Savitri may be regarded as a sacred text, a contemporary Veda

Home > E-Library > Magazines > Sraddha > February 2011 > Contents

On Savitri— A talk to a Young Disciple Mother 7

Savitri Sri Krishnaprem 11

To Savitri, the Wonderful Epic Ranajit Sarkar 14

Savitri : The Song of the Infinite Alok Pandey 17

Veda Vyasa’s Mahabharata in Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri Prema Nandakumar 39

Aswapati’s Yoga Srimat Anirvan 47

Love and Death Debashish Banerjee 53

Savitri—Book VI, Canto II: The Way of Fate and The Problem of Pain Makarand R. Paranjape 73

The Descent of Knowledge in Savitri Sonia Dyne 87

The Mother’s Savitri Translations Shraddhavan 105

Onward She Passed… Rejection As Described in Savitri Matthijs Cornelissen 118

An Analytical assessment of Death-Savitri Debate Usharanjan Chakraborty 131

Newness of Savitri: an Interpretation Asoka K Ganguli 139

Savitri – Book VI, Canto II: The Way of Fate and The Problem of Pain

Makarand R. Paranjape

Savitri, Sri Aurobindo’s magnum opus, a modern epic of nearly 24,000 lines, is akin to an ocean. It is difficult to fathom all at once, but every part of it shares its intrinsic nature. In that sense, where and how we plunge into it is of little consequence. We will glimpse its magnificence no matter what method we adopt. Provided, of course, we open ourselves to its magic. Though the whole of Savitri may be regarded as a sacred text, a contemporary Veda, it is a very long and complex composition. Therefore, we might actually single out some Cantos, perhaps half a dozen, which are so important that they encapsulate the whole structure, the whole methodology and also, if we might use that word, the whole “theology” of the epic. And this, Book VI, Canto II, is one of those crucial Cantos – “The Way of Fate and The problem of Pain.” What follows could be seen as a part of the age-old Indian tradition of commenting on major texts. Master texts had multiple commentaries over generations. Savitri is a poem that invites such treatment.

This Canto is important because it asks fundamental questions, the kind of questions, in fact, which all of us ask. Why do we suffer? Why is there so much pain in human life? Are we fated to suffer in this manner? Is there no cure, no solution? Because all of us have suffered at some point or the other as human beings, these questions go to the very heart of what it means to be embodied, what it means to be human. No doubt, many have also found great solace in this Canto, answers to these questions. As one person responded after this talk, “I went through an extremely difficult phase in my life. During that time, I must have read this Canto literally a hundred times. Each time I read it, it revealed something new about not just my problem but also about life.” Thus, not only does the Canto ask fundamental questions, it even answers them to the satisfaction of many readers and sadhaks.

   Some 2500 years ago, the great Sakya Muni, Gautama Buddha, himself reflected on such questions, making them the bedrock of his teaching. He said there are four noble truths – cattari ariyasacca - ni in Pali or catvari arya satyani in Sanskrit. These are suffering, its cause, its elimination, and, finally, the way to this elimination. According to the Buddha, suffering is universal, its cause is craving; but it is also possible to end suffering, and suffering can be ended by the cessation of craving or tanha. This great teaching was offered in the very first sermon that the Buddha gave – Dharma chakra pravartana sermon – in Sarnath when he started preaching after becoming the Awakened One. Ultimately, the way to end suffering is to lead a right, or one might prefer to say, the righteous life. This is based on the eight-fold path – right view, right intention (prajña or wisdom), right speech, right action, right livelihood (´ila  s or conduct), and right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration (samadhi or concentration). In a way, Sri Aurobindo also covers similar ground here, in this important Canto.

The Vadantic approach to suffering, in contrast, focuses not so much on the causes of the suffering but on the nature and identity of the sufferer. [1] The end of suffering is effected by the end of false indentification, which is the prelude to liberation or mukti. According to some schools, such liberation is available while being embodied, in which case it is called jivanmukti. For Sri Aurobindo, suffering becomes the aid, in fact the goad, to spiritual evolution. In a way, Sri Aurobindo also covers similar ground here, in this important Canto. We shall look at Sri Aurobindo’s approach in greater detail later.

