Sri Aurobindo

Translations

CWSA.- Volume 5

Note on the Texts

Fluent in English from his childhood, Sri Aurobindo mastered five other languages – French, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Bengali – and learned something of seven others – Italian, German, Spanish, Hindi / Hindustani, Gujarati, Marathi and Tamil. On numerous occasions over a period of half a century he translated works and passages written in several of these languages.

The present volume contains all Sri Aurobindo’s translations from Sanskrit, Bengali, Tamil, Greek and Latin into English, with the exception of his translations from the Rig Veda and the Upanishads. (His Vedic and Upanishadic translations are published in volumes 14 – 18 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo.) Sri Aurobindo’s translations of some of the Mother’s French Prières et méditations appear in The Mother with Letters on the Mother, volume 31 of The Complete Works. His translations of Sanskrit texts into Bengali are published in Writings in Bengali and Sanskrit, volume 9 of The Complete Works. Several of his other works incorporate translations. Essays on the Gita (volume 19), for instance, contains translations and paraphrases of many passages from the Bhagavad Gita. (The present volume contains an early literary translation of the Gita’s opening chapters.)

The editors have arranged the contents of the present volume in five parts according to source-language. The pieces are published as Sri Aurobindo translated them, even if his ordering does not agree with the usual order of the original text.

Part One: Translations from Sanskrit

Sri Aurobindo began to learn Sanskrit as an Indian Civil Service probationer at Cambridge between 1890 and 1892. He continued his studies while working as an administrative officer and professor in the Baroda state between 1893 and 1906. During this period he translated most of the pieces making up this part. His rendering of Vidula dates from the period of his political activity (1906 – 10); some shorter pieces, mostly incomplete, date from his years in Pondicherry (1910 – 50).

Section One. The Ramayana

Pieces from the Ramayana. Sri Aurobindo translated these four passages sometime around 1900 under the heading “Pieces from the Ramaian”. They have been reproduced in the order of their occurrence in his notebook. The Sanskrit sources of the passages are as follows: “Speech of Dussaruth to the assembled States-General of his Empire”, Ayodhya Kanda, Sarga 2. 1 – 20; “An Aryan City”, Bala Kanda, Sarga 5. 5 – 22; “A Mother’s Lament”, Ayodhya Kanda, Sarga 20. 36 – 55; “The Wife”, Ayodhya Kanda, Sargas 26 – 30.

An Aryan City: Prose Version. Editorial title. Translated around 1912. Bala Kanda, Sarga 5. 5 – 15. This translation covers most of the same ground as the verse translation in “Pieces from the Ramayana”, which was done around a decade earlier.

The Book of the Wild Forest. Translated around 1912. Aranya Kanda, Sargas 1. 1 – 21, 2. 1 – 25, 3. 1 – 5.

The Defeat of Dhoomraksha. Translated around 1913. Yuddha Kanda, Sarga 52.

Section Two. The Mahabharata

Sabha Parva or Book of the Assembly-Hall. According to notations in the manuscript, Sri Aurobindo worked on this translation between 18 March and 18 April 1893. (He returned to India after passing more than thirteen years in England on 6 February 1893.) His original plan was to translate much of the Parva in twelve “cantos”. On the first page of the manuscript, under the heading “Translation / of / the Mahabhaarut / Sabhâ Purva / or Book of the Assembly-Hall”, he wrote an outline of the proposed work:

Part I. The Book of the Sacrifice

Canto I The Building of the Hall.

Canto II. The Debated Sacrifice

Canto III. The Slaying of Jeresundh.

Canto IV. The Conquest of the World.

Canto V. The Interrupted Meedgiving

Canto VI The Slaying of Shishupaal.

Part II. The Book of Gambling

Canto VII The Grief of Duryodhun

Canto VIII The Bringing of Yudishthere

Canto IX. The Throwing of the Dice

Canto X The Oppression of Drowpadie

Canto XI. The Last Throwing of the Dice

Canto XII. The Exile of the Pandoves

The division of the Parva into twelve cantos is Sri Aurobindo’s own and does not correspond to any divisions in the Sanskrit text.

Sri Aurobindo abandoned this project before completion, leaving translations, in places rather rough, of only two cantos and part of a third. The first canto consists of Adhyayas 1 – 3 and part of Adhyaya 4, the second of Adhyayas 13 – 16 and part of 17, and the third of Adhyayas 20 – 22 and part of 23. (These are the Adhyaya numbers in the popular Gita Press edition [Gorakhpur], which corresponds reasonably well to the edition used by Sri Aurobindo for this translation. The corresponding Adhyayas in the Critical Edition [Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute] are 1 – 4, 12 – 16 and 18 – 21.)

