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Letter to Dr. Karan Singh April 27, 1999 Respected Dr. Karan Singh-ji,
Apropos of my brief faxed reply to your kind letter of 9.4.99, I put down in relative detail some cardinal facts about the new edition of Savitri. The Epic Savitri was composed spread over a period of three and half decades (1916-1950). Sri Aurobindo used different kinds of paper at different times, altered, omitted and introduced new words often along the margins of the papers and it was far from easy to make out several words of his text. While making fresh copies of the original manuscripts, his disciples unwittingly made several errors. Then came the stage when parts of the epic were dictated by the Master (from the mid-forties). Not only numerous punctuational omissions, but also errors in words (confusing ‘soul’ to be ‘sole’, for example) crept in. The text did not fare much better in the early stages of its printing, first in some periodicals and then as volumes. That was a time when the Ashram had no expert proof-readers and compositors. (Even in early sixties I detected the word ‘Capital’ in The Synthesis which I felt should not be there and when the original manuscript was consulted, my feeling proved correct. Obviously, an early proof- reader had written that word in the margin to indicate that a letter should be capitalized. The compositor had incorporated the word!) Despite all the dedication of the people concerned, numerous errors persisted in Savitri. The first volume of Savitri was published in book form in 1950 shortly before Sri Aurobindo’s passing away. Sri Aurobindo by then was hardly in a position to read the proofs himself. The second volume followed in 1951. The three disciples
Page-9 who were responsible for copying, taking dictation and type-writing the epic, were Nirodbaran, K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) and Nolini-da. While editing the subsequent editions in 1954 and 1970, they detected several errors and with the Mother’s approval, corrected them. During the 1970s, Nirodbaran gave the manuscripts of Savitri to the Archives of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram for preservation, microfilming, and study. During the preliminary examination of the manuscripts, carried out under his direct supervision by his assistant and a member of the Archives, it was found that a number of copying errors had been made during the long process of the poem’s revision. Some of these ‘transmission errors’ (as they are called by specialists in the field of ‘textual criticism’) had inadvertently found their way into the text of the epic. Once this discovery had been made, Nirodbaran authorised a full and careful examination of all the relevant manuscripts with the aim of removing all such errors from the text of the poem. In reply to a categorical question put to Nolini-da by Jayantilal-da (the man who was the architect and leading spirit of the Archives), Nolini-da gave his green signal for the corrections approved by Nirodbaran to be carried out. The editorial task and technique were painstaking and complex. Each printed line was compared with the line in the manuscript. The manuscripts as well as the available earlier corrected proof-sheets, were subjected to detailed examination by the editors with the aid of the latest computer and photo-graphic technology. I need not describe the process in detail. But anybody with genuine quest can see that the process involved honest and intelligent labour of a dedicated team for ten long years, for the new edition to emerge. An average person with the minimum goodwill can understand that there could be no other motive for this difficult and monumental task to be undertaken except the inspiration that it is the Ashram’s sacred responsibility to present the Master’s work in the accurate-most form. The main authority is Sri Aurobindo’s text. "What has been ‘corrected’ is not Sri Aurobindo’s text, but the errors of the scribes and the proof-readers. Why at all should a team led by
Page-10 Nirodbaran, K. D. Sethna (Amal Kiran) and Jayantilal Parekh do anything else? In fact, every edition has been an improvement in the sense of coming closer to the original and the latest edition is the culmination of the process. It is the term ‘revised’, understood superficially, which scared some people. Added to that was the supplementary volume explaining the raison d’etre of the corrections. Produced in good faith, the supplementary volume only made some people pounce upon the great number of corrections (in fact the bulk of it is punctuational though) and make a hullabaloo, without caring for the explanations. The irony is, an Advocate of Calcutta High Court (God save the legal system) who literally cannot spell the name of Sri Aurobindo or Savitri correctly, brought a P.I.L. in the Calcutta High Court, praying for an order to withdraw the new edition of Savitri! The judgement delivered on 20.4.99 reads: "The present edition is not the first to contain corrections. Each previous edition of Savitri has amended a number of errors noticed by the editors or brought to their attention by readers. Once a likely mistake had been observed, the manuscript was sometimes consulted for confirmation. But a systematic search for errors was not conducted until the work began on the present edition. "The reasons are convincing. The supplementary volume also gives a table of emendations to show the present readings and the previous readings. A table of alternative readings has also been printed in the volume. A researcher or a serious student of Sri Aurobindo can very well find out the original text as well as the amended ones. There appears to be no distortion in the revised edition. "We are, therefore, of the view that there is no force in this petition and the same deserves to be dismissed and is hereby dismissed." Here is a passage from Udar’s reminiscences: "One day the Mother told me that the whole of Savitri was a Mantra for the transformation of the world. I then asked the
Page-11 Mother why is it that we can see no sign of its action in the world so far? She replied, ‘The original transcriptions of the manuscripts of Savitri have some mistakes in them, and these mistakes have dulled its force.’ So the Mother Herself knew that there were mistakes in the original publication of Savitri." If people like X desire to continue with the earlier editions of Savitri, who is stopping them from doing so? In a few years the copyright of the work will cease to be with the Ashram. We cannot stop anybody from bringing out a new print of any of the old editions. There is a Chinese proverb: "When a finger points at the moon, the imbecile looks at the finger, instead of at the moon." I cannot, by any stretch of imagination, look upon these people as imbecile. At the same time I fail to understand their wisdom. The supplementary volume is self-explanatory. In any case they could have paid a visit to our Archives and got their curiosity satisfied instead of rushing to the Court or sensationalising it in various ways. Are they a part of a wider effort to scandalise the Ashram? Disappointed at some other fronts, are they banging their fists on his beautiful work – the new edition of Savitri, closest so far to the Master’s original? I do not know. Thanking you for writing to me and with warm regards,
Yours sincerely,
MANOJ DAS
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