Sri Aurobindo: A Forward-Looking Traditionalist

Paper presented at a National Seminar sponsored by Rashtriya Sanskrit Samsthan, New Delhi,

and Sri Aurobindo Institute of Indian Culture, Shillong, February 9–10, 2013

I speak to you as a historian and biographer, not as a Sanskrit scholar. I did once

undertake a fairly serious study of the language, and I still occasionally turn to a

Sanskrit work to see what the original text of a passage is. But for the last few decades

most of my research has been based on historical documents and literary texts, most

of them written in English or French. These include all the writings of Sri Aurobindo,

and what follows is an attempt to summarize his views on Indian culture with

reference to the Sanskrit language.

Sri Aurobindo began to study Sanskrit as a Civil Service probationer at

Cambridge. He of course had no background in his mother tongue, Bengali, which he

began to study at the same time; but as a master of Greek and Latin, he had no trouble

picking up the rudiments of India’s classical language. The first text he read was the

Naladamayanti episode of the Mahabharata, which he went through, he later wrote,

“with minute care several times” while still in England.1 When he returned to India in

1893, he took up the study of Sanskrit in earnest, translating passages from the

Ramayana and Mahabharata, and later the Meghadutam, Vikramorvashiyam and other

works of Kalidasa, and the Nitishatakam of Bhartrihari. He also wrote several critical

essays on epic and classical literature.

It was not until a decade after his return from England that the focus of Sri

Aurobindo’s attention shifted from literary to spiritual works. Around 1902 he began

his long engagement with the Upanishads, striving to bring out the majesty of

Upanishadic language in English translations, though he admitted that the task was an

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impossible one, since “in no other human tongue than Sanscrit is such graudeur &

beauty possible.”2 He was particularly attracted to the Isha Upanishad, beginning

more than ten translations, often with commentary, between 1902 and 1914. He called

the last of these works of exegesis “The Life Divine”. When he began the monthly

journal Arya in August 1914, one of the first pieces appear to was his final translation

of and commentary on the Isha. At the same time he began publishing his own

metaphysics in The Life Divine, writing in a later chapter of this work that the Isha

more than any other Upanishad made clear to him “the unity and reality of all the

manifestations of the absolute”.3

The August 1914 issue of the Arya also included Chapter One of The Secret of

the Veda. This was the firstfruits of four years of philological research that he began

after settling in Pondicherry in 1910. He began this research after becoming intrigued

by an apparent relationship between Tamil on the one side, and Sanskrit, Latin and

Greek on the other. “Examining the vocables of the Tamil language”, he wrote in the

Secret, he found himself “continually guided by words or by families of words

supposed to be pure Tamil in establishing new relations between Sanskrit and its

distant sister, Latin, and occasionally, between the Greek and the Sanskrit.” He

eventually concluded there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that Tamil was

an “Aryan” – that is, what we now call a Indo-European language – but he speculated

that the differences between Tamil and the Indo-European tongues might be “due to

an early separation and an extensive change of its vocabulary during its preliminary

ages”.4 This statement has some resonance with late-twentieth-century theories of a

1 Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Himself and the Ashram, Collected Works of Sri Aurobindo (hereafter CWSA), vol. 35:122 Sri Aurobindo, Kena and Other Upanishads, CWSA 18:1673 Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, CWSA 22:662

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superfamily of so-called Nostratic languages, within which Tamil and the various

Indo-European languages are distant cousins several times removed.5

One of the reasons Sri Aurobindo supposed that Tamil and Sanskrit were more

closely related than nineteenth-century philologists supposed was his realisation that

that the so-called “racial division” between the inhabitants of northern and southern

India did not hold up under direct scrutiny. After settling in Pondicherry, he wrote,