While revising his translation Sri Aurobindo wrote alternative versions of several passages. The editors have reproduced the later version whenever it was sufficiently well worked out for use; if not, they have reverted to the original version. Sri Aurobindo numbered the lines of his first versions of the three cantos, but did not revise the numbers after adding new lines.

Virata Parva: Fragments from Adhyaya 17. These two fragments were written on a single page of a notebook that can be dated to around 1898. The shorter, prose version covers part of the Sanskrit passage that is translated in the longer, poetic version, namely Virata Parva 17. 13 – 15 in the Gita Press edition or 16. 7 – 9 in the Critical Edition.

Udyoga Parva: Two Renderings of the First Adhyaya. The two versions of Adhyaya 1 of the Udyoga Parva were done separately around 1902 and 1906. Neither is quite complete. The first version omits Shlokas 8 and 9; the second omits the last verse.

Udyoga Parva: Passages from Adhyayas 75 and 72. These fragments from Adhyayas 75 and 72 (73 and 70 in the Critical Edition) of the Udyoga Parva were translated in this order around 1902. They occupy a page of the notebook containing the essay “Notes on the Mahabharata” (see Early Cultural Writings, volume 1 of The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo). The first passage covers the first three Shlokas of Adhyaya 75 (the remainder of this Adhyaya is translated in “Notes on the Mahabharata”). The second passage covers Shlokas 1 – 5 of Adhyaya 72.

The Bhagavad Gita: The First Six Chapters. Sri Aurobindo translated these chapters of the Bhagavad Gita sometime around 1902. He used a text of the Gita published in Calcutta in 1301 Bengali era (1894 – 95), jotting down English renderings of a few verses in the book itself before translating the first six chapters in a notebook. A translation of the first three verses of the seventh chapter is reproduced in Appendix I from marginal notations in his copy of the book. Appendix II is a much later translation of the first three and a half verses of the Gita, found in a notebook used by Sri Aurobindo in 1927.

Vidula. This translation first appeared in the weekly Bande Mataram on 9 June 1907 under the title “The Mother to her Son”. The following note by Sri Aurobindo was printed above the text:

(There are few more interesting passages in the Mahabharat than the conversation of Vidula with her son. It comes into the main poem as an exhortation from Kunti to Yudhisthir to give up the weak spirit of submission, moderation, prudence, and fight like a true warrior and Kshatriya for right and justice and his own. But the poem bears internal evidence of having been written by a patriotic poet to stir his countrymen to revolt against the yoke of the foreigner. Sanjay, prince and leader of an Aryan people, has been defeated by the King of Sindhu and his Kingdom is in the possession of the invader. The fact of the King of Sindhu or the country around the Indus being named as the invader shows that the poet must have had in his mind one of the aggressive foreign powers, whether Persia, Graeco-Bactria, Parthia or the Scythians, which took possession one after the other of these regions and made them the base for inroads upon the North-West. The poet seeks to fire the spirit of the conquered and subject people and impel them to throw off the hated subjection. He personifies in Vidula the spirit of the motherland speaking to her degenerate son and striving to awaken in him the inherited Aryan manhood and the Kshatriya’s preference of death to servitude.)

Almost thirty-five years later Sri Aurobindo revised his translation for publication in Collected Poems and Plays (1942). At that time he struck out the above note and wrote the one reproduced on page 105.

Section Three. Kalidasa

Between 1898 and around 1903 Sri Aurobindo wrote several chapters of a planned critical study of the works of Kalidasa, the master of classical Sanskrit poetry. During the same period he translated two complete works by the poet – the Meghaduta and the Vikramorvashiya – as well as parts of three others – the Malavikagnimitra, the Kumarasambhava and the Raghuvansha. A number of years later, in Pondicherry, he returned to Kalidasa, producing three different versions of the opening of the Kumarasambhava.

The editors reproduce these translations in the following order: first, the only surviving complete translation; next, the two that include at least one major section of the original text; and finally, notes and fragments.

