Passing Thoughts [3]   Achar   Achar is a mould in which the thing itself rests and feels stable; it is not the thing itself. It is this sense of stability which is the great value of achar, it gives the thing itself the sraddha, the faith that it is meant to abide. It is a conservative force, it helps to preserve things as they are. But it is also a danger and hindrance when change becomes necessary. Conservative forces are either sattwic or tamasic. Achar with knowledge, observance full of the spirit of the thing itself, is sattwic and preserves the thing itself; achar without knowledge, looking to the le

"South Indian Bronzes" 1   THE DISCOVERY of Oriental Art by the aesthetic mind of Europe is one of the most significant intellectual phenomena of the times. It is one element of a general change which has been coming more and more rapidly over the mentality of the human race and promises to culminate in the century to which we belong. This change began with the discovery of Eastern thought and the revolt of Europe against the limitations of the Graeco-Roman and the Christian ideals which had for some centuries united in an uneasy combination to give a new form to her mentality and type of life. The change, whose real

Dayananda and the Veda   DAYANANDA accepted the Veda as his rock of firm foundation, he took it for his guiding view of life, his rule of inner existence and his inspiration for external work, but he regarded it as even more, the word of eternal Truth on which man's knowledge of God and his relations with the Divine Being and with his fellows can be rightly and securely founded. This everlasting rock of the Veda, many assert, has no existence, there is nothing there but the commonest mud and sand; it is only a hymnal of primitive barbarians, only a rude worship of personified natural phenomena, or even less than that, a liturgy of ceremonial sacrif

Marginalia   ON MADHUSUDAN DUTT'S VIRANGANA KAVYA   A Virgilian elegance and sweetness and a Virgilian majesty of diction ennoble the finer epistles of these Heroides; there is too a Virgilian pathos sad & noble breaking out in detached lines and passages, as in Shacountala's sorrowful address to the leaf and the single melancholy line ,  এই কি রে ফেল ফল প্রেম তরু শাখে  but the more essential poetical gifts, creative force, depth or firmness of meditation, passionate feeling, a grasp of the object, consistency & purity of characterisation are still absent. They were not in the poet's nature and such gifts if denied by Nature, are denied for ever. What

Sketch of the Progress of Poetry from Thomson to Wordsworth   The Age of transition from the poetry of Pope to that of Wordsworth begins strictly speaking with Thomson. This transition was not an orderly and consistent development, but consisted of different groups of poets or sometimes even single poets each of whom made a departure in some particular direction which was not followed up by his or their successors. The poetry of the time has the appearance of a number of loose and disconnected threads abruptly broken off in the middle. It was only in the period from 1798 to 1830 that these threads were gathered together and a definite, co

Part Two   On Literature   Sri Aurobindo wrote all the pieces in this part in Baroda between 1893 and 1906. He published the essays making up Bankim Chandra Chatterji in a newspaper in 1893 ­ 94. He published two of the essays on Kalidasa, "The Age of Kalidasa" and "The Seasons", in 1902 and 1909 respectively. He did not publish any of the pieces in the sections headed "On Poetry and Literature" and "On the Mahabharata".   Bankim Chandra Chatterji     I   His Youth and College Life   BANKIM Chandra Chattopadhyaya, the creator and king of Bengali prose, was a high-caste Brahman and the son of a distingu

Part Three   On Education   Sri Aurobindo wrote the pieces in this part at different times between 1899 and 1920. All of them except "Education" and "National Education" were published in periodicals shortly after they were written. Address at the Baroda College Social Gathering   IN ADDRESSING you on an occasion like the present, it is inevitable that the mind should dwell on one feature of this gathering above all others. Held as it is tow

At the Society's Chambers   Professor —Gentlemen, I believe we are here in full strength. It is gratifying to find so much enthusiasm still abroad for the dispassionate acquisition of knowledge. I trust it is not a short-lived fervour; I trust we shall not soon have to declare our society extinct from constitutional inability to form a quorum. Jurist —I believe this is a society for the discussion of all things discussable and the discovery of all things discoverable. Am I right in my supposition? Professor —Your definition is rather wide, but it may pass. What then? Jur

Dayananda The Man and His Work   AMONG the great company of remarkable figures that will appear to the eye of posterity at the head of the Indian Renascence, one stands out by himself with peculiar and solitary distinctness, one unique in his type as he is unique in his work. It is as if one were to walk for a long time amid a range of hills rising to a greater or lesser altitude, but all with sweeping contours, green-clad, flattering the eye even in their most bold and striking elevation. But amidst them all, one hill stands apart, piled up in sheer strength, a mass of bare and puissant granite, with verdure on its summit, a solitary p

Part Seven   Epistles / Letters From Abroad   Sri Aurobindo wrote the first three of these fictional letters in Bengal in 1910. They were published in 1920 ­ 22 without his editorial supervision; they are reproduced here from his manuscripts. He wrote the last three letters in Pondicherry in 1910 or 1911 but never published them; they are reproduced here from his manuscripts.     Epistles from Abroad   I   Dearly beloved, You, my alter ego, my second existence, now sitting comfortably at home and, doubtless, reading the romantic fiction