SRI AUROBINDO
Translations
from Sanskrit and Other Languages
Bibliographical Note
Sri Aurobindo, on his return to India, started steeping himself in Indian Culture and began learning the Indian languages – Sanskrit, Bengali, Gujarati, Marathi, etc. At the same time he commenced translating from Sanskrit and Bengali. We find in his manuscripts a few lists enumerating the work he had done, judging from which many translations seem to have been lost. The translation of Kalidasa’s Meghaduta in terza rima, is, we know for certain, irretrievable.
Most of the translations from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, the Gita, Kalidasa, Bhartrihari and the mediaeval poets Bidyapati, Chandidas, Horu Thakur, etc. were done during Sri Aurobindo’s Baroda period, 1893-1905. But Kalidasa’s Kumarasambhava bears the date January 15, 1918. The Book of the Assembly Hall from the Mahabharata bears the earliest known date, the 18th of March, 1893, indicating that it was started exactly a month after he had assumed office in Baroda State.
Vidula which appeared in Bande Mataram in 1907 was translated about the same time.
Kalidasa’s Vikramorvasi and Bhartrihari’s Century of Life were published in book-form in 1911 and 1923 and were included in Collected Poems and Plays in 1942. Vikramorvasi has been published in Volume 7 of the Centenary Series (Collected Plays).
The first thirteen chapters of Bankim Chandra Chatterjee’s Ananda Math were translated and serialised in the Karmayogin in 1909. The national song, Bande Mataram, appears in this novel.
Songs of the Sea was translated at the request of the author, C. R. Das, and published in 1923 with his own prose translations. In 1942 it was included in Collected Poems and Plays.
The works of Tamil poets were translated with the help of Subramaniam Bharati and published in the Arya in 1914-1915.
Translations from the Greek belong to Sri Aurobindo’s early period, while the poem from Catullus was done in Pondicherry.
During the ’thirties and ’forties Sri Aurobindo translated from Bengali a few poems of his disciples.
D. L. Roy’s song Mother India was Englished in 1941.
The translations brought together in this volume are printed exactly as found in the manuscripts. Proper names are spelt as in the original copy.
Most of the translations here are of literary pieces. The translations of the Upanishads and Vedas are published in Volumes 10, 11, 12 of the present series.