{"id":789,"date":"2013-07-13T01:30:25","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=789"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:30:25","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:30:25","slug":"40-to-my-brother-mannohan-ghose-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/27-supplement-volume-27\/40-to-my-brother-mannohan-ghose-vol-27-supplement-volume-27","title":{"rendered":"-40_To My Brother (Mannohan Ghose).htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n

\n\tSUPPLEMENT   <\/span>
\n\tTO
\n\tVOLUME  
\n<\/span>9<\/font><\/b><\/p>\n

\n\tTHE  <\/span>FUTURE  <\/span>POETRY
\n\t
\n
\n\t<\/font>LETTERS <\/span>ON <\/span><\/i>POETRY, LITERATURE  <\/span>AND ART<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 \n\t<\/p>\n

\n   <\/span>                                        
\n<\/span>This letter addressed by Sri Aurobindo to
\nhis poet-brother 
\n                                 
\nManmohan Ghose, was found in a typewritten form among 
\n                                 
\nhis manuscripts.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nThe spellings of <\/i>proper names have been maintained as found in the typed
\ncopy.
\n<\/span>
\n
\n<\/span>Page-145<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\n\tPurānamityeva
\n na sādhu sarvam,<\/i>
\n Na cāpi kāvyam navamityavadyam:<\/p>\n

<\/i><\/font><\/p>\n

Santah
\n pariksyānyatarad bhajante: <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

Mūdah
\n parapratyayaneyabuddhi.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

           
\n  <\/span><\/i>Kalidasa<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Not
\n everything that is old is good,
\n Nor is a poem therefore faulty because it is new:<\/font><\/p>\n

Good
\n critics examine and prefer:
\n The fool follows in the beaten track of opinion.<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n                       Page-147<\/font><\/p>\n

\n


\nTo
\nMy Brother<\/span><\/p>\n

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

\n                      
\n<\/span>O<\/b><\/font>NLY <\/span>a
\nshort while ago I had a letter from you – I cannot lay my hands on the passage,
\nbut I remember it contained an unreserved condemnation of Hindu legend as
\ntrivial and insipid, a mass of crude and monstrous conceptions, a
\nlumber-room of Hindu banalities. The main point of your indictment
\nwas that it had nothing in it simple, natural, passionate and human, that the
\ncharacters were lifeless patterns of moral excellence.
\n              
\n<\/span>I have been so long accustomed to regard your taste and
\njudgment as sure and final that it is with some distrust I find myself differing
\nfrom you. Will you permit me then to enter into some slight
\ndefence of what you have so emphatically condemned and explain why I
\nventure to dedicate a poem on a Hindu subject, written in the Hindu
\nspirit and constructed on Hindu principles of taste, style and
\nmanagement, to you who regard all these things as anathema maranatha? I
\nam not attempting to convince you, only to justify, or at least
\ndefine my own standpoint; perhaps also a little to reassure myself in the
\nline of poetical art I have,
\nchosen.
\n           
\n<\/span>The impression that Hindu Myth has made on you, is its inevitable aspect
\nto a taste nourished on the pure dew and honey of Hellenic
\ntradition; for the strong Greek sense of symmetry and finite beauty is in
\nconflict with the very spirit of Hinduism, which is a vast attempt of the
\nhuman intellect to surround the universe with itself, an immense
\nmeasuring of itself with the infinite and amorphous. Hellenism must
\nnecessarily see in the greater part of Hindu imaginations and thoughts a mass of
\ncrude fancies equally removed from the ideal and the real. But when it
\ncondemns all Hindu legend without distinction, I believe it is acting from an
\ninstinct which is its defect,<\/span> –<\/span>
\nthe necessary defect of its fine
\nquality. For in order to preserve<\/span> a pure, sensitive and severe standard
\nof taste and critical judgment, it is compelled to be intolerant; to insist,
\nthat is, on its own limits and rule out all that<\/font><\/p>\n