Vikramorvasie or The Hero and the Nymph. Sri Aurobindo began this translation of Kalidasa’s second drama, the Vikramorvashiya, sometime around 1898. He had apparently completed it by around 1902, when he wrote an essay on the characters of the play. (This essay, “Vikramorvasie: The Characters”, is published in Early Cultural Writings, volume 1 of The Complete Works.) Probably in 1911 Sri Aurobindo’s translation was published by R. Chatterjee (presumably Ramananda Chatterjee, editor of the Prabasi and Modern Review) at the Kuntaline Press, Calcutta. A second edition was brought out in 1941 by the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry; the next year the text was included in the same publisher’s Collected Poems and Plays.

In the Gardens of Vidisha or Malavica and the King: Act I. Sri Aurobindo wrote this partial translation of Kalidasa’s Malavikagnimitra in Baroda, probably around 1900 – 02. A fragment from the beginning of Act II, translated at the same time, is published here in an appendix.

The Birth of the War-God. Around 1916 – 18, Sri Aurobindo made three separate translations of parts of the first two cantos of Kalidasa’s epic Kumarasambhava under the title The Birth of the War-God. The first rendering, which breaks off after the twentieth verse, is in rhymed stanzas. The second rendering is a translation of the first canto in blank verse; verses 7 – 16 were translated in a different order from the original. The third, expanded version includes several long passages that do not correspond to anything in Kalidasa’s epic. It may thus be considered practically an independent poem by Sri Aurobindo.

Notes and Fragments

Skeleton Notes on the Kumarasambhavam: Canto V. Around 1900 – 02, while still living in Baroda, Sri Aurobindo produced this annotated literal translation of the beginning of the fifth canto of Kalidasa’s epic. In it he cited the glosses of various commentators. These citations make it clear that he used the edition of Shankar Ganesh Deshpande: The Kumara-Sambhava of Kâlidâsa (I–VI.) With the commentary of Mallinâtha (Poona, 1887).

The Line of Raghou: Two Renderings of the Opening. Sri Aurobindo translated the first ten verses of Kalidasa’s Raghuvansha independently on two different occasions, first in Baroda sometime around 1900 – 05 (he headed this translation “Raghuvansa”) and later in Pondicherry around 1912 (he headed this translation “The Line of Raghou / Canto I”).

The Cloud Messenger: Fragments from a Lost Translation. Sri Aurobindo translated the entire Meghaduta sometime around 1900. A decade later, while living in Pondicherry under the surveillance of the British police, he entrusted the translation to a friend, who (according to the received story) put it in a bamboo cylinder and buried it. When the cylinder was unearthed, it was discovered that the translation had been devoured by white ants. The only passages to survive are the ones Sri Aurobindo quoted in his essay “On Translating Kalidasa” and in a letter to his brother Manmohan Ghose that was typed for use as a preface to the poem Love and Death. These passages are reproduced here in the order in which they occur in Kalidasa’s poem.

Section Four. Bhartrihari

The Century of Life. Sri Aurobindo began this translation of the Niti Shataka of Bhartrihari (sixth to seventh century) while in Baroda. He seems to have been referring to it when he spoke, in a letter to his uncle dated 15 August 1902, of “my MS of verse translations from Sanskrit”. Some of the epigrams were first published in the Baroda College Miscellany, presumably during the years he was a professor of English there (1898 – 1901 and 1905 – 06). A few others were published in the Karmayogin on 19 March 1910 and in the Arya in December 1917 and November 1918. The complete translation was preserved in the form of a forty-page typescript, preceded by an eight-page “Prefatory Note” (see below). In 1924 the translation was published by the Shama’a Publishing House, Madras.

Appendix: Prefatory Note on Bhartrihari. The typed manuscript of Sri Aurobindo’s translation of The Century of Life, then called “The Century of Morals”, included this “prefatory note” on the poet and his work. When Sri Aurobindo published The Century of Life in 1924, he discarded this note in favour of the brief translator’s note published here on page 314.

Section Five. Other Translations from Sanskrit

Opening of the Kiratarjuniya. Sri Aurobindo read the masterwork of the seventh-century poet Bharavi during the early part of his stay in Pondicherry. He wrote a literal translation of the first two Shlokas of the poem in the top margin of the first page of the book. This evidently was intended as an aid in his study of the poem and not as an attempt at literary translation.

Bhagawat: Skandha I, Adhyaya I. This translation of the first Adhyaya of the Bhagavata Purana was written in Pondicherry around 1912.