“Wherever I turned, I seemed to recognise with a startling distinctness … the old

familiar faces, features, figures of my friends of Maharashtra, Gujerat, Hindustan,

even … of my own province Bengal.” He speculated on the ethnological composition

of ancient and modern India, which had produced, he wrote, a “unity of physical as

well of cultural type” that existed “behind all variations.”6 In this he anticipated

modern genomic research that has found a basic genetic unity across Indian sub-

populations.7

Sri Aurobindo did not pursue these ethnological or linguistic speculations very

far, because in the course of his philological research he stumbled upon “what seemed

a clue to the very origins and structure of the ancient Sanskrit tongue; and so far did

this clue lead that I lost sight entirely of my original subject of interest, the

connections between Aryan and Dravidian speech, and plunged into the far more

interesting research of the origins and laws of development of human language

itself.”8 His research convinced him that words were not “artificial products” but

4 Sri Aurobindo, “The Origins of Aryan Speech”, in The Secret of the Veda (1971 edition): 559-61.5 For an introduction to these theories, see Wikipedia, “Nostratic languages” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostratic ; for a more technical discussion, see Merrit Ruhlen, The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue (New York: Wiley, 1994), pp. 72-74.6 15:37-38.7 For an introduction to this topic, see Wikipedia, “Genetics and archeogenetics of South Asia” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetics_and_archaeogenetics_of_South_Asia ; for a more technical discussion see T. Kivisild, et al., “The Place of the Indian mtDNA Variants in the Global Network ofMaternal Lineages and the Peopling of the Old World”. Genomic Diversity (1999): 135-52.8 Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, CWSA 15:50.

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“living growths of sound with certain seed-sounds at their basis”, out of which

develop “a small number of primitive root-words with an immense progeny.”9 His

main resource in this research was the vocabulary of Vedic and classical Sanskrit,

along with that of classical Greek and Latin, and modern Tamil, French, German, and

so forth. Between 1910 and 1914 he filled dozens of notebooks with philological data

of various sorts, and also wrote two considerable drafts of a proposed work on the

“Origins of Aryan Speech.” I have described this work elsewhere and will not repeat

my findings here, since the original material will be published fairly soon in Vedic

and Philological Studies, a separate volume of the Complete Works of Sri

Aurobindo.10

Sri Aurobindo never gave a final form to his philological investigations,

because his research into the origins of language led him to the Rig Veda, and he soon

became deeply absorbed in the study of this most ancient of Indian texts. His first

contact with Vedic though, he wrote in the Secret, came to him “indirectly while

pursuing certain lines of self-development in the way of Indian Yoga.” Without his

being aware of it, his sadhana had begun to converge towards that of the Rishis, and

when he took up the Veda as part of his philological research he found that the

prevailing interpretations of this scripture – that of Indian ritualists such as

Sayanacharya and that of European scholars – failed to do it justice. Gradually his

philological studies became part of a larger investigation into the inner significance

of the Veda. You are all aware of the outlines of Sri Aurobindo’s interpretation and I

will not go into that here. You have also all read the beautiful translations he

published with The Secret of the Veda and in Hymns to the Mystic Fire, which exhibit

9 Sri Aurobindo, Secret, CWSA 15:5110 My research appears in the journal Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research (vol. 2, nos. 1 and 2 [1978]) under the title “Sri Aurobindo’s Vedic and Linguistic Research”. Sri Aurobindo’s Vedic and Linguistic Studies will be volume 14 of the Complete Works.

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both scholarly rigour and poetic sensibility. The same is true of his translations of the

Isha and Kena Upanishads, which appeared in the Arya between 1914 and 1916. He

used these translations to bring out aspects of his own philosophy, but he never forced

the Upanishads to agree with his own ideas. Rather, he coaxed his readers to enlarge

their understanding of Vedanta when the message of the Upanishads fell short of his

ideal. Where these texts gave expression to the integral truth of the brahman, their

“aid to humanity” was, he wrote, “indispensable”. But where they were tied to an

outdated inspiration, the open-minded reader had to “go beyond the Upanishads”,

since “it is only the ignorant soul that will make itself the slave of a book.”11

