratna dhātamam.
agnim tie purah'hitam yajñasya devam rtvijam, hotāram ratna dhātamam.
agnim the God called Agni; ile I laud in longing; God of what kind ? purohitam placed in front for the performance of. the work; and again of what kind ? yajñasya devam rtoijam the God who himself has become the rtvik for the carrying out of the sacrifice that is being performed in celebration of the Godhead; and again of what kind ? hotāram who calls the Gods by virtue of his capacity; and still how made ? ratnadhātamam who bears in excelsis the felicities that are charming.
The Etymologists explain the term agni in many ways. This much is clear from a scrutiny of their derivations : alternate meanings are advanced by reckoning the form of Agni in some way or the other on the strength of the utterances of the Brahmanas. It is considered that sentences in the Brahmanas such as "Yea, this one was born before, agre, the Gods, hence he is agni by name", are the basis of meanings like agra1Jib (one who is the first).
* Collection of the Hymns of the Rig Veda.
** Arrangement of the text in which each word is written and pronounced in its original form without phonetic changes. (The Samhita text is continuous incorporating the phonetic changes.)
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According to the Grammarians, the word agni is derived from the root ang. They illustrate the Undid Sutra, 'angemalopasca', agnate, es upward; goes up to carry the oblation to the heaven; this is a possible derivation If the roots meaning agni in all the branch languages- of the ancient Aryans be scrutinised, it yields the constituent meaning of movement, strong and luminous. Thus do cohere all the words signifying the nature of agni.
īle : I'laud, says Sayana; I beseech, says Yaska. There is no dispute about the roots having multiple significance, īlate signifies .says Yaska, beseeching, adoring or worshipping. The act of adoration is the most apposite in view of the form of agni, his office and his management of it. adhyesana-intense longing-means impulsion, aspiration. The longing adoration consists in the welcome and honoured induction in the special performance of the adorable Vicar or Agni the God. ile I aspire.
purohitam : Agni is placed in the front of the yajamāna sacrificer, for the carrying out of the work of sacrifice. That is why he is waited upon by the Rishi in the inner sacrifice and by the yajamana in the outer sacrifice. Thus is the sense of adhyesana, longing adoration, apposite to ile. This agrees also with the traditional derivation of purohita-he holds him in the front. It is to be noted that the order given by the commentators viz. yajñasya purohitam hotāram deoam rtvijam ratnadhātamam, is neither necessary nor proper. When terms yield the meaning in the order in which they stand, it is not right to relate words in one place with words in another. That is why we have commented upon the phrase y arias a devam rtoijam as it stands.
hotāram : himself a God, he summons the other Gods to be present at the sacrifice. Thus is Agni, the Lord of the call.
ratnadhātamam : all accept the derivation of ratna as the word ending with the termination kna of the Unādis, applied on the root ram.
To us who are concerned with the inner Sacrifice, the derivation given in the
āManirārthamañjarī, what bears ratna (happiness) is ratnadhā, him who bears the
happiness excellently ratnadhah tam, is acceptable. It means that Agni alone is
the bearer, the founder of the felicities-signified by the term ratna-which are
the fruits of the offerings made by the Rishi, the Yajamana who is engaged in
the
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inner Sacrifice. For those who swear that there is naught else beyond the outer sacrifice, it means Agni, the donor in excelsis of the ratna, the treasure, which, consisting of cows, horses etc., is the ruit of the sacrifice.
And this is the purport of the Rik :
1. aspire intensely for Agni the adorable, the leader arid the Vicar who carries out the Sacrifice, the God who as the Ritvik does and gets done in due season the Sacrifice to be performed, "who being capable of bringing the presence of the Gods in the Sacrifice is their summoner, and who, again, founds in the Yajamana the excellences of Felicity.
Tr. I adore Agni, the Vicar, the divine Ritvik of the" Sacrifice, the summoner who most bears the felicities.
2. agnih fūrvebhirrsibhirīdyo nūtanairuta, sa devan eha vaksati. agnih 'pūrvebhih rsibhih idyah nūtanaih uta, sah devān ā iha vaksati.
agnilh the God equipped with the capacity of the Vicar etc. as mentioned before; pūrvebhih; by the ancient; ribhil by the seers of the' Mantras, Bhrigu, Angiras and the like; idyah laudable, adorable, to be aspired to; nutanah uta adorable even by the new seers; sah the God who is thus spoken of as adorable; devan 'the rest of the Gods like Indra and others; iha in this sacrifice; āvaksati brings.
agnih the God equipped with the capacity of the Vicar etc. as mentioned before;
iha : Skandasvami has it, "or here, in this world". The purport is that Agni, located on earth, brings the gods located in heaven, to this location on earth. The meaning is clear in the inner Sacrifice.