\n
\nPage-148<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

exceeds
\nthem, as monstrous and unbeautiful. It rejects that flexible sympathy based on
\ncuriosity of temperament, which attempts to project itself into differing types
\nas it meets them and so pass on through ever-widening artistic experiences to
\nits destined perfection. And it rejects it because such catholicity would break
\nthe fine mould into which its own temperament is cast. This is well; yet is
\nthere room in art and criticism for that other, less fine but more many-sided,
\nwhich makes possible new elements and strong departures. Often as the romantic
\ntemperament stumbles and creates broken and unsure work, sometimes it scores one
\nof those signal triumphs which subject new art forms to the service of poetry or
\nopen up new horizons to poetical experience. What judgment would such a
\ntemperament, seeking its good where it can find it, but not grossly
\nindiscriminating, not igno<\/span>bly
\nsatisfied, pronounce on the Hindu legends?
\n            
\n<\/span>I would carefully distinguish between two types of myth, the
\nreligious-philosophical allegory and the genuine secular legend. The former is
\nbeyond the pale of profitable argument. Created by the allegorical and
\nsymbolising spirit of mediaeval Hinduism, the religious myths are a type of
\npoetry addressed to a peculiar mental constitution, and the sudden shock of the
\nbizarre repels occidental imagination the moment it comes in contact with
\nPuranic literature, reveals to us where the line lies that must eternally divide
\nEast from West. The difference is one of root-temperament and therefore
\nunbridgeable. There is the mental composition which has no facet towards
\nimaginative religion, and if it accepts religion at all, requires it to be
\nplain, precise and dogmatic; to such these allegories must always seem false in
\nart and barren in significance. And there is the mental composition in which a
\nstrong metaphysical bent towards religion combines with an imaginative tendency
\nseeking symbol both as an atmosphere around religion, which would otherwise
\ndwell on too breathless mountaintops, and as a safeguard against the spirit of
\ndogma. These find in Hindu allegory a perpetual delight and refreshment; they
\nbelieve it to be powerful and penetrating, sometimes with an epical daring of
\nidea and an inspiration of searching appropriateness which not unoften dissolves
\ninto a strange and curious beauty. The strangeness permeating these legends is a
\nvital part<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-149<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

of
\nthemselves, and to eliminate the bizarre in them – bizarre to European notion,
\nfor to us they seem striking ,and natural- would be to emasculate them of the
\nmost characteristic part of their strength. Let us leave this type aside then as
\nbeyond the field of fruitful discussion.
\n            
\n<\/span>There remain the secular legends; and it is true that a great number of
\nthem are intolerably puerile and grotesque. My point is that the puerility is no
\nessential part of them but lies in their presentment, and that presentment again
\nis characteristic of the Hindu spirit not in its best and most self-realising
\nepochs. They were written in an age of decline, and their present form is the
\nresult of a literary accident. The Mahabharata of Vyasa, originally an epic of
\n24,000 verses, afterwards enlarged by a redacting poet, was finally submerged in
\na vast mass of inferior accretions, the work often of a tasteless age and
\nunskilful hands. It is in this surface mass that the majority of the Hindu
\nlegends have floated down to our century. So preserved, it is not surprising
\nthat the old simple beauty of the ancient tales should have come, to us marred
\nand disfigured, as well as debased by association with later inventions which
\nhave no kernel of sweetness. And yet very simple and beautiful , in their
\npeculiar Hindu type, were these old legends with infinite possibilities of
\nsweetness and feeling, and in the hands of great artists have blossomed into
\ndramas and epics of the most delicate tenderness or the most noble sublimity.
\nOne who glances at the dead and clumsy narrative of the Shacountala legend in
\nthe Mahabharata and reads after it Kalidasa`s masterpiece in which delicate
\ndramatic art and gracious tenderness of feeling reach their climax, at once
\nperceives how they vary with the hands which touch them.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