When he took up the Gita, Sri Aurobindo deliberately avoided the traditional

line-by-line form of translation and commentary, using instead the English essay to

bring out the Gita’s meaning in a freeform way. His intent, he wrote, was not to nail

down the meaning the Gita once and for all. This is what the commentators from

Shankara to Tilak had tried to do, all of them finding in the Gita their “own system of

metaphysics and trend of religious thought.” It would be more profitable, Sri

Aurobindo continued, “to seek in the Gita for the actual living truths it contains … to

extract from it what can help us or the world at large and to put it in the most natural

and vital form and expression we can find that will be suitable to the mentality and

helpful to the spiritual needs of our present-day humanity.”12

Sri Aurobindo was convinced of the greatness of the Indian tradition, but his

appreciation of the Indian past looked forward to an even greater future. “The

traditions of the past are very great in their own place, in the past,” he wrote in a

letter, “but I do not see why we should merely repeat them and not go farther.”13 To

be able to progress, the country had to remain open to influences from different

11 Sri Aurobindo, Kena, CWSA 18:96.12 Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita, CWSA 19:4-5.13 Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga (1970 edition), 88.

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civilisations, even those that had given rise to European imperialism. Responding to a

call for an insular style of nationalism that had been proposed by his former colleague

C. R. Das, Sri Aurobindo wrote in “Indian Culture and External Influence”:

I take it as a self-evident law . . . that it is neither desirable nor possible to

exclude everything that comes in to us from outside. I take it as an equally

self-evident law that a living organism … must recast the things it takes in to

suit the law and form and characteristic action of its biological or

psychological body.… It is, to use an apt Sanskritic phrase employed in the

Bengali tongue, ātmasātkaraṇa, an assimilative appropriation, a making the

thing settle into oneself and turn into characteristic form of our self-being.

The first necessity, for the individual and for the nation, was “to live in one’s self”, to

make “use of one’s inner material and inner powers.” But, he added, “not to be able to

use the material that the life around offers us” was “a serious deficiency and a danger

to the existence.” Such appropriation, he insisted, was not mere imitation, because

“even an old thought or truth that I affirm against an opposing idea, becomes a new

thought in me in the effort of affirmation and rejection”, clothing itself “with new

aspects and issues.”14 This was Sri Aurobindo’s answer to Indian anxieties about the

challenge of the then-dominant West, but also to the challenge posed by India’s own

past accomplishments. The old as well as the new had to be creatively appropriated,

becoming transformed into something that was stronger and richer than the

constituent materials.

It is in the light of this assimilative appropriation that we have to view Sri

Aurobindo’s approach to efforts of “the Indian spiritual mind” to recover its past and

move towards its future. On the one hand he encouraged the study of India’s past

achievements in religion, literature, art, polity, and so forth. On the other hand he

14 Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India, CWSA 20:47-48, 49, 51.

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discouraged the “revival of orthodox conservatism” as being superficial, sentimental

and out of “touch with the great facts and forces of life.” Modern Indians, he wrote,

had to “look upon all that our past contains with new eyes” in order “to recover

something of their ancient sense” but at the same time “bring out of them a new light

which gives to the old truths fresh aspects and therefore novel potentialities of

creation and evolution.” Pride in the accomplishments of the Indian soul should not

take the form of what he called an “unthinking cultural Chauvinism which holds that

whatever we have is good for us because it is Indian or even that whatever is in India

is best, because it is the creation of the Rishis.” What India needed was not a lonely

self-glorification, but “a unity with the rest of mankind, in which we shall maintain

our spiritual and our outer independence.” The East-West dichotomy had to be

transcended, he said, for “from the view of the evolutionary future, European and

