Sri Aurobindo
Karmayogin
POLITICAL WRITINGS AND SPEECHES — 1909-1910 — No. 32
Karmayogin: A Weekly Review
Saturday 12th February 1910 — No.32
Passing Thoughts
The Scholarship of Mr. Risley
We are not concerned with the political issues of Mr. Risley's great oratorical effort in connection with the Press Bill, for we have renounced politics; but Mr. Risley as a scholar falls within our province, and we can only hope our remarks on that subject will not expose us to the provision against bringing officials into contempt.
Even at that risk we must take leave to say that we can only hope Mr. Risley's ethnological science is less remarkably muddled than his knowledge of Indian civilisation and literature.
In his exhortation to Indian womanhood to stand fast to its ancient moorings he jumbles together Swayamvaras1, the rape of the Sabines and Shacuntala in a miraculous fashion!
At no Swayamvara that we are aware of, did the women come forward as peacemakers between the abducting hero and the disappointed suitors.
Mr. Risley has been misled by pitchforking his early memories of Roman history into Indian epic and narrative.
And need we say that there was neither Swayamvara, nor fighting nor peacemaking in the story of Shacuntala?
This is the first time, moreover, that a startled Indian public has been pointed to Shacuntala as the ideal Hindu woman.
Sita, Draupadi, Savitri, Damayanti,— these are familiar to us as ideals, but Shacuntala is Mr. Risley's own addition.
To us she is a beautiful poetic creation, not an exemplar of feminine conduct.
We observe that the Bengalee is full of admiration for Mr. Risley's poetic rapture over Shacuntala.
We do not know whom we should congratulate more, the poet of the Press Bill or his admirer.