Bhavani. Sri Aurobindo’s translation of the opening of this hymn, attributed to the eighth-century Vedantic philosopher and commentator Shankaracharya, is dated 28 March 1941.

Part Two: Translations from Bengali

Although born in Bengal of Bengali parents, Sri Aurobindo did not begin to learn the Bengali language until he was a young man. As a child he spoke only English and Hindustani. His father, then an ardent anglophile, did not allow Bengali to be spoken at home. When he was seven, Aurobindo was taken to England, where he remained for the next thirteen years. Selected for the Indian Civil Service and assigned to Bengal, he began the study of Bengali at Cambridge. Rejected from the service in 1892, he obtained employment in the state of Baroda, where he continued his Bengali studies. At this time he translated a number of songs by devotional poets who wrote in Bengali or the related language of Maithili. Between 1906 and 1910 he lived in Bengal, where he mastered Bengali well enough to edit a weekly journal in that language. At that time he translated part of a novel by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee. Later, in Pondicherry, he translated a few examples of contemporary Bengali poetry.

Section One. Vaishnava Devotional Poetry

Radha’s Complaint in Absence. Sri Aurobindo published this “imitation” of a poem by Chandidasa (late fourteenth to early fifteenth century) in Songs to Myrtilla (c. 1898), his first collection of poems.

Radha’s Appeal. This “imitation” from Chandidasa was also published in Songs to Myrtilla.

Karma: Radha’s Complaint. This free rendering of a poem by Chandidasa first appeared in Ahana and Other Poems (Pondicherry: The Modern Press, 1915).

Appeal. This English poem is based in part on a song (“Divas til ādh. . . ”) in Vidyapati’s Padavali (see the next item). The first stanza of the English follows Vidyapati’s text fairly closely; the two stanzas that follow are Sri Aurobindo’s own invention. It was first published in Ahana and Other Poems.

Twenty-two Poems of Bidyapati. Vidyapati (fourteenth to fifteenth century; pronounced “Bidyapati” in Bengali and so spelled by Sri Aurobindo) wrote in Maithili, a language spoken in north-east Bihar and Nepal, which is closely related to Bengali and other languages of eastern India. Mediaeval Maithili in particular is close to mediaeval Bengali, and Bengali scholars consider Vidyapati one of the creators of their own literature. Sri Aurobindo read Vidyapati’s Padavali as part of his study of early Bengali literature. (He used the text reproduced in an edition of Prachin Kabir Granthabali [Anthology of the Old Poets] published in Calcutta in 1304 Bengali era [1897 – 98].) Around 1898 Sri Aurobindo began to translate poems from the Padavali into English verse. He entitled his first selection, “Ten Poems translated from Bidyapati”. Later, in the same notebook, he added twenty-four more. Some years later he selected twelve of these thirty-four translations for inclusion in his “Selected Poems of Bidyapati” (see below). The twenty-two poems that he did not select are published together here under an editorial title similar to the title of his first selection of ten.

Sri Aurobindo gave titles to drafts of four of the poems in this series (13: “Radha”; 14: “After the bath”; 15: “Radha bathing”; 16: “Love’s Stratagem”) and three of the “Selected Poems of Bidyapati” (2: “Enchantment”; 12: “The Look”; 13: “The Bee and the Jasmine”). He wrote more than one version of some of the translations included in this section. Versions that differ significantly from the ones chosen for publication here are reproduced in the reference volume (volume 35). As Sri Aurobindo did not finalise his arrangement of these twenty-two poems, they are published in the order in which they occur in Prachin Kabir Granthabali.

Selected Poems of Bidyapati. Around 1900 Sri Aurobindo selected nineteen of his translations from Vidyapati (twelve of which had been drafted in the notebook mentioned in the previous note), and arranged them in an order that emphasises the dialogue between Radha and Krishna.

Selected Poems of Nidhou. Sri Aurobindo translated these twenty poems by the Bengali poet Ramnidhi Gupta (1741 – 1839), known as Nidhu Babu, sometime around 1900, using the same notebook he had used for “Selected Poems of Bidyapati”. He seems to have used texts of Nidhu Babu’s poems published in an edition of the collection Rasa Bhandar (Calcutta, 1306 Bengali era [1899 – 1900]). He numbered his translations and then revised the order by changing the numbers in pencil. The editors have followed the revised arrangement.

