NOTE

Volume 4 in the SRI AUROBINDO BIRTH CENTENARY LIBRARY contains Sri Aurobindo's original Bengali writings.

Sri Aurobindo started learning Bengali, his mother tongue, in England, as a probationer for the Indian Civil Service. After his return to India he began a serious study of the language with a view to acquiring proficiency in reading, writing and speaking. During his stay at Baroda he wrote some poetry in Bengali, attempting even a long poem called "Usha-Haran Kabya". A few lines from this work are reproduced here for the first time.

It is to this poem that his brother, Manmohan, himself a poet, refers in his letter to Rabindranath Tagore, dated October 24, 1894. We quote from it the following extract:

"Aurobindo is anxious to know what you think of his book of verses¹, but I have explained to him how busy you are just now; and that you will write later when you have a little more leisure to do justice to his book. I myself think that he is possessed of considerable powers of language and a real literary gift, — but is lacking in stuff and matter, perhaps in warmth of temperament. But those pieces on Parnell², consisting of fine philosophic reflection, show, I think, that he might do great things. Unfortunately he has directed (or rather misdirected) all his energies to writing Bengali poetry. He is at present engaged on an epic (inspired I believe by Michael Madhusudan) on the subject of Usha and Aniruddha."

He wrote several articles for the earlier issues of Yugantar, a Bengali revolutionary weekly started by his brother Barin and others under his guidance in March 1906. But not a single copy of this journal has so far been traced.

The earliest available Bengali writings of Sri Aurobindo besides "Usha-Haran Kabya" are the three letters to his wife Mrinalini Devi written between 1905 and 1907. These were produced as exhibits in the Alipore Conspiracy Case in 1908, and having attracted public notice were reproduced in various journals and in book-form soon afterwards.

After his acquittal in 1909 Sri Aurobindo started a Bengali weekly called Dharma, and wrote most of the editorial comments and leading

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¹SONGS TO MYRTILLA published a year later, in 1895.

²Charles Stewart Parnell (1891) and Hic facet (Centenary Volume 5, pp. 15, 11).

articles for it until his withdrawal to Chandernagore in February 1910. Most of these leading articles were published in book-form in 1920 under the title DHARMA O JATIYATA by Prabartak Publishing House, Chandernagore. In the present volume these articles are arranged under two sections, "Dharma" and "Jatiyata" (Religion and Nationalism). The editorial comments from Dharma are published here in a separate section for the first time.

Some of the articles on the. Gita from Dharma were separately brought out in book-form in 1920 by the Prabartak Sangha under the title GITAR BHUMIKA.

KARAKAHINI (Tales of Prison Life) was first serialised in nine parts in the Bengali monthly, Suprabhat in 1909-1910. This series remained incomplete as Sri Aurobindo left Bengal in 1910. The essay, "Karagriha O Swadhinata" (Prison and Freedom), was published in Bharati, a Bengali journal, about the same time. KARAKAHINI came out in book-form in 1920 from Chandernagore.

In 1918 Sri Aurobindo wrote "Jagannather Rath" (the Chariot of Jagannath) for Prabartak, a journal published from Chandernagore. The article was published in book-form in 1921 along with some others under the same title by the Prabartak Publishing House.

His letter to Barin, also known as "Letter from Pondicherry", written in 1920 was first published in Narayana, a journal edited by C. R. Das. It was also issued as a booklet in the same year and later along with "Letters to Mrinalini" under the title SRI AUROBINDER PATRA (Letters of Sri Aurobindo) by the Prabartak Publishing House.

A number of articles on the Vedas, Upanishads and other subjects found in Sri Aurobindo's manuscripts were first put together in book-form in 1955 under the title VIVIDHA RACHANA. In this volume they have been distributed in various sections.

The letters Sri Aurobindo wrote to some women disciples who did not know English were published as PATRAWALI in two parts, the first in 1951 and the second in 1959.

The original sources of all articles are indicated in the Table of Contents.