Archival Notes The Bande Mataram Sedition Trial   In our last issue we published several documents relating to the journal Bande Mataram. The name of this daily newspaper, which means literally "Hail Mother (India)!", was at once a mantra, a patriotic slogan and a battle-cry, and to utter it was a punishable offence in certain parts of British India. Soon after its inception in August 1906, the Bande Mataram shot into the limelight not only in Calcutta and Bengal, but across India, as the most courageous proponent of the ideals of the Nationalist party. In the words of the historian R.C. Majumdar: "Arabinda's articles in the Bande Mataram put the Extremist Party on a high p

The Revision of The Synthesis of Yoga   Sri Aurobindo's Synthesis of Yoga first appeared serially in the monthly review Arya. Its first instalment came out in the Arya's first issue, August 1914. There is no evidence that Sri Aurobindo did any work on this most extended of his yogic writings before June 1914, when it was decided to publish the Arya. There are, however, some remarkable resemblances between certain chapters of the Synthesis (especially in Part IV, "The Yoga of Self-Perfection") and a manuscript of Sri Aurobindo's known as Sapta-Chatushtaya (SABCL Vol. 27, pp. 356-75). The Sanskrit mantras which are presented and elaborated in this document

The Evolutionary Scale    I         WE shall see how the thought of God works itself out in Life. The material world is first formed with the Sun as centre, the Sun itself being only a subordinate star of the great Agni, Mahavishnu. in whom is centred the Bhu. Mahavishnu is the Virat Purusha who as Agni pours Himself out into the forms of sun and star. He is Agni Twashta, Visvakarman, he is also Prajapati and Matariswan. These are the three primal Purushas of the earth-life, — Agni Twashta, Prajapati and Matariswan, all of them soul-bodies of Mahavishnu. Agni Twashta having made the Sun out of the Apas or waters of being, Prajapati as Surya Savitri enters into the

A Theory of the Human Being         It is a superstition of modern thought that the march of knowledge has in all its parts progressed always in a line of forward progress deviating from it, no doubt, in certain periods of obscuration, but always returning and in the sum constituting everywhere an advance and nowhere a retrogression. Like all superstitions this belief is founded on bad and imperfect observation flowering into a logical fallacy. Our observation is necessarily imperfect because we have at our disposal the historical data and literary records of only a few millenniums and beyond only disjected and insufficient indices which leave gigantic room for the

Hymns to the Mystic Fire   HYMNS OF KUTSA ANGIRASA   Mandala I, Sukta 95         1. Day and Night have different forms, but are travellers to one perfect goal; they suckle alternately the divine Child. In our day he becomes the brilliant Sun and is master of the law of his nature; through our night he is visible by the purity of his brightness and the energy of his lustres.       2. Ten powers of the Thought, loving and sleepless goddesses, gave birth to this child of the Maker who is carried very variously and widely. They lead him abroad through the world in a flaming splendour, his keen power of light self-lustrous in all things born       3.

The Life Divine   Chapter II The Golden Rule of Life — Enjoyment and Renunciation         The first line of the Seer's first couplet has given us very briefly and suggestively the base and starting-point of the whole thought of the Upanishad; the second line of the same couplet opens to us, with equal brevity, with equal suggestiveness the consummation of the whole thought of the Upanishad. The rest of the eighteen slokas fill out, complete, play variations; they add much thought that is necessary to avoid error, to perceive supplementary and collateral truths or to guide oneself aright in the path that has been hewn out or to walk with unstumbling footste

The First Hymn of the Rig-veda   MANDALA 1. SUKTA I (1)       1. Agni I adore, the representative priest of the Sacrifice, the god who sacrifices aright, the priest of the offering who disposes utterly delight.       2. Agni adorable to the seers of old, is adorable also [to the] new. for he brings hither the gods.       3: By Agni one gets him energy and an increase day by day full of success and full of power.       4. Agni. the material sacrifice which thou encompassest with thy being on every side, that indeed goeth to the gods.       5. Agni the priest of the offering, who has the force of the wisdom, the true, the full of rich-

Notes on the Texts   A Swadeshi Meeting. A report of Sri Aurobindo's speech at Bhavanipur, Calcutta, on 13 October 1909, has already been published under the title "Swadeshi in Calcutta" in SABCL Volume 27, page 75 That report, taken from the Times of India (Bombay), is short and summary. The present report, longer and no doubt closer to the original speech, is taken from the Bengalee of Calcutta, issue of 15 October 1909. The speech deals with the forthcoming observance of the 16th of October, Partition Day, or as Sri Aurobindo preferred to call it, Union Day (see SABCL Vol. 2, p. 243). During the mass meeting held in Beadon Square, Calcutta, on the sixteenth, Sri Aurobindo

The Morality of Boycott         Ages ago there was a priest of Baal who thought himself commissioned by the god to kill all who did not bow the knee to him . All men , terrified by the power and ferocity of the priest, bowed down before the idol and pretended to be his servants ; and the few who refused had to take refuge in hills and deserts. At last a deliverer came and slew the priest and the world had rest. The slayer was blamed by those who placed religion in quietude and put passivity forward as the ideal ethics, but the world looked on him as an incarnation of God.       A certain class of minds shrink from aggressiveness as if it were a sin. Their tem

The First Hymn of the Rig-veda       MANDALA I, SUKTA 1       1. The Fire I pray, the divine vicar of the sacrifice and ordinant of the rite, the Summoner1 who most founds the ecstasy.   2. The Fire, desirable to the ancient seers, so even to the new, — may he come to us with the gods.   3. By the Fire one obtains a wealth that increases day by day, glorious and full of hero-powers.   4. O Fire, the pilgrim sacrifice which thou encompassest on every side, reaches the gods.   5. Fire, priest of the call, the seer-will rich in brilliant inspirations, may he come to us, a god with the gods.   6. O Fire, the happy good that