In this first part of this exposition, let us look briefly at the action of the Canto. In the previous Canto, Narad, the heavenly singer, has descended into the marble halls of King Aswapati’s palace. Savitri, the Madra princess, the Divine Flame and Aswapati’s daughter, has just returned after finding her soul-mate in Satyavan. But Narad tells the shocked royal couple that if Savitri marries Satyavan, he will die in a year’s time. Having heard this dread sentence, Savitri instead of retracting, reaffirms her choice. This Canto records, to begin with, Queen Malawi’s, that is Savitri’s mother’s reaction to this shocking pronouncement. The queen, Sri Aurobindo tells us, is also a very evolved person, quite in control of her mind and sense, but when she hears this awful news she is disturbed. She loses her calm, her poise, her equanimity and plunges into a questioning which is somewhat angry. She is hurt, upset, and therefore asks, how and why is it that we who live on this earth, we enjoy some moments of joy, then we suffer, and we go through the same cycle again and again. Is this the law? If so, then why did God make this world? Why did he make us for this meaningless cycle of pain? Indeed, is something wrong with the creation itself, did all go wrong somewhere?

Narad then gives his reply at some length, which is a very important explanation about why it is so, why we suffer, and whether we are bound by law or Fate to this chain of causality. Again, we might briefly remember the Buddha when he saw those sights of suffering humanity which had been shielded from his eyes. He saw death, old age, sickness and things that his father, Prince Suddhodana, had wanted him never to see. The father wanted his son to be raised in the palace in happiness, shielded from all sorrow and suffering. But Gautama saw these things and realised that he was also going to grow old and die, that he would also know suffering and perhaps illness. That is why he determined to find the cause for suffering so that he could, once and for all, cure it and free all other sentient beings from it. What a noble resolve, how grand his ideal.

Onward She Passed… Rejection As Described in Savitri

Matthijs Cornelissen

One of the many marvellous things in  Savitri is the completely uninterrupted progress in the sadhana of Aswapati and later of Savitri. Aswapati and Savitri always move on; they never stop; they never go back. Partly this may be due to the symbolic nature of the story. Aswapati and Savitri are, after all, at least to some extent typal figures. Their lives miss the many diluting and confusing side-plots that mar and delay our spiritual development. But this is only part of the explanation; there is also a more technical aspect to it. It appears to me that the secret of their quick progress rests in the perfect application of a specific yogic skill, the skill of rejection. Rejection is one of the three main skills or “inner gestures” that have to be used in Sadhana. The most powerful description of these three skills can be found in Sri Aurobindo’s collection of letters called The Mother.

Notes on Authors

( Beginning with this issue we shall include names of only those writers who have not figured previously in this section )

Asoka K Ganguli is a retired Reader of English, University of Delhi. His field of specialisation was the poetry of Milton and Walt Whitman and on the latter poet he was awarded Ph.D. in 1968. He taught English poetry to postgraduate students of the University of Agra for a decade and to students of the University of Delhi for almost three decades. A voracious reader of Sri Aurobindo’s poetry, specially  Savitri since early fifties, his first publication Sri Aurobindo’s Savitri which was published by Sri Aurobindo Society in 2002 and his second book Sri Aurobindo: Poet of Nature and other writings on Savitri  are the outcome of his labour and research in the field of Aurobindean literature.