Selected Poems of Horo Thacoor. Sri Aurobindo translated these seven poems by Harekrishna Dirghangi (1738 – 1813), known as Haru Thakur, around the same time as the selections from Nidhu Babu (see above), writing his fair copies in the same notebook. His source seems to have been Rasa Bhandar (see above). The notes above the texts are his own glosses.

Selected Poems of Ganodas. Sri Aurobindo translated these seven poems by the sixteenth-century poet Jnanadas (whose name he spelled “Ganodas”, as it is pronounced in Bengali) around the same time, and in the same notebook, as his selections from Nidhu Babu and Haru Thakur. His text appears to have been the Prachin Kabir Granthabali (see above under “Twenty-two Poems of Bidyapati”). The glosses are his own.

Section Two. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee

Hymn to the Mother: Bande Mataram. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee (1838 – 94) inserted his song “Bande Mataram” in the tenth chapter of his novel Anandamath. During the Swadeshi movement (1905 – 12) the song became a national anthem and its opening words – “Bande Mataram” (“I bow to the Motherland”) – a sort of battle cry. In the course of translating the first part of the novel (see below), Sri Aurobindo rendered the song in English verse, adding, in a footnote, a more literal prose translation. First published in the Karmayogin on 20 November 1909, the two renderings later were reproduced in Rishi Bunkim Chandra (1923), a pamphlet containing also an essay of the same name.

Anandamath: The First Thirteen Chapters. Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s novel Anandamath (The Abbey of Bliss) was first published in 1882. A quarter-century later it gained great popularity as the source of the song “Bande Mataram” and as a masked revolutionary statement. A translation of the Prologue and the first thirteen chapters of Part I of the novel were published in the Karmayogin between between August 1909 and February 1910 over the name Aurobindo Ghose (Sri Aurobindo). The chapters contain a number of unidiomatic expressions that make one wonder whether he was solely responsible for the translation. During the 1940s, a full translation of Anandamath was published by the Basumati Sahitya Mandir, Calcutta. A note to this edition states: “Up to 15th Chapter of Part I translated by Sree Aurobindo. Subsequent pages translated by Sree Barindra Kumar Ghosh.” Chapters fourteen and fifteen were certainly not translated by Sri Aurobindo, and are not included here.

Sometime during the early period of his stay in Pondicherry (1910 – 14), Sri Aurobindo made a handwritten translation of the first two chapters of Anandamath, apparently without reference to the Karmayogin version. This translation is published here in an appendix.

Section Three. Chittaranjan Das

Songs of the Sea. Sri Aurobindo met Chittaranjan Das (1870 – 1925) while both were students in England. Two decades later Das successfully defended Sri Aurobindo from the charge of conspiracy to wage war against the King in the Alipore Bomb Case (1909 – 10). In 1913, learning that Sri Aurobindo was in financial need, Das offered him Rs. 1000 in exchange for a translation of Das’s book of poems, Sagar-Sangit (Sea-Songs). Sri Aurobindo agreed and completed the translation, which eventually was published, along with Das’s prose translation, by Ganesh and Co., Madras, around 1923. Twenty-five years later Sri Aurobindo wrote of his rendering:

I was not . . . self-moved to translate this work, however beautiful I found it; I might even be accused of having written the translation as a pot-boiler, for Das knowing my impecunious and precarious situation at Pondicherry offered me Rs. 1,000 for the work. Nevertheless I tried to give his beautiful Bengali lines as excellent a shape of English poetry as I could manage.

Section Four. Disciples and Others

During the 1930s a number of Sri Aurobindo’s disciples wrote poems that they submitted to him for comment and criticism. On eleven occasions he translated or thoroughly revised translations of poems in Bengali that had been sent to him in this way. During the same decade he translated three songs by Dwijendralal Roy and Atulprasad Sen. These fourteen translations are arranged here in the order of the poets’ birth. Most were informal efforts; only “Hymn to India” and “Mahalakshmi” were revised for publication.

Hymn to India, by Dwijendralal Roy (1863 – 1913). Roy, a well-known playwright, was the father of Dilip Kumar Roy, a disciple of Sri Aurobindo (see below). Sri Aurobindo translated his Bharata Stotra on 16 February 1941. The next month the translation was published in the Modern Review, Calcutta, under the title “Hymn to India”. A year later it was reproduced in Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Poems and Plays under the title “Mother India”. The editors have reverted to the Modern Review title (a literal translation of the original Bengali title) to avoid confusion with the next piece.

