Sri Aurobindo

The Harmony of Virtue

Early Cultural Writings — 1890-1910

Bibliographical Note

THE HARMONY OF VIRTUE, Volume 3 of the SRI AUROBINDO BIRTH CENTENARY LIBRARY, contains Sri Aurobindo's early prose writings on subjects of cultural import. They cover a period of twenty years, from 1890 to 1910, prior to his withdrawal to Pondicherry. The political writings and speeches of this period, revealing the active part he played in India's struggle for independence, are collected in Volumes 1 and 2, the poetry, plays, translations in their appropriate volumes.

Section One: It contains the earliest available prose writings, dated 1890-92, his student days in England. Stray Thoughts in this section are gleaned from scattered notes found in the same manuscript.

Section Two: On the passing away of Bankim Chandra Chatterji in 1894 Sri Aurobindo contributed this series of seven articles to the Indu Prakash of Bombay edited by his Cambridge friend K. G. Deshpande. It ran from 16 July to 27 August 1894.

Sections Three, Four and Five: The writings in these three sections belong to the Baroda period. Most of them are from manuscripts that remained unknown till 1950. Only The Age of Kalidasa and Kalidasa's “Seasons” were available earlier. They were first printed in 1909 in the Karmayogin, the English Weekly Review Sri Aurobindo edited in 1909-10. They were later published in book-form in 1929 after some revision, under the title KALIDASA.

Sections Six, Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten: All the articles in these five sections were written for the Karmayogin, except Hatha Yoga and Raja Yoga (Section Seven) and Mazzini—Cavour—Garibaldi, Shivaji— Jai Singh, Littleton — Percival (Section Ten). A few of the articles in Section Seven were brought out in book-form under the title THE IDEAL OF THE KARMAYOGIN in 1918. The fourth edition in 1927 was revised.

Section Nine: The articles Epistles from Abroad, In the Society's Chambers, At the Society's Chambers are published for the first time. The rest of the articles in this section, the manuscripts of which had passed for a time into other hands when Sri Aurobindo had left British India, were published in the Standard Bearer in 1920.