Krishnaprem, Sri, known as Ronald Nixon in his early life, was a brilliant product of the University of Cambridge. In his early twenties he received an offer of appointment as a lecturer in English at the University of Lucknow and sailed for India, where he spent the rest of his life. One special contact was Dilip Kumar Roy, a musician par excellence, a great devotee of Lord Krishna and also a favourite disciple of Sri Aurobindo. Young Professor Nixon was a frequent guest in the house of the Vice-Chancellor, University of Lucknow where Nixon, on the insistence of Mrs. Chakravarty, the wife of the ViceChancellor, had taken up residence. As time passed, a close friendship grew up between the three of them— Nixon, Roy and Mrs. Chakravarty, a well-known and sophisticated socialite and a deeply devoted Krishna bhakta. Her relationship with Nixon developed into that of preceptor or guru, the latter being both a son and a disciple. It was at Uttar Vrindavana, that they established a beautiful ashram and a temple dedicated to Lord Krishna and Radha. Mrs. Chakravarty, now a full fledged sannyasini, adopted the name Yashoda Ma, and Ronald Nixon came to be known as Krishnaprem.

Through Dilip Sri Aurobindo developed a high regard for Krishnaprem, and always commended his views to Dilip. Krishnaprem gave the world two important books, ‘The Yoga of the Kathopanishad’ and ‘Yoga for the Westerner’. All of his writing displayed his impressive knowledge and grasp of highly spiritual and metaphysical subjects. He passed away in 1965. Ramana Maharshi commended Krishnaprem to his devotees with the words, ‘A wonderful blend of jñyani (knowledge) and bhakti (devotion) in one person.’

Makarand R Paranjape is a Professor of English at the Centre for English Studies,

School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal University, New Delhi, 11067. A prolific writer, critic, poet and scholar his latest books include Altered Destinations: Self, Society and Nation in India and Another Canon: Indian Texts and Traditions in English.

Usharanjan Chakraborty (born 1931) did his MA in English, History and Philosophy and also PhD in Philosophy from Calcutta University. After serving in different colleges, he joined North Bengal University in 1982 and retired from there in 2000 as Reader in Philosophy. In addition to presenting papers at various seminars, his writings have appeared in several journals notably Calcutta University Philosophy Journal, The Advent, Mother India, World Union and Rtam

Each Shammi film was pure ambrosia

Goodbye, Sir! MJ Akbar is the editor-in-chief of The Sunday Guardian.

Forty years later it is easy to be dismissive about that yell which rose from the belly, filled the throat and then knocked your head off: Yaaaahoooo! For me, sitting in a bug-infested cinema hall called Swapna, that cry from Junglee was a roar of liberation from the silly boredom of convention. Suddenly, lovers did not weep, as Dilip Kumar did by the bucketful; or go perpendicular with patriotism, as Raj Kapoor considered necessary; or adopt a stomach-ache face, which was Rajendra Kumar's speciality. Shammi Kapoor told us, when I was all of ten and had just been sentenced to boarding school, to go find our own voice, even if that turned into the occasional scream. Be brilliant, if you could; be a fool, if you had to; but be authentic in either case. There was fun to be had in both avatars.

The importance of not being earnest - The Times of India Srijana Mitra Das Aug 17, 2011, 12.00AM IST

Shammi's elder brother, Raj Kapoor, was typically the angst-ridden wanderer, an awara with a hard-luck story and blue-eyed charm, ill treated, then redeemed by the Nehruvian state. Dev Anand brought a happier face to the Nehruvian persona, playing fleet-footed characters knee-deep in mystery, modernity and mischief.

Eschewing modernity, Rajendra Kumar was an old-fashioned 'tragedy king' drawn from bards' tales and folklore, whose films framed three hours of perfect sorrow, expressed in shrieking shehnais, teary eyes and tragic accidents twisting lives out of shape. Dilip Kumar was a silken-voiced thespian around whose heavy talent epics had to be spun, extending from the splendour of Mughal India to the griminess of rural India, cowering before dacoits and moneylenders alike, finding respite in just a little jig by the waterfall.