It is impossible to determine the age of the ancient personages like Angiras. The phrase nūtanairuta implies that there were other contemporary seers, creators of Suktas, like Madhucchandas. It also points to the weight of tradition of a sempiternal, fruitful and established discipline devoted to Agni.
Tr. The Agni adorable by the ancient seers is adorable too by the new. He brings here the Gods.
3. agninā rayimasnavat posameva divedive, yasasam viravattamam. agninā rayim asnavat posam eva divedive, yasasam vira af tamam.
agninā by the instrumentation of the God; rayim treasure, something inner, not merely outer; ainauat (the Yajamana) obtains; what
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kind of treasure ? divedive day by day; posameva verily nourished,
increasing, never decreasing; and again of what kind ? yasasam with fame, f of
glory; viravattamam superbly endowed with hero power;
such is the treasure enjoyed.
Some' object to the taking of the term para as adjective to rayi as it
terminates with gaits. They say it should be posam, nourishment, and rayim
treasure, that is asnaoat, enjoyed. If that be so, then the conjunctive ' word
ca is to be taken as understood. Then the significance of the word eva in
posameoa will have been ignored. Both posam and yaiasam are adjectives of rayi,
used in the sense of possession
(matvartha).
Such Use is common in the Veda. In places like vapusāmidekam (IV.7.9.), oapusāmapasyam (V.62.I), the commentators interpret the meaning indicating matvartha as vapusām vapusmatām; possessed of bodies, devānām-of the embodied Gods. That is correct. So also here, resort to indication is permissible. yasas is used as adjective of rayi to indicate the glory. Some moderns have it that asnaoat being in the form of let (Vedic Present) should carry the sense of Imperative Tense, lot. The sense indicated by the Present Tense (lat) is preferable anti approved by the commentators of old.
The purport is : the Yajamana obtains the inner plenitude (denoted by the term rayi), superbly full of hero-strength and glorious, due to the power of the Grace of Agni who is the summoner of the Gods as described earlier.
Tr. By Agni one enjoys a treasure that increases day by day, glorious, most full of hero-power.
4. agneyamyajñamadhvaram viśvatah paribhūrasi, sa iddevesu gacchati.., agne yam yajñam adhvaram viśvatah paribhūh asi, sah it devesu gacchati.
agne thou; yam adhvaram which is moving on the path; yajñam sacrifice; visvatah on every side; paribhūh: surrounding; asi art; sa it that sacrifice alone; devesu among the Gods; gacchati goes to the destination.
The ritualistic commentators take the Une that adhvara is "free from
violence." The immolation of the animal in the sacrifice is a transgression of
the injunction of the Dharma Sastra, "Harm not any
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creature". To affirm that in this case there is no violence, those who interpret in the external sense explain the term adhvara as that in which there is no dhvara, violence. Now the sacrifice is dcribed in the Veda as a Person. This one consisting in the giving away' of substances, embodying a total self-sacrifice, manifesting in the being of the sacrificer, sets out to the world of Svar above in order to reach the Gods. Therefore he does the journey, adhuāna"m rāti, gives the path for the ascent of the sacrificer. And in such a pilgrime-sacrifice, protection from all evil, as Rakshasas and the like, from all sides, is obtained only from Agni. Hence it is said that only that sacrifice which is well-guarded by Agni reaches to the Gods.
Tr. O Agni ! The pilgrim-sacrifice on every side of which thou art, that alone goes among the Gods.