            
\n<\/span>But you are right. The Hindu myth has not the warm passionate life of the
\nGreek. The Hindu mind was too austere and idealistic to be sufficiently
\nsensitive to the rich poetical colouring inherent in crime and sin and
\noverpowering passion; an Oedipus or an Agamemnon stands therefore outside the
\nline of its creative faculty. Yet it had in revenge a power which you will
\nperhaps think no compensation at all, but which to a certain class of minds, of
\nwhom I confess myself one, seems of a very real and distinct value. Inferior in
\nwarmth and colour and quick life and the<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-150<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

savour
\nof earth to the Greek, they had a superior spiritual loveliness and exaltation;
\nnot clothing the surface of the earth with imperishable beauty, they search
\ndeeper into the white-hot core of things and in their cyclic orbit of thought
\ncurve downward round the most hidden foundations of existence and upward over
\nthe highest, almost invisible arches of ideal possibility. Let me touch the
\nsubject a little more precisely. The difference between the Greek and Hindu
\ntemperaments was that one was vital, the other supra-vital; the one physical,
\nthe other metaphysical; the one sentient of sunlight as its natural atmosphere
\nand the bound of its joyous activity, the other regarding it as a golden veil
\nwhich hid from it beautiful and wonderful things for which it panted.<\/font> (<\/font>O
\nfostering Sun, who hast hidden the face of Truth with thy golden shield,
\ndisplace that splendid veil from the vision of the righteous man, O Sun.<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

   <\/span><\/font>            
\nO
\nfosterer, O solitary traveller, O Sun, OMaster of Death, O child of God,
\ndissipate thy beams, gather inward thy light; so shall I behold that splendour,
\nthy goodliest form of all. For the Spirit who is there and there, He am I.<\/span><\/font>)<\/span>
\nThe Greek aimed at limit and finite perfection, because he felt vividly all our
\nbounded existence; the Hindu mind, ranging into the infinite tended to the
\nenormous and moved habitually in the sublime. This is poetically a dangerous
\ntendency; finite beauty, symmetry and form are always lovely, and Greek legend,
\neven when touched by inferior poets, must always keep something of its light and
\nbloom and human grace or of its tragic human force. But the infinite is not for
\nall hands to meddle with; it submits only to the compulsion of the mighty, and
\nat the touch of an inferior mind recoils over the boundary of the sublime into
\nthe grotesque. Hence the enormous difference of level between different legends
\nor the same legend in different hands, – the sublimity or tenderness of the
\nbest, the banality of the worst, with a little that is mediocre and intermediate
\nshading the contrast away. To take with a reverent hand the old myths and
\ncleanse them of soiling accretions, till they shine with some of the antique
\nstrength, simplicity and solemn depth of beautiful meaning, is an ambition which
\nHindu poets of today may and do worthily
\ncherish. To accomplish a similar duty in a foreign tongue is a <\/span>more
\nperilous endeavour.<\/span> ,<\/p>\n

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

         
\n<\/span>I have attempted in the following narrative to bring one of<\/font><\/p>\n