Against this, Shammi's movies were an entirely new breeze blowing in from the four corners of the world. They carried to India the sexiness of Hollywood, the pulsations of pop, the verve of Italian fashion, the poutiness of French love-making. Dhotis, kurtas, guns and speeches went out of the window. Shammi shook the rafters with his gags and stormed the dance floor, sax in his mouth, babe by his side, shimmying and shaking before sophisticates in a nightclub seated at tables glimmering with cocktails. … Despite the rock and roll, there was little question of shaking the established order – Shammi's films only lightly, smilingly, suggested how much fun it would be if everyone chilled out a little.

In this frame, serious politics took a decided backseat. Despite embracing international culture in the form of Elvis, sunglasses, trousers and travel, Shammi kept his films free of overt politics, whether that of modernity or tradition. He personified the quirkiest combination of the 'swinging sixties' in India – the joyful energy of youth without its intense debates or demonstrations. …

In his own manner, thus, Shammi too was political. He took differences of class and creed in his hands and crumpled them up into a paper ball, making light of such pettiness under the clear skies of modern India. With a jazzy step and a smile on his face, he threw the ball high up in the air, to where few could see it anymore – and all with a great yahoo. Shammi taught a delighted nation that it was possible to be political without anger or angst. It was possible to not be earnest – and still be deadly serious. It was possible to say it with a song, not a speech. Few others made that point quite as wonderfully.

The Pioneer :: Home : >> He told an entire generation Cry Freedom ...  Monday, August 15, 2011 Chandan Mitra

Shammi Kapoor celebrated entertainment. His films steered clear of social messages, forte of his elder brother Raj. Shammi Kapoor sang and danced into the hearts of a new generation of Indians straining at the leash to break away from the overdose of moralistic hype in the immediate aftermath of Gandhian puritanism and Nehruvian socialism. 

To the generation stepping out of their teens in the mid-60s, each Shammi film was pure ambrosia. They transported you to a perfect world of make-believe where boy chased girl with gusto, bordering on behaviour that would today bring the Crime Against Women cell scurrying to the spot. The girl, needless to add, would eventually succumb to his irreverent, lusty courting and a long spell of bliss interspersed with half-a-dozen melodious songs would follow. Then the villain would appear, convince the girl’s stentorian father that his daughter’s lover was a wayward, good-for-nothing waster. Much drama would happen till the obstacles evaporated in the face of truth. Boy and girl would live happily ever after. Shammi Kapoor’s films became the epitome of this so-called formula. Almost every film had the same story line, give or take the occasional unexpected twist or turn. …

Again, Shammi wouldn’t be Shammi without Mohammad Rafi, who was literally his voice. From the soulful Ehsan tera hoga mujhpar (Junglee) to the erotic Dilruba dil pe tu (Raj Kumar), lilting Jawaniyan ye mast mast bin piye (Tumsa Nahin Dekha) and the sheer abandon of Taarif karoon kya uski (Kashmir ki Kali) melancholy Yeh duniya usi ki zamana uki ka and the romantic Deewana hua badal from the same film, it was Rafi who modulated his voice and style to match Shammi’s every mood.

Hindi cinema has come a long way since Shammi eased himself out, playing occasional character roles, the most memorable being in Manoranjan. The formula has run its course and rise of the multiplex has altered cultural preferences significantly. Maybe a surging India doesn’t need to escape drudgery any more. But in the era that produced Shammi Kapoor, India needed him as a soothing balm, someone who comforted you while egging on to assert and stake claim as a young man who had aspirations to go beyond the straitjacket that Indira Gandhi’s socialist society kept ready for you. The generation that woke up to the freedom of ear-shattering Yahoo! will always remember him as one of the shapers of modern India.  

Antonin Artaud & Pierre Klossowski

Antonin Artaud Criticism 1896-1948

(Full name Antoine-Marie-Joseph Artaud; also wrote under the pseudonym Le Révélé) French essayist, dramatist, poet, novelist, screenwriter, and actor.