Indian civilisation at their best have only been half achievements, infant dawns

pointing to the mature sunlight that is to come.”15

I will conclude with a few remarks on Sri Aurobindo’s views on the place of

Sanskrit in India’s past and the role he hoped it would play in its future. He regarded

the language as “one of the most magnificent, the most perfect and wonderfully

sufficient literary instruments developed by the human mind.” Classical Sanskrit in

particular, was, he wrote, “the most remarkably finished and capable instrument of

thought yet fashioned, at any rate by either the Aryan or the Semitic mind”. Such a

statement counts for something, coming as it does from a master of Greek, Latin,

English and French, who also had some traces of Hebrew and Arabic. Classical

Sanskrit, he went on, was “lucid with the utmost possible clarity, precise to the

farthest limit of precision, always compact and at its best sparing in its formation of

phrase, but yet with all this never poor or bare.”16

15 Sri Aurobindo, Renaissance, CWSA 20:25, 31, 20, 75, 93, 85.

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The literary creations of this language, Sri Aurobindo said, stand “in the front

rank among the world’s great literatures.” Remarkable “both in quality and in body

and abundance of excellence”, they exhibited “potent originality and force and

beauty” as well as “grandeur and justice and charm of speech”. And it was not only in

Sanskrit that “the Indian mind has done high and beautiful and perfect things.” There

was also the literature of Pali and the later regional languages both of northern and

southern India. Altogether, the literature of the Indian subcontinent did not “fall so far

short in the quantity of its really lasting things and equals in its things of best

excellence the work of ancient and mediaeval and modern Europe.” Note the

judiciousness of this comment from one who was a master both of Indian and of

European literature. There is no need for hype when dealing with truly remarkable

cultural achievement.17

Turning to the postclassical era, Sri Aurobindo noted that Sanskrit literature

did not “come to any abrupt end” but continued into modern times. But he had to

admit that “the genius rapidly fades out from it, it becomes stiff, heavy and artificial

and only a scholastic talent remains to keep it in continuity”. In the end, he said,

Sanskrit became “the language of the Pandits” and no longer provided “a first-hand

expression of the life and mind of the people.”18 From the medieval period forward,

all living literary expression was in the regional languages.

Sri Aurobindo believed nevertheless that Sanskrit still had “a future as a

language of the learned.” “It will not be a good day for India”, he declared, “when the

ancient tongue ceases entirely to be written or spoken.” But for it to prosper, it had to

“get rid of the curse of the heavy pedantic style contracted by it in its decline with the

lumbering impossible compounds and the overweight of hair-splitting erudition.”

16 Sri Aurobindo, Renaissance, CWSA 20:324, 357-58.17 Sri Aurobindo, Renaissance, CWSA 20:314, 315.18 Sri Aurobindo, Renaissance, CWSA 20:376, 355.

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He himself wrote some pieces in Sanskrit which will appear along with his

Bengali writings in a separate volume of the Complete Works. His first surviving

Sanskrit composition, Bhavani Bharati, was written between 1904 and 1908 but not

published until 1985. It is a call by the Mother of India to her children to shake off

their lethargy and rise to her defence, followed by a vision of India’s glorious future.

The second, Ekamevadvitiyam, is an incomplete essay sketching some of the main

ideas of the author’s Integral Advaita. “Lila,” he concludes, “indeed is the world….

Having attained the one enjoyable Divine, enjoy Him in all things.”19

As a scholar and writer with a comprehensive knowledge of the ancient and

modern literatures of India and Europe, Sri Aurobindo looked forward to the

development of literary and linguistic research that would apply the best of the old

and new methods of the East and West. Old-style scholars had to pick up “the

flexibility and penetrating critical sense” of the new Western scholarship, while

modern scholars had to learn “the patient thoroughness of the old.”20 More generally,

he felt that all students in India should acquire an Indian language, for this was

necessary “to get to the heart and intimate sense of our own culture and establish a

vivid continuity between the still living power of our past and the yet uncreated power

of our future.” Once this basis was established, it would be easier for students “to

learn and use English or any other foreign tongue so as to know helpfully the life,

ideas and culture of other countries and establish our right relations with the world

around us.”21 This, he said, ought to be the aim of modern education in the

humanities, and it is something like this that is being practiced at the Sri Aurobindo

International Centre of Education, where all students learn to speak English, French,

their mother tongue, and Sanskrit.

19 Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, vol. 2, no. 2 [December 1978]: 182-87.20 Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1:613.21 Sri Aurobindo, Early Cultural Writings, CWSA 1:421.

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Notes

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