\n<\/span>The lsha Upanishad, 15
\n& 16.<\/span><\/p>\n


\nPage-151<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

our old legends
\nbefore the English public in a more attractive garb than could be cast over them
\nby mere translation or by the too obvious handling of writers like Sir Edwin
\nArnold; –
\npreserving its inner spirit and Hindu
\nfeatures, yet rejecting no de<\/span>vice
\nthat might smooth<\/span> away the sense
\nof roughness and the bi<\/span>zarre
\nwhich always haunts what is unfamiliar, and win for it the suffrage of a culture
\nto which our mythological conventions are unknown and our canons of taste
\nunacceptable. The attempt is necessarily beset with difficulties and pitfalls.
\nIf you think I have even in part succeeded, I shall be indeed gratified; if
\notherwise, I shall at least have the consolation of having failed where failure
\nwas more probable than success.
\n               <\/span>The
\nstory of Ruaru is told in the very latest accretion layer of the Mahabharata, in
\na bald and puerile narrative without force, beauty or insight. Yet it is among
\nthe most significant and powerful in idea of our legends; for it is rather an
\nidea than a tale. Bhrigou, the grandfather of Ruaru, is almost the most august
\nand venerable name in Vedic literature. Set there at the very threshold of Aryan
\n<\/span>history, he looms dim but large out of the mists of an incalculable
\nantiquity, while around him move great shadows of unborn peoples and a tradition
\nof huge half-discernible movements and vague but colossal revolutions. In later
\nstory his issue form one of the most sacred clans of Rishies, and Purshurama the
\ndestroyer of princes was of his offspring. By the Titaness Puloma this mighty
\nseer and patriarch, himself one of the mind-children of Brahma had a son Chyavan,
\n– who <\/span>inherited even from the womb his father’s personality, greatness and
\nascetic energy. Chyavan too became an instructor and former of historic minds
\nand a father of civilisation; Ayus was among his pupils, the child of Pururavas
\nby Urvasie and founder of the Lunar or Ilian dynasty whose princes after the
\ngreat civil wars of the Mahabharata became Emperors of India. Chyavan’s son
\nPramati, by an Apsara or nymph of paradise, begot a son named Ruaru, of whom
\nthis story is told. This Ruaru, later, became a great Rishi like his fathers,
\nbut in his youth he was engrossed with his love for a beautiful girl whom he had
\nmade his wife, the daughter of the Gundhurva King, Chitroruth, by the sky-nymph
\nMenaca; an earlier sister therefore of Shacountala.  <\/font><\/p>\n

\n <\/span>P<\/span>age-152<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

Their
\njoy of union was not yet old when Priyumvada perished, like Eurydice by the
\nfangs of a snake. Ruaru inconsolable for her loss wandered miserable among the
\nforests that had been the shelter and witnesses of their love consuming the
\nuniverse with his grief until the Gods took pity on him and promised him his
\nwife back, if he sacrificed for her half his life. To this Ruaru gladly assented
\nand the price paid was reunited with his love.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\n<\/span>Such is the story divested of the subsequent puerile developments by
\nwhich it is linked on to the Mahabharata. If we compare it with the kindred tale
\nof Eurydice, the distinction I have sought to draw between the Hindu and Greek
\nmythopoetic faculty justifies itself with great force and clearness. The
\nincidents of Orpheus` descent into Hades, his conquering Death and Hell by his
\nmusic and harping his love back to the sunlight and the tragic loss of her at
\nthe moment of success through a too natural and beautiful human weakness has
\ninfinite fancy pathos, trembling human emotion. The Hindu tale, barren of this
\nsubtlety and variety is bare of incident and wanting in tragedy. It is merely a
\nbare idea for a tale. Yet what an idea it supplies! How deep and searching is
\nthat thought of half the living man’s life demanded as the inexorable price for
\nthe restoration of his dead! How it seems to knock at the very doors of human
\ndestiny, and give us a gust of air from worlds beyond our own suggesting
\nillimitable and unfathomable thoughts of our potentialities and limitations.
\n             
\n<\/span>I have ventured in this poem to combine, as far as might bet the two
\ntemperaments, the Greek pathetic and the Hindu mystic; yet I have carefully
\npreserved the essence of the Hindu spirit and the Hindu mythological features.
\nThe essential idea of these Hindu legends aiming, as they do, straight and sheer
\nat the sublime and ideal gives the writer no option but to attempt epic tone and
\nform – I speak of course of those which are not merely beautiful stories of
\ndomestic life. In the choice of an epic setting I had the alternative of
\nentirely Hellenising the myth or adopting the method of Hindu epic. I have
\npreferred the course  <\/span>which I fear
\nwill least recommend itself to you. The true subject of Hindu epic is always a
\nstruggle between two ideal forces universal and opposing while the human and
\ndivine actors the Supreme Triad <\/span>excepted,
\nare pawns moved to and fro by immense world-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-153
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