INTRODUCTION

Poet and theorist of revolutionary theater, avant-garde novelist and surrealist screenwriter, actor, drug addict, and madman, Antonin Artaud is famous for the influence he exerted through his writings and performances—especially after death—on the way writers, directors, actors, and communal theater companies conceive of theater, its production, and its function. Progenitor of a form of theater whose aim is to unsettle and radically transform its audience and its culture, such as happenings, theater of the absurd, or experimental theater, Artaud called for an end to a drama of rationality, masterpieces, and psychological exploration. Artaud advocated a “theatre of cruelty”—a probing, goading, and provocative theater drawing on Symbolist sensory derangement, psychoanalytic theory, and the Balinese theater. Such a theater, according to Artaud, should employ expressive breathing, animal sounds, uninhibited gestures, huge masks, puppets, and an architecture that destroys the barrier between actors and audience in order to turn spectators into participants, and bring them to a level of visceral experience Artaud deemed more profound than any experience accessible through passive understanding or absorption of language, plot, or coherently structured action. Artaud's aim was to unblock repression and to purge violence, hypocrisy, and the malaise he saw as endemic to society. …

Major Works

Les Cenci, Artaud's play about a man who rapes his own daughter and is then murdered by men the girl hires to eliminate him, typifies Artaud's theater of cruelty. Les Cenci was produced in Paris in 1935 but was closed after seventeen dismal performances. Another illustration of Artaud's work is Le jet de sang or The Fountain of Blood (1925), a farce about the creation of the world and its destruction by humans, especially women. Like many of Artaud's other plays, scenarios, and prose, Les Cenci and The Fountain of Blood were designed to challenge conventional, civilized values and bring out the natural, barbaric instincts Artaud felt lurked beneath the refined, human facade. Of The Fountain of Blood, Albert Bermel wrote in Artaud's Theater of Cruelty: “All in all,The Fountain of Blood is a tragic, repulsive, impassioned farce, a marvelous wellspring for speculation, and a unique contribution to the history of the drama.” More than for any particular work, Artaud is remembered more for his tormented life, for having turned himself inside out in the attempt to discover a way to transform theater and society, and for the concepts he developed for effectuating transformation. Le Théâtre de la cruauté (1933) and Le Théâtre et son double (1938; The Theater and Its Double)—Artaud's most famous works—along with the novel Héliogabale (1934; Heliogabalus) and his blasphemous play Le jet de sang, rather than having an independent artistic existence, stand as manifestos and vehicles for approaching, if not achieving, the transformations Artaud proclaimed. According to author Susan Sontag: “Not until the great outburst of writing in the period between 1945 and 1948 … did Artaud, by then indifferent to the idea of poetry as a closed lyric statement, find a long-breathed voice that was adequate to the range of his imaginative needs—a voice that was free of established forms and open-ended, like the poetry of [Ezra] Pound.”

Critical Reception

In Antonin Artaud: Man of Vision, Bettina Knapp offered an explanation of Artaud's popularity long after his death: “In his time, he was a man alienated from his society, divided within himself, a victim of inner and outer forces beyond his control. … The tidal force of his imagination and the urgency of his therapeutic quest were disregarded and cast aside as the ravings of a madman. … Modern man can respond to Artaud now because they share so many psychological similarities and affinities.” Artaud's individual works, throughout his lifetime, were often received badly. However, the body of his work—seen as a call for the creation of a new theater—and his life—seen as the forge upon which his theories were fashioned—gained in the latter part of the twentieth century a numinous force, and a celebrated following.

Pierre Klossowski - Obituaries, News - The Independent Tuesday, 14 August 2001 – Ian James

The novelist, essayist, painter and translator Pierre Klossowski was one of the most original and influential intellectual figures in 20th-century French thought and writing. Brother of the painter Balthus and a close associate of Georges Bataille, Klossowski wrote novels, philosophical essays and translations which made a decisive contribution to the development of thought and aesthetics in France from the 1950s onwards. …  

As a translator and interpreter of Friedrich Nietzsche, Klossowski also had an enormous impact on the emergence of philosophies of difference in France in the 1960s and 1970s. In particular, his readings of the Nietzschean doctrine of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same, and the emphasis he gave to the motifs of parody and simulacrum, exerted a key influence on philosophers such as Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard and, arguably, Jacques Derrida.