Mother India, by Dwijendralal Roy. In 1932 Sri Aurobindo thoroughly revised a translation by Mrs. Frieda Hanswirth Dass, a Swiss friend of Dilip Kumar Roy’s, of Dwijendralal’s song Bharatabarsha. Sri Aurobindo later wrote of this version as “my translation”. Early typed copies of it are entitled “Mother India”.

The Pilot, by Atulprasad Sen (1871 – 1934). Sen, a noted songwriter and singer, was a friend of Dilip Kumar Roy’s. Dilip seems to have sent Sri Aurobindo a copy of this song, probably accompanied by his own or another’s English translation, sometime during the 1930s. He later marked a typed copy of the present translation “by Sri Aurobindo”.

Mahalakshmi, by Anilbaran Roy (1890 – 1974). In November 1935, Sri Aurobindo wrote of this translation (which he had apparently just completed):

Anilbaran’s song is best rendered by an Elizabethan simplicity and intensity with as little artifice of metre and diction as possible. I have tried to do it in that way.

The translation was first published, under the title “The Mother”, in Gitasri, a book of Bengali songs by Dilip Kumar Roy and Nishikanto. It was reprinted, under the title “Mahalakshmi”, in Sri Aurobindo’s Collected Poems and Plays (1942).

The New Creator, by Aruna (1895 – 1993).

Lakshmi, by Dilip Kumar Roy (1897 – 1980). Sri Aurobindo’s handwritten copy of this translation is entitled “Mahalakshmi”. It was published under the title “Lakshmi” in the poet’s collection Anami (Calcutta, c. 1934), and under the name “Mahalakshmi” in his collection Eyes of Light (Bombay, 1948). In both books Sri Aurobindo was identified as the translator. The editors have used the title “Lakshmi” to distinguish this translation from the translation of Anilbaran Roy’s poem (see above).

Aspiration: The New Dawn, by Dilip Kumar Roy. A copy of this translation in Sri Aurobindo’s own hand exists. It was published in the poet’s Anami (c. 1934). The poet later wrote that it “was originally translated by my own humble self in free verse which Sri Aurobindo corrected and revised later”.

Farewell Flute, by Dilip Kumar Roy. This translation was published in the poet’s Eyes of Light in 1948. There the translator was identified as Sri Aurobindo.

Uma, by Dilip Kumar Roy. Sri Aurobindo based this translation on one by K. C. Sen. Apropos of his work, he wrote:

Khitish Sen’s translation is far from bad, but it is not perfect either and uses too many oft-heard locutions without bringing in the touch of magic that would save them. Besides, his metre, in spite of his trying to lighten it, is one of the common and obvious metres which are almost proof against subtlety of movement. It may be mathematically more equivalent to yours, but there is an underrunning lilt of celestial dance in your rhythm which he tries to get but, because of the limitations of the metre, cannot manage. I think my iambic-anapaestic choice is better fitted to catch the dance-lilt and keep it.

Two typed copies of Sri Aurobindo’s translation exist, one entitled “Uma” and the other “Gouri”. In the margin of one, D. K. Roy wrote: “This can be taken as Sri Aurobindo’s translation. 99% is his.”

Faithful, by Dilip Kumar Roy. The poet wrote of this translation: “The English version is a free rendering from the Bengali original by Dilip Kumar and corrected by Sri Aurobindo practically 90%.”

Since thou hast called me, by Sahana (1897 – 1990). An early typed copy of this poem is marked: “translated from Sahana’s song by Sri Aurobindo. 13-2-’41.”

A Beauty infinite, by Jyotirmayi (c. 1902 – ?) The poet’s sonnet was written on 2 January 1937 and submitted to Sri Aurobindo the next day. On 14 January Sri Aurobindo wrote this translation, prefacing it with the following remark: “I am inserting an attempt to put in English verse Jyoti’s sonnet translated by Nolini [Kanta Gupta].”

At the day-end, by Nirodbaran (born 1903). The poet’s sonnet was submitted to Sri Aurobindo on 17 February 1937. Sri Aurobindo wrote his translation as part of his reply of the next day. He prefaced it with the remark: “Well, let us put it in English – without trying to be too literal, turning the phrases to suit the Eng. language. If there are any mistakes of rendering they can be adjusted.”

The King of kings, by Nishikanto (1909 – 1973). An early typed copy of this translation is marked: “Translated by Sri Aurobindo from Nishikanto’s song. 7.2.1941.”