impulses
\nwhich they express but cannot consciously guide. It is perhaps the Olympian
\nideal in life struggling with the Titanic ideal, and then we have a Ramaian. Or
\nit may be the imperial ideal in government and society marshalling the forces of
\norder, self-subjection, self-effacement, justice, equality, against the
\naristocratic ideal, with self-will, violence, independence, self- assertion,
\nfeudal loyalty, the sway of the sword and the right of the stronger at its back;
\nthis is the key of the Mahabharata. Or it is again, as in the tale of Savitrie,
\nthe passion of a single woman in its dreadful silence and strength pitted
\nagainst Death, the divorcer of souls. Even in a purely domestic tale like the
\nRomance of Nul, the central idea is that of the spirit of Degeneracy, the genius
\nof the Iron age, – overpowered by a steadfast conjugal love. Similarly, in this
\nstory of Ruaru and Priyumvada the great spirits who preside over Love and Death,
\nCama and Yama, are the real actors and give its name to the poem.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

            
\n<\/span>The second essential feature of the Hindu epic model is one which you
\nhave selected for especial condemnation and yet I have chosen to adhere to it in
\nits entirety. The characters of Hindu legend are, you say, lifeless patterns of
\nmoral excellence. Let me again distinguish. The greater figures of our epics are
\nideals, but ideals of wickedness as well as virtue and also of mixed characters
\nwhich are not precisely either vicious or virtuous. They are, that is to say,
\nideal presentments of character-types. This also arises from the tendency of the
\nHindu creative mind to look behind the actors at tendencies, inspirations,
\nideals. Yet are these great figures; are Rama, Sita, Savitrie, merely patterns
\nof moral excellence? I who have read their tale in the swift and mighty language
\nof Valmekie and Vyasa and thrilled with their joys and their sorrows, cannot
\npersuade myself that it is so. Surely Savitrie that strong silent heart, with
\nher powerful and subtly-indicated personality, has both life and charm; surely
\nRama puts too much divine fire into all he does to be a dead thing, – Sita is
\ntoo gracious and sweet, too full of human lovingness and lovableness of womanly
\nweakness and womanly strength! Ruaru and Priyumvada are also types and ideals;
\nlove in them, such is the idea, finds not only its crowning exaltation but that
\nperfect idea<\/i> of itself of which every exis- <\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-154<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

ting
\nlove is a partial and not quite successful manifestation. Ideal love is a triune
\nenergy, neither a mere sensual impulse, nor mere emotional nor mere spiritual.
\nThese may exist, but they are not love. By itself the sensual is only an animal
\nneed, the emotional a passing mood, the spiritual a religious aspiration which
\nhas lost its way. Yet all these are necessary elements of the highest passion.
\nSense impulse is as necessary to it as the warm earth-matter at its root to the
\ntree, emotion as the air which consents with its life, spiritual aspiration as
\nthe light and the rain from heaven which prevent it from withering. My
\nconception being an ideal struggle between love and death, two things are needed
\nto give it poetical form, an adequate picture of love and adequate image of
\ndeath. The love pictured must be on the ideal plane, and touch therefore the
\nfarthest limit of strength in each of its three directions. The sensual must be
\nemphasised to give it firm root and basis, the emotional to impart to it life,
\nthe spiritual to prolong it into infinite permanence. And if at their limits of
\nextension the three meet and harmonise, if they are not triple but triune, then
\nis that love a perfect love and the picture of it a perfect picture. Such at
\nleast is the conception of the poem; whether I have contrived even faintly to
\nexecute it, do you judge.
\n<\/font>         
\n<\/span>  <\/span>But when
\nHindu canons of taste, principles of epic-writing and types of thought and
\ncharacter are assimilated there are still serious difficulties in Englishing a
\nHindu legend. There is the danger of raising around the subject a jungle of
\nuncouth words and unfamiliar allusions impenetrable to English readers. Those
\nwho have hitherto made the attempt have succumbed to the passion for "local
\ncolour" or for a liberal peppering of Sanscrit words all over their verses,
\nthus forming a constant stumbling-block and a source of irritation to the
\nreader. Only so much local colour is admissible as comes naturally and un-
\nforced by the very nature of the subject; and for the introduction of a foreign
\nword into poetry the one valid excuse is the entire absence of a fairly
\ncorresponding word or phrase in the language
\n<\/span>itself. Yet a too frequent resort
\nto this plea shows  <\/span>either a
\nlaziness in the  <\/span>invention or an
\nunseasonable learning. There are very <\/span>few Sanscrit words or ideas, not of
\nthe technical kind, which do not admit of being approximately conveyed in
\nEnglish by direct<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-155<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

