{"id":74,"date":"2013-07-13T01:25:42","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=74"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:25:42","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:25:42","slug":"08-bankim-chandra-chatterji-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03\/08-bankim-chandra-chatterji-vol-03-the-harmony-of-virtue-volume-03","title":{"rendered":"-08_Bankim Chandra Chatterji.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n
\nS<\/b><\/font><\/span>ECTION
\n<\/span>T<\/span>wo<\/span><\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

\nBANKIM CHANDRA CHATTERJI<\/b><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nOn the passing away of Bankim Chandra Chatterji in
\n1894 Sri Aurobindo wrote a series of seven articles,
\n"Bankim Chandra Chatterji by a Bengali" in the Induprakash<\/i> of Bombay from July 16, 1894 to August
\n27, 1894. These articles were signed "Zero".<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

 
\n
\nONE<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\nHis Youth and College Life<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nB<\/font>ankim <\/font>
\n<\/b>Chandra Chattopadhyaya, the
\ncreator and king of Bengali prose, was a high-caste Brahman
\nand the son of a distinguished official in Lower Bengal. Born
\nat Kantalpara on the 27th June 1838, dead at Calcutta on the
\n8th April 1894, his fifty-six years of laborious life were a parcel
\nof the most splendid epoch in Bengali history; yet among its
\nmany noble names, his is the noblest. His life shows us three
\nfaces, his academical career, his official labours and his literary
\ngreatness; it will be here my endeavour to give some description
\nof each and all. The first picture we have of his childhood is his
\nmastering the alphabet at a single reading; and this is not only
\nthe initial picture but an image and prophecy of the rest. Even
\nthus early men saw in him the three natural possessions of the
\ncultured Bengali, a boundless intellect, a frail constitution and
\na temper mild to the point of passivity. And indeed Bankim
\nwas not only our greatest: he was also our type and magnified
\npattern. He was the image of all that is most finely characteristic
\nin the Bengali race. At Midnapur, the home of his childhood,
\nthe magnificence of his intellect came so early into view, that his
\nname grew into a proverb. "You will soon be another Bankim",
\n\u2014 for a master to say that was the hyperbole of praise, and the
\nbest reward of industry. He ascended the school by leaps and
\nbounds; so abnormal indeed was his swiftness that it put his
\nmasters in fear for him. They grew nervous lest they should
\nspoil by over-instruction the delicate fibre of his originality, and
\nwith a wise caution, they obstructed his entrance into the highest
\nclass. Bankim had always an extraordinary luck. Just as at school his fine
\npromise was saved by the prudence of its guardians from the altar of High Education, the Moloch to whom we
\nstupidly sacrifice India’s most hopeful sons, so it was saved at
\nHugly College by his own distaste for hard work. At Hugly<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 75<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nCollege quite as much as at Midnapur he had .the reputation of
\nan intellectual miracle. And indeed his ease and quickness in
\nstudy were hardly human. Prizes and distinctions cost him no
\neffort in the attaining. He won his honours with a magical carelessness and as if by accident while others toiled and failed.
\nBut while unconquerably remiss in his duties, he bestowed wonderful pains on his caprices. He conceived at this time a passion
\nfor Sanskrit and read with great perseverance at a Pandit’s tol<\/i>.
\n<\/i>In a single year, he had gone through the Mugdhabodh, Raghuvansa, Bhatti and the Meghaduta. Advancing at this pace he
\nmanaged in something under four years to get a sense of mastery
\nin the ancient tongue and a feeling for its literary secrets which
\ngave him immense leverage in his work of creating a new prose.
\nNot that there is the least touch of pedantry in his Bengali style: rather it was he and Madhu Sudan Dutt who broke the tyranny
\nof the Sanskrit tradition: but one feels how immensely his labour
\nwas simplified by a fine and original use of his Sanskrit knowledge. At the age of seventeen, being then a student of five
\nyears standing, he cut short his attendance at Hugly College.
\nHe left behind him a striking reputation, to which, except Dwarakanath Mitra, no student has ever come near. Yet he had done
\npositively nothing in the way of application or hard work. As
\nwith most geniuses his intellectual habits were irregular. His
\nspirit needed larger bounds than a school routine could give it,
\nand refused, as every free mind does, to cripple itself and lose its
\nnatural suppleness. It was his constant habit, a habit which grew
\non with the lapse of time, to hide himself in a nook of the College Library and
\nindulge his wandering appetite in all sorts of reading. At the eleventh hour and with an examination impending,
\nhe would catch up his prescribed books, hurry through them at
\na canter, win a few prizes, and go back to his lotus-eating. I
\nbelieve this is a not uncommon habit with brilliant young men
\nin all countries and it saves them from the sterilising effects of
\nover-instruction; but it hardly strikes one as a safe policy for
\nslower minds. At the Presidency College, his next seat of instruction, he shaped his versatile intellect to the study of law. He had
\nthen some project of qualifying as a High Court Pleader, but at
\nthe right moment for literature the Calcutta University came into<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 76<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\nbeing and Bankim took literary honours instead of legal. The
\nCourts lost a distinguished pleader and India gained a great man.
\nBankim, however, seems to have had some hankering after Law;<\/font> 
\n<\/font>for he subsequently snatched time from hard official drudgery
\nand larger literary toil to appear with his usual distinguished
\nsuccess for the B.L. But his chief pretension to academical
\noriginality is perhaps that he was, together with Jodunath Bose,
\nour first B.A., even in this detail leading the way for his countrymen. His official appointment followed close on the heels of
\nhis degree. At the age of twenty he was sent as Deputy Magistrate to Jessore.<\/font><\/p>\n

\nI have drawn out, in a manner as little perfunctory as I
\ncould manage, this skeleton of Bankim’s academical life. In
\nany account of an eminent Hindu a dry sketch of this sort is a
\nform that must be gone through; for we are a scholastic people
\nand in our life examinations and degrees fill up half the book.
\nBut examinations and degrees are a minor episode in the history
\nof a mind. An European writer has acutely observed that nothing which is worth knowing can be taught. That is a truth
\nwhich Dr. Bhandarkar, when he can spare time from his Carlyle,
\nmight ponder over with profit. Not what a man learns, but
\nwhat he observes for himself in life and literature is the
\nformative agency in his existence, and the actual shape it will
\ntake is much determined by the sort of social air he happens to
\nbreathe at that critical moment when the mind is choosing
\nits road. All else is mere dead material useless without the
\nbreath of a vivifying culture. If examinations and degrees are
\nthe skeleton of university life, these are its soul and life-blood,
\nand where they exist poorly or not at all, education, except for
\nthe one or two self-sufficing intellects, becomes mere wind and
\ndust. Among what sort of men did the student Bankim move ?
\nFrom what social surroundings did his adolescent personality
\ntake its colour ? These are questions of a nearer interest than the
\nexaminations he passed or the degrees he took; and to them I
\nshall give a larger answer.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nPage <\/font>
\n\u2013 77<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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