Part Three: Translations from Tamil

In connection with his research into the “origins of Aryan speech”, Sri Aurobindo made a brief study of Tamil in Pondicherry around 1910 – 12. A few years later the celebrated poet Subramania Bharati, who like Sri Aurobindo was a political refugee in the French colony, introduced Sri Aurobindo to the works of the mediaeval Vaishnava saints known as alwars, helping him translate some of their poems into English, and providing him with material to enable him to write prefatory essays on the poets. Bharati also may have helped Sri Aurobindo in his translations from the Kural.

Andal. Andal lived during the eighth century. Sri Aurobindo’s translations of three of her poems – “To the Cuckoo”, “I Dreamed a Dream”, and “Ye Others” – were published in the Arya in May 1915. They were preceded by the essay reproduced here.

Nammalwar. Maran, known as Nammalwar, lived during the ninth century. Sri Aurobindo’s translations of his “Hymn of the Golden Age”, and “Love-Mad”, along with an essay on the poet, were published in the Arya in July and September 1915.

Kulasekhara Alwar. Kulasekhara Alwar reigned in the Chera kingdom of south India during the eighth century. Sri Aurobindo’s translation of his “Refuge” was published in the Arya in November 1915.

Tiruvalluvar. Composed by the poet Tiruvalluvar sometime during the early centuries of the Christian era, the Kural consists of 1330 verse aphorisms on the main aspects of life – ethical, practical and sensuous – divided into three parts made up of chapters of ten verses each. Around 1919, Sri Aurobindo translated the first chapter (in a different order from the original) and five aphorisms from the second chapter.

Part Four: Translations from Greek

Sri Aurobindo began the study of Greek at St Paul’s School, London. After winning a classical scholarship with the best Greek papers the examiner had ever seen, he continued his studies at King’s College, Cambridge. He wrote the translations of Greek epigrams reproduced here in England or Baroda. The translations from Homer were done later, in Baroda and Pondicherry.

Two Epigrams. Sri Aurobindo’s translations of these epigrams attributed to Plato (fifth to fourth century B.C.) and Meleager (first century B.C.) were published in Songs to Myrtilla (c. 1898).

Opening of the Iliad. Sri Aurobindo translated these lines from the Iliad in Baroda around 1901.

Opening of the Odyssey. Sri Aurobindo translated these lines from the Odyssey in Pondicherry around 1913. His manuscript is headed “Odyssey Book I”.

Hexameters from Homer. These translations of four lines from the Iliad were written, below the original Greek lines, in a note-pad used by Sri Aurobindo in 1946 mainly for passages of his epic, Savitri. In a letter dictated in that year, he quoted these lines in a slightly different form to illustrate the use of repetition in the Homeric style.

Part Five: Translations from Latin

Sri Aurobindo began the study of Latin in Manchester before entering school. He continued his studies at St Paul’s and at King’s College, Cambridge. He did the translations reproduced here in Pondicherry in the 1930s and 1940s.

Hexameters from Virgil and Horace. Sri Aurobindo translated these three lines from the works of Virgil and Horace (both first century B.C.) in Pondicherry during the 1930s, using the same hexametric metre as the originals. The first line is a conflation of two lines from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book 8, line 596 and Book 11, 875. The second line is also from the Aeneid, Book 1, line 199. The last is line 41 of Horace’s Ars Poetica.

Catullus to Lesbia. Sri Aurobindo translated this lyric by the Latin poet Catullus (first century B.C.) in Pondicherry around 1942. Two versions of the translation exist among his manuscripts. The one reproduced here is the more developed.

Publishing History

As mentioned above, the following works were published during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime: the three poems by Chandidasa and “Appeal” (c. 1898 and 1915); Vidula (in Bande Mataram in 1907); Vikramorvasie or The Hero and the Nymph (Calcutta, 1911; Pondicherry, 1941); The Century of Life (Madras, 1924); Bande Mataram and the chapters of Anandamath (1909 and subsequently); Songs of the Sea (Madras, 1923); Bengali poems by “Disciples and Others” (1934 – 1948); the selections from the Alwars (1914 – 15); and the Greek lyrics (c. 1898). Most of these works were reproduced in Collected Poems and Plays (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1942). Most of the other translations appeared in books or journals between 1950 and 1970. All known translations were collected for the first time in Translations (Pondicherry, 1972). The present volume contains a few translations that have not previously been printed. All the texts have been checked against Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts and books and periodicals published during his lifetime.