rendering
\nor by a little management, or, at the worst, by coining a word which, if not
\nprecisely significant of the original, will create some kindred association in
\nthe mind of an English reader. A slight inexactness is better than a laborious
\npedantry. I have therefore striven to avoid all that would be unnecessarily
\nlocal and pedantic, even to the extent of occasionally using a Greek expression
\nsuch as Hades for the lord of the underworld. I believe such uses to be
\nlegitimate, since they bring the poem nearer home to the imagination of the
\nreader. On the other hand, there are some words one is loth to part with. I have
\nmyself’ been unable or unwilling to sacrifice such Indianisms as Rishi, Naga,
\nfor the snake-gods who inhabit the nether-world; Uswuttha, for the sacred
\nfig-tree; Chompuc (but this has been made familiar by Shelley’s exquisite
\nlyric); coil or Kokil, for the Indian cuckoo; and names like Dhurma (Law,
\nReligion, Rule of Nature) and Critanta, the ender, for Yama, the Indian Hades.
\nThese, I think, are not more than a fairly patient reader may bear with.
\nMythological allusions, the indispensable setting of a Hindu legend, have been
\nintroduced sparingly, and all but one or two will explain themselves to a reader
\nof sympathetic intelligence and some experience in poetry.
\n             
\n<\/span>Yet are they, in some number, indispensable. The surroundings and epic
\nmachinery must necessarily be the ordinary Hindu surroundings and machinery.
\nProperly treated, I do not think these are wanting in power and beauty -of
\npoetic suggestion. Ruaru, the grandson of Bhrigou, takes us back to the very
\nbeginnings of Aryan civilisation when our race dwelt and warred and sang within
\nthe frontier of the five rivers, Iravatie, Chundrobhaga, Shotodrou, Bitosta and
\nBipasha, and our Bengal was but a mother of wild beasts, clothed in the sombre
\nmystery of virgin forests and gigantic rivers and with no human inhabitants save
\na few savage tribes, the scattered beginnings of nations. Accordingly the story
\nis set in times when earth was yet new to her children, and the race was being
\ncreated by princes like Pururavas and patriarchal sages or Rishies like Bhrigou,
\nBrihuspati, Gautama. The Rishi was in that age the head of the human world. He
\nwas at once sage, poet, priest, scientist, prophet, educator, scholar and
\nlegislator. He composed a song, and it became
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-156<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