5. agnirhotā kavikratuh satyascitrasravastamah, devo devebhirāgamat. agnih hotd kavikratuh satyah citrasravah'tamah, devah devebhih ā gamat.
agnih himself; deuah. a God; devebhih along with other Gods; dgamat may he come. There are four adjectives to Agni. hotā summoner of the Gods; kaoikratuh, kavi is the term for one with bright intellect; in the Veda kavi stands for one who sees the beyond, what is beyond the objects of the senses. So does Sayana comment upon it in many places. The term kratu is explained by ritualists either as intelligence or act (ritualist), according to the context. Kratu is the unshakable Will or a determined conscios-force capable of execution. Thus the term kavikratu:t signifies a conscious will or will-force seeing the supra-sensible. satyah. true in seeing, in conscious action and .. also in self-form, without any touch with or defilement by falsehoods, hence undeviating in activities of seeing etc.; citrasraoastamah, iraua means fame and it is not incorrect to take it so in the external sense; the words sraval;, iraoana, sruti derived from the root sru recall the same meaning. Because it is heard from all over, srauais taken to mean fame. Hence here it means that the hearing, sraval;, of Agni is superbly (tama) citram, marvellous, manifoldly discernible.
The purport is that Lord Agni whose addition is varied and supersensible, himself hearing, can make the seeker hear wonderful auditions.
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Tr. Agni, the, summoner, the Seer-Will, true and most full of richly varied listenings, may he come a God with the Gods.
Thus ends the first group
of the first chapter
in the first Eighth.
6. yadanga dāsuge tvamagne bhadram karisyasi, tavettatsatyamahgirah. yat anga dāsuse tvam agne bhadram karisyasi, tava it tat satyam angirah.
anga dear; agne O Agni; dāsuse to the Yajamana who gives; tvam thou; yad that; bhadram happy good; karisyasi shalt do; tavet thine alone; tat that; satyam Truth; angiral: O Angira, Agni of this appellation.
According to Sayana this is the sense : Agni gives wealth in the form of animals, progeny and the like to the sacrificer who has given the oblation. That is the good expressed by the term bhadra. With the instrumentation of the wealth thus obtained the sacrificer sacri Ices again to Agni. That is why it is Agni's alone.
In truth there is no disputation here. But the commentators have done a great disservice to this Mantra laden with delightful meaning in which some truth "of Agni is indicated in clear expression, dāsuse to the giver, yad bhadram karisyasi what happy good thou shalt do, tat satyam that Truth is thine alone tavet-this is the right and direct order.
This then is the purport. The happy good that is going to be done for the Yajamana by Agni is the truth of Agni alone. And what is that happy good which is said to be the truth of Agni only ? They assert, on the strength of the utterances in the Brāhmana, that progeny, animals, money, house and so on are all the happy good, bhadram. May be, progeny animals etc. are the good. Let us not quarrel. But there is no doubt that in the Rig Veda, bhadra signifies good, something exalted connected with Truth. In cases like, "Savitr God, send far away all calamities, sendus only what is good, bhadram" (V.82.S), "Drive the evil dream away" (V.82.4), the term bhadra is used in contradistinction to the evil that follows from evil dream. If the meaning is understood in the sense that the Truth of Agni is verily the happy good that ends the misfortunes resulting from false knowledge, then the use of satya as adjective to Agni
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in the first Rik, and here (in the present Rik) the statement that such a good is the Truth of Agni only, stand justified. Hence it is of some common good that is intended. The truth which is the 1Good that opposes the false consciousness is verily the' principle of Agni, his nature. All over the Veda the word bhadra is used in the sense of opposing the misfortune born of evil and false knowledge. And this is clear from the Hymn to dispel the evil dream in which bhadram vararh ornute (a happy boon do they elect) etc. is chanted in opposition to Nirrti, the deity of Sin.
In another place there occurs a mantra meaning that those who malign the good (bhadra) are thrown into the environs of Nirriti : "those who soil the good by their natures, may Soma give 'them over to Ahi, or to the lap of Nirriti consign" (X.I04.9). So also is the bhadra lauded as relating to the own home of Agni, the Vast Truth denoted by the word rta; as the objective to be attained by the mind and the Will. "Create for us a happy mind" (IV.I9.20), "Send us a happy mind, and deligent will" (X.25.I), "Awake to the right-minded ness of man's happiest state, vast and great and happy is thy house of refuge, 0 Agni" (V. I IO).
It is to be thus noted that even in yielding' the meaning of good, such a word occurring in the mantra, indicates the specialty of bhadram. Even the .Rik of Kutsa Angira co firms our interpretation of this Rik, yadanga dāiuse. It says: "This is thy happy grace, that kindled in thy own abode, invoked with Soma, thou soundest forth most benign; thou givest wealth and treasure to the giver. O Agni, in thy friendship may we not suffer harm" (I.94.14). This Rik of Kutsa is to be remembered in grasping meaning of the mantra ahead, rājantam etc.
Tr. Agni, the happy good that thou shalt create for the giver, is the Truth of Thee alone, O Agniras.
7. upa tvāgne divedive dosāvastardhiyā vayam, namo bharanta emasi. upa tvā agne dive-dive dosāvastah dhiyā vayam, namah bharantah ā imasi.
agne, O Agni;
tvā to thee; divedive day by day; dosduastalt night and day; vayam we;
dhiyā by the thought capable of bearing; namalt obeisance; bharantali
carrying; upemasi we come, wait upon
Here some take dosāvastā
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light arid dosāvastph as his vocative. Actually dosd means night and it denotes darkness; coastal means day and denotes light. The purport is, that wither in dark or in light, in all states, everyday, we wait upon you ceaselessly. Evarh mimo bharantali vayam, 'thus bearing the obeisance's, we', is apposite. The intelligence is capable of bearing the burthen of the beisance. It is thus to be understood that for one who seeks (waits upon) Agni, the one sadhana (means) is the intelligence rooted in meditation, day by day, ceaselessly, in state of inner illumination or no illumination-in a word, in all conditions.
Tr. To Thee, O Agni, day by day, in the night, and in the light, we approach carrying by our thought the obeisance.
8. rājantamadhuaānām gopāmrtasya didivim, oardhamānam sve dame rājantam adhuarānām: gopāmrtasya didivim, oardhamānam sve dame.
In the previous mantra it was said, "Agni, we approach Thee". "Thou" of what kind ? The seer describes in three adjectival phrases : adhuarānām rājantam the master of sacrifices denoted by the 'term adhvara, Path, Journey; rtasya didioimgopdm luminous guardian of the Truth; sve dame vardhamiinamincreasing in his own home.
It is not proper to take gopām with adhsxirdndm when the terms yield meaning
as they stand. Thought has to be' bestowed upon the meaning in rtasya gopis;
(guardian of Truth), sa ca didivim; (and he is shining), sve dame vardhatam
(increases in his own home). In this one hymn itself is affirmed twice the
Truth-nature of Agni by the expression satyah. (Rik 5) and tavet tat satyam (Rik
6). In this Rik he is described as the guardian of Truth and as increasing in
his own home. What else but Truth could be the own Home of Agni ? The Truth, the
Right, the Vast, alone is the abode of Agni. And his Truth, the supreme station
is to be attained by the Yajamana; Sacrifice the means there for. The one who
performs is the Seer-Will, the Truth, one whose nature is the Truth, who is the
guardian of Truth and whose dwelling place is the Truth: he is only Agni. In the
Rik (I.75.5), Rishi Rahugana, son of Gotama, prays to Agni : "Sacrifice to Mitra
and Varuna for us; sacrifice to the other Gods; sacrifice to the Truth, the
Vast, the Own Home." From this Rik it is clear that Agni's office of carrying
out the sacrifice is not for the sake of the Yajamana only, but that the Vast
Truth which is the own omen of Agni is the supreme object of Sacrifice. We hear
the same in I1.ro.2
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where it is said : "Shine out, guardian of the Truth, in thy own home."
Such is the profound mantra which has been given a mmon-place meaning by the ritualist interpretation which has it thus : "The hall of sacrifice is the 'own home' of Agni; there is Agni, who increases by consuming the ghee-offering, worshipped morning and evening by the practicum's of Agni-sacrifice."
Tr. Who reignest over pilgrim-sacrifices, luminous guardian of the Truth, increasing in Thy own home.
9. sa nah piteva sūnave'gne sūpāyano bhava, sacasvā nah svastaye. sah nah pitd'iva silnave agne su'updyanah bhava, sacasva nah svastaye.
agne Agni; sa tvam such as Thou art; sūnaue to the son; piteva like a father nah our; sūpāyanah he who is easily approachable, easy of access; bhava be; nah our; svastaye for good; sacasva serve, cling to us, be contained in us.
Tr. Therefore, be easy of access to us as a father up to his sort, cling to us for our happy state.
We have commented upon this hymn of Madhuchhandas on Agni. In this very first hymn of the Rig Veda often Books, is revealed the Secret of the Veda, with a certain clarity. While commenting upon it, we have shown briefly as far as necessary, the line of high thought in the Mantras. Though in the case of certain Riks in the hymn, a ritualistic meaning can be somehow extracted, the line is not clear and straight for a ritualistic interpretation throughout. In the ritualistic interpretation a common-place meaning is brought out after a great deal of difficulty in case of words like kavikratuh, satyah, citrasravastamah, dhiyā namo bharantah, sve dame vardhamānam etc. The meaning derived by them of the mantra 'yadanga ddsuse' is ridiculous in the extreme. The direct meaning is : "To him who offers to Agni what he has or what he is himself, Agni effects the happy good-denoted by the term bhadra-which eliminates the false consciousness and the misery born out of it. And the Truth that is this good is founded in Agni only."
This is the argument that runs through the mantras of the hymn, as seen through this direct opening on the Secret of the Veda. Thus, Rik by Rik :
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First :. God Agni himself is waited upon as the Vicar, the Ritvik, for the carrying out of the sacrifice of the Yajamana.
Second : this discipline of adoration of Agni is not something new adopted by Madhuchhandas but what has come down in the tradition of the Rishis from a long past and by which Agni, the foremost of the Gods, brings the other Gods.
Third : the wealth obtained by the grace of Agni is not tainted by fear, of decay like the worldly variety, but given to increase more an of more.
Fourth : it is not the sacrifice performed by human effort unaided that can reach to the Gods, but only the sacrifice which is guarded In every way from all evil spirits by Agni.
Fifth : endowed with vision and audition, wise, firm .of will, Agni is the helper of the Gods.
Sixth : the giving of the special good which lies in Truth-Consciousness as opposed to the False is the Truth of Agni.—-
Seventh : every day, in all conditions, firm in meditation, weighted with obeisance's, the Rishis wait upon Agni.
Eighth : Truth (the Vast Truth) is the own Home of Agni; there he increases for the Yajamana. That he protects.
Ninth : to such Agni who is realised or in order to realise him, does the Rishi pray with great trust : 'Cling unto us like a father to the son, be easy of access to us.'
Certainly an Agni of this kind cannot be only the sacrificial fire which is but an external symbol. Neither can he be only the deity presiding over the material principle of heat. The Agni adored in this first hymn, whose prowess has been brought out by us and whose features set forth in the hymn, is truly the Truth,, the Lord auspicious, our Seer-Will.
This is the Agni hymn, which gives a foretaste of the essence of the Secret of the Veda and which, in the tradition of the study of the thousand-hymned Veda, is called the epitome of all Vedic study; and it is to emphasise this feature that the ancients say : "Repeat the sukta agnimile, destroyer of sin, creator of prosperity; the fruit of the study of all the Vedas is obtained thereby."
In the famous Soma sacrifice, known as agnhtoma, this hymn is
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recited by the Hotr Prior to the Pouring of the Soma in the morning recitation. 1
T. V. Kapali Sastry.
(Translated from the Siddhāñjana, Commentary on the Rig Veda.)
1 A fine summary of this Sukta by the present commentator is to be found in his Sidelights in Sanskrit literature:
Because his natural movement is one of power and brilliance., his name agni is derived by the wise from the root ang.
In works of the worship of the Gods, Agni is sought after; he is the summoner in the sacrifice3 carrier of felicities, the Ritvik and the Priest.
This adsorptive waiting upon Agni is an ancient science. Capable of bringing the Gods, he is adorable too by the new.
The treasure obtained from Agni, full of Hearing and Strength, increases day by day; it is not subject to decay like the wealth of the world.
It is only the sacrifice which is environed by the Lord Agni, who is invoked, that reaches the Gods, guarded on the way from the evil spirits.
The sacrifice is called adhvara because, arising from the yajamana, he sets out to the world of Svar; because he creates, gives, rati, the path, adhar, to the Heaven, he is known as adhvara.
To such a sacrifice Agni comes with the Gods. He comes in the form of Vision, Will-Power; hence he is spoken of as Seer-Will, kavikratuh.
The happy good averting the False that he, full of varied listenings of the Truth, bears for the yajamana is held to be his special truth.
Shining bright in his own abode, the Supreme Truth, for the yajamana, increasing, guardian of Truth, Lord of the Sacrifices, he is ever adored and waited upon by the Rishis, steadfast, engaged in austerities and meditation with daily obeisance's carrying full surrender.
Like the father who clings to the son, and is easy of access to him, so is Agni to the devoted is Rishi.
Talus lauds the great sage.
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"The truth of all things is in the calm of their depths."
—SRI AUROBINDO
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