THE FIRST AMERICANS IN THE SRI AUROBINDO ASHRAM     RECOLLECTIONS OF THEM AND NOTES ON SOME PERSONAL TOPICS RELATED TO AMERICA     1   The first American name to fly about in the Ashram's air was one that significantly had a plural ring: McPheeters. It was two Americans who jointly started the flow of the New World to the Newer World which Sri Aurobindo and the Mother had begun to build in the Old. They were husband and wife: Vaun and Janet McPheeters. They were here already before I stepped into Pondicherry on December 16, 1927. The Mother had given them the upper floor of a two-s

A DREAM AND AN ATTEMPT AT ITS READING     "I had a dream some days back. I am in a shop to buy an umbrella. I ask for the colours. I pick up an emer- ald-green umbrella from those set before me. It is very fine but somehow has marks of birds' droppings on it! Still, I decide to take it. Then suddenly I am by the Pondicherry sea. Many Ashramites are there. Some are sitting on rocks in the water. All of them are children — except Lalubhai. I ask why all are there and am told that the Mother is coming and it is best to be in or near the water. I wonder why then people are not in th

PUNCTUATING OUR WORLD-VIEW     AN EXERCISE WITH THE PASSAGE OF TIME     What punctuation-mark could better express our state of mind face to face with the modern world and its enigmatic as well as ominous movement from day to day than the sign of interrogation? Some might be stirred to use the exclamation-sign because every day an unpleasant surprise is in store for us making us sit up straight and evoking from our hearts a desperate "Oh!" Others might vote for the colon: they would do so on the following ground: each sunrise reveals more glaringly the import of unpleasantness suggested by the previous sunset. Stil

-034_Her Changing Eyes (Poem).htm HER CHANGING EYES Brims there a fathomless blue? Then love's deep surge has made her ocean-souled! Shed they a fiery hue? Then truth has lit her mind to pure sun-gold! Are they like purple wine? O she is drunk with the Ineffable! Outbeams a dark dew-shine? With pity of your gloom her lustres fill. ] But when that varied glance Is fading to a quiet none can see Behind snow-lids of trance, She's waking in you all eternity!     20.9.33 Page-166

SUPPLEMENT THREE CHANDRAGUPTA MAURYA, CHANDRAGUPTA I AND THE GREEK PICTURE OF SANDROCOTTUS A COMPARATIVE GLANCE AT THE RIVAL CLAIMS Even apart from the weighty chronological tilt from Megasthenes favouring the founder of the Imperial Guptas instead of the founder of the Maurya dynasty as the Indian original of the Greeks' Sandrocottus in the time of Alexander and his immediate successor Seleucus Nicator, there are substantial considerations to support the former and not the latter Indian monarch. The most obvious and perhaps the most decisive point is the information by Strabo (XV.1.36)1 from Megasthenes apropos o

-010_The True Dates of the Bharata War and of the Kaliyuga marked by Krishna^s death.htm SUPPLEMENT ONE THE TRUE DATES OF THE BHĀRATA WAR AND OF THE KALIYUGA MARKED BY KRISHNA'S DEATH To round off our chronology in terms that are prominent in the Indian tradition we should arrive at an estimate of the epoch in which the Bhārata War was fought and in whose wake the Yuga traditionally designated Kali commenced, essentially marked by the death of Krishna who had been the centrally determinative figure in that critical carnage. We have fastened on the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. for the start of the Imperial Guptas as the sole feature of the old Purānic chronology whi

SUPPLEMENT TWO THE CHRONOLOGICAL AND ADMINISTRATIVE BEARING OF THE KAUTĪLIYA ĀRTHAŚASTRA Now that the main chronological problems connected with our thesis have been tackled, a determination of the age of the political treatise going by the name of Arthaśāstra and purporting to have been written by Kautilya, alias Chānakya and Vishnugupta, whom tradition regards as the chief minister of Chandragupta Maury a, can be attempted. An estimate related to our dating of Chandragupta I instead of the first Maurya to the time of Megasthenes must be outlined and justified in order to give a finishing touch to this s

BIBLIOGRAPHY Agrawala, V. S., India as known to Pānini (Lucknow, 1953) "Bhuvana Kośa Janapadas of Bharatvarsha", Purāna ( Varanasi), V, No.1 "Yāska and Pānini" The Cultural Heritage of India (Sri Ramakrishna Mission, Calcutta, 1958), Vol.I Aitareya Brāhmana, IV, V, VII, VIII Aiyangar, K. V. Rangaswami, "The Samavartana of Snana (The end of Studentship)", Prof. K. V. Rangaswami Aiyangar Commemoration Volume (Madras, 1940) Aiyangar, S. Krishnaswami, "Studies in Gupta History", Journal of Indian History, VI, Supplement, Madras. Hindu India from Original Sources (Bombay 1919) The Beginnings of South Indian History (Madras

-002_The Challenge of India^s Traditional Chronology.htm PART ONE THE CHALLENGE OF INDIA'S TRADITIONAL CHRONOLOGY 1 The chronology of ancient India, as determined by modern historians, diverges completely from the chronology framed by India herself for her own antiquity. The complete divergence applies not only to very remote occurrences like the Bhārata War: it applies also to comparatively late ones like the rule of the Imperial Guptas. Could India be utterly at fault about historical time? Surely, here is an issue of capital importance - and. as if to rivet our attention on it, it becomes crucial apropos of the very point that brought modern historians their moment of "Eureka

SUPPLEMENT ONE WHO WERE THE Gangaridai? AN OLD QUESTION REOPENED "Gangaridai" (sometimes misspelled "Gandaridai", once "Gan-daritai") - "Gāngārides", - "Gāngāridae" (or "Gaggaridae"1) -these are the names under which a great people in ancient India was known to Greek and Latin writers of antiquity. Modern historians2 are as good as unanimous in locating this people in the region watered by the mouths of the Ganges, the Ganges-delta in what is now called Lower Bengal. And for their decision they quote two authorities: (1) Megasthenes (c. 302 B.C.) whose lost book Indica is believed to have been extensively drawn upon by several Classical autho