one
\nof the sacred hymns of the people; he emerged from rapt communion with God to
\nutter some puissant sentence, which in after ages became the germ of mighty
\nphilosophies; he conducted a sacrifice, and kings and peoples rose on its seven
\nflaming tongues to wealth and greatness; he formulated an observant aphorism,
\nand it was made the foundation of some future science, ethical, practical or
\nphysical; he gave a decision in a dispute and his verdict was seed of a great
\ncode or legislative theory. In Himalayan forests or by the confluence of great
\nrivers he lived as the centre of a patriarchal family whose link was thought-
\ninterchange and not blood-relationship, bright-eyed children of sages, heroic
\nstriplings, earnest pursuers of knowledge, destined to become themselves great
\nRishies or renowned leaders of thought and action. He himself was the master of
\nall learning and all arts and all sciences. The Rishies won their knowledge by
\nmediation working through inspiration to intuition. Austere concentration of the
\nfaculties stilled the waywardness of the reason and set free for its work the
\ninner, unerring vision which is above reason, as reason is itself above sight;
\nthis again worked by intuitive flashes, one inspired stroke of insight quivering
\nout close upon the other, till the whole formed a logical chain; yet a logic not
\ncoldly thought out nor the logic of argument but the logic of continuous and
\nconsistent inspiration. Those who sought the Eternal through physical
\nausterities, such as the dwelling between five fires (one fire on each side and
\nthe noonday sun overhead) or lying for days on a bed of swordpoints, or Yoga
\nprocesses based on an advanced physical science, belonged to a later day. The
\nRishies were inspired thinkers, not working through deductive reason or any
\nphysical process of sense-subdual. The energy of their personalities was
\ncolossal; wrestling in fierce meditation with God, they had become masters of
\nincalculable spiritual energies, so that their anger could blast peoples and
\neven the world was in danger when they opened their lips to utter a curse. This
\nenergy was by the principle of heredity transmitted, at least in the form of a
\nlatent and educable force, to their offspring. Afterwards as the vigour of the
\nrace exhausted itself, the inner fire dwindled and waned. But at first even the
\nunborn child was divine. When Chyavan was in the womb, a Titan to whom his<\/font><\/p>\n

\nP<\/font>age-157<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

mother
\nPuloma had been betrothed before she was given to Bhrigou, attempted to carry
\noff his lost love in the absence of the Rishi. It is told that the child in the
\nwomb felt the affront and issued from his mother burning with such a fire of
\ninherited divinity that the Titan ravisher fell blasted by the wrath of an
\ninfant. For the Rishies were not passionless. They were prone to anger and swift
\nto love. In their pride of life and genius they indulged their yearnings for
\nbeauty, wedding the daughters of Titans or mingling with nymphs of Paradise in
\nthe august solitudes of hills and forests. From these were born those ancient
\nand sacred clans of a pre-historic antiquity, Barghoves, Barhaspathas, Gautamas,
\nKasyapas, into which the descendants of the Aryan are to this day divided. Thus
\nhas India deified the great men who gave her civilisation.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

         
\n<\/span>On earth the Rishies, in heaven the Gods. These were great and shining
\nbeings who preserved the established cosmos against the Asuras, or Titans,
\nspirits of disorder between whom and the Hindu Olympians there was ever warfare.
\nYet their hostility did not preclude occasional unions. Sachi herself, the Queen
\nof Heaven, was a Titaness, daughter of the Asura, Puloman; Yayati, ally of the
\nGods, took to himself a Daitya maiden Surmishtha, child of imperial Vrishopurvan
\n(for the Asuras or Daityas, on the terrestrial plane, signified the adversaries
\nof Aryan civilisa- tion), and Bhrigou’s wife, Puloma, was of the Titan blood.
\nChief of the Gods were Indra, King and Thunderer, who came down when men
\nsacrificed and drank the Soma wine of the offering; Vaiou, the Wind; Agni, who
\nis Hutaashon, devourer of the sacrifice, the spiritual energy of Fire; Varouna,
\nthe prince of the seas; Critanta, Death, the ender, who was called also Yama
\n(Government) or Dhurma (Law) because from him are all order and  <\/span>stability,
\nwhether material or moral. And there were subtler presences; Cama, also named
\nModon or Monmuth, the God of desire, who rode on the parrot and carried five
\nflowery arrows and a bow-string of linked honey-bees; his wife, Ruthie, the
\ngolden-limbed spirit of delight; Saraswatie, the Hindu Muse, who is also Vach or
\nWord, the primal goddess, – she is the unexpressed idea of existence which by
\nher expression takes visible form and being; for the word is prior to and more
\nreal, because<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/font>Page-158
\n<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

more
\nspiritual, than the thing it expresses; she is the daughter of Brahma and has
\ninherited the creative power of her father, the wife of Vishnou and shares the
\npreservative energy of her husband; Vasuquie, also, and Seshanaga, the great
\nserpent with his hosts, whose name means finiteness and who represents Time and
\nSpace; he upholds the world on his hundred colossal hoods and is the couch of
\nthe Supreme who is Existence. There were also the angels who were a little less
\nthan the Gods; Yukshas, the Faery attendants of Kuvere, lord of wealth, who
\nprotect hoards and treasures and dwell in Ullaca, the city of beauty,<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

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

                                       
\nthe hills of mist<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\nGolden, the dwelling-place of Faery kings, <\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

                 
\n<\/span>And mansions by unearthly moonlight kissed:-<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

           
\nFor one dwells there whose brow with the young moon<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

                 
\n<\/span> <\/span>Lightens as with a
\nmarvellous amethyst <\/span>–<\/p>\n

Ullaca, city of beauty, where no thought enters but that of love, no age but
\nthat of youth, no season but that of flowers. Then there are the Gundhurvas,
\nbeautiful, brave and melodious beings, the artists, musicians, poets and shining
\nwarriors of heaven; Kinnaries, Centauresses of sky and hill with voices of Siren
\nmelody; Opsaras, sky-nymphs, children of Ocean, who dwell in Heaven, its
\nsongstresses and daughters of joy, and who often mingle in love with mortals.
\nNor must we forget our own mother, Ganges, the triple and mystic river, who is
\nMundaquinie, Ganges of the Gods, in heaven, Bhagirathie or Jahnavie, Ganges of
\nmen, on earth, and Boithorinie or coiling Bhogavatie, Ganges of the dead, in
\nPatala, the grey under-world and kingdom of serpents, and in the sombre
\ndominions of Yama. Saraswatie, namesake and shadow of the Muse, preceded her in
\nher sacred- ness; but the banks of those once pure waters have long passed to
\nthe barbarian and been denounced as unclean and uninhabitable to our race, while
\nthe deity has passed to that other mysterious under-ground stream which joins
\nGanges and Yamouna in their tryst at
\nProyaga<\/span>. . . .
\n            <\/span>Are
\nthere not here sufficient features of poetical promise, sufficient materials of
\nbeauty for the artist to weave into immor-<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-159<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

tal
\nvisions? I would gladly think that there are , that I am not cheating myself
\nwith delusions when I seem to find in this yet untrodden path,<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\n\t
\n\t                   
\n via…qua me quoque possim<\/p>\n

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

 <\/span>Tollere
\n humo victorque virum volitare per ora.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

   
\n<\/span>Granted, you will say, but still Quorsum haec putida tendunt? or how does
\nit explain the dedication to me of a style of work at entire variance with my
\nown tastes and preferences? But the value of a gift depends on the spirit of the
\ngiver rather than on its own suitability to the recipient. Will you accept this
\npoem as part-payment of a deep intellectual debt I have been long owing to you?
\nUnknown to yourself, you taught and encouraged me from my childhood to be a
\npoet. From your sun my farthing rush-light was kindled, and it was in your path
\nthat I long strove to guide my uncertain and faltering footsteps. If I have now
\nin the inevitable development of an independent temperament in independent
\nsurroundings departed from your guidance and entered into a path, perhaps
\nthornier and more rugged, but my own, it does not lessen the obligation of that
\nfirst light and example. It is my hope that in the enduring fame which your
\ncalmer and more luminous genius must one day bring you, on a distant verge of
\nthe skies and lower plane of planetary existence, some ray of my name may
\nsurvive and it be thought no injury to your memory that the first considerable
\neffort of my powers was dedicated to you.<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/p>\n

\nPage-160<\/font><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUPPLEMENT   TO VOLUME   9 THE  FUTURE  POETRY LETTERS ON POETRY, LITERATURE  AND ART                                               This letter addressed by Sri Aurobindo to his poet-brother                                    Manmohan Ghose, was found in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-27-supplement-volume-27","wpcat-16-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}