In a French philosophical scene dominated largely by phenomenology in the 1930s and by Sartrian existentialism in the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s, Klossowski's writings on Nietzsche helped to found a way of thinking which allowed certain, subsequently very famous, philosophers to counter the humanised Heideggerianism of Sartre, and also to challenge dominant structuralist modes of thought. It is from these philosophical displacements and critical re-inscriptions that what, in the English speaking world, became known as post-structuralism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s.

Klossowski's novels constitute by far the most challenging and enigmatic part of his work. Partly because of their difficulty and apparent inaccessibility (they abound with references to theology, scholastic philosophy, as well as Gnostic heresy, and are written in a highly Latinate style and syntax), these novels are perhaps less well known than Klossowski's other work, although they have always attracted something of a cult following and offer endless literary and intellectual pleasure to the initiated reader. Le Baphomet, Klossowski's last novel, won the 1965 Prix des Critiques.

P. Valsala & Manoj Das

The Pioneer :: Home : >> Manoj Das now on website Wednesday, August 17, 2011 PNS Bhubaneswar - A website of eminent storyteller Manoj Das has been launched, www.worldofmanojdas.in 

Blessed by Sri Aurobindo, Prof Das has been effortlessly and spontaneously writing beautiful pieces which have been unique among present generation of writers. 

With 40 plus books in English and an equal number of books in Odia to his credit, he is a recipient of a number of awards, including Padma Shri, Saraswati Samman, Uktal Sahitya Samaj, Sarala Puraskar and Utkal Ratna and DLitt from various universities. 

Born in Balasore district in 1934, Prof Das has been inspiring his fellow writers over decades. He is the country's foremost bi-lingual writer with a lucid and crisp style.
He is acknowledged as one of the ablest interpreters of the Indian literary and cultural heritage. The writer teaches English literature as well as works on Sri Aurobindo at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education at Puducherry. 

The Hindu : NATIONAL / KERALA : Aurobindo's poetry unmatched, says Valsala: SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

Novelist and the former president of Kerala Sahithya Academy P. Valsala said that Keralites must study the poetry of Sri Aurobindo which “was unmatched in sublimity of thought.” She was speaking after releasing “Concept of Man in Sri Aurobindo's Poetry” authored by Jitendra Sharma on Saturday.

On ‘Savitri'

Though Malayalam poets had been prolific, there was nothing in Malayalam poetry that could measure up to the greatness of ‘Savithri,' Sri Aurobindo's epic poem, she said. The novelist added that Sri Aurobindo's poetry was comparable to the best in English literature.

In Malayalam

Ms. Valsala said she was so moved by the spirituality in Sri Aurobindo's poems, reproduced in Mr. Sharma's book, that she translated a few of them into Malayalam so that these could be read by lovers of Malayalam poetry also. These poems were read out at the function by the novelist. She added that she would be translating more poems by Sri Aurobindo into Malayalam soon.

She presented a copy of the book to Venu Maruthayi, writer and retired Hindi teacher.

Mr. Sharma, who teaches French at St. Joseph's College, Devagiri, and did his undergraduate studies at Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education Centre, Puducherry, also spoke at the function held at Kozhikode Press Club.

Sports is a serious tool for holistic development | SpeakingTree Sports can create a stronger and more energetic nation

In the words of Sri Aurobindo, sports and games are very effective ways to develop valuable qualities like courage, capacity to take initiatives and rapid ...

Today’s children hardly have any time to play. They and their parents are fully convinced that this is wastage of time. Their teachers are no different. That is why they don’t encourage students to play. The teachers are .. More By: Nirjhar Majumdar on Aug 16, 2011 | 0 Likes | 1 Response About the Author The author is a Research Associate of a reputed PSU. He has penned numerous articles on management, strategies and insurance. He is currently posted at Kolkata. He is a long time devotee of Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry