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Note on the Texts
Note on the Texts
ISHA UPANISHAD comprises Sri Aurobindo’s translations of and commentaries on the Isha Upanishad His translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads, as well as his translations of later Vedantic texts and writings on the Upanishads and Vedanta in general, are published in Kena and Other Upanishads, volume 18 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO. Sri Aurobindo had a special interest in the Isha Upanishad, whose principle of “uncompromising reconciliation of uncompromising extremes” (p 83) underlies his own philosophy as well He first translated the Isha around 1900, and over the next fourteen years returned to it again and again, citing, translating, and writing commentaries on this eighteen-verse text None of these commentaries was completed, but each served as a step in the development of his interpretation. Between August 1914 and May 1915 Sri Aurobindo published a translation and analysis of the Isha in the monthly review Arya These were issued as a book in 1920 or 1921; a revised edition came out in 1924 This work contains Sri Aurobindo’s last word on the Isha Upanishad; it may also be said to represent the quintessence of his Upanishadic interpretation His final translation and analysis are published in Part One of the present volume Part Two contains the various incomplete commentaries he wrote before August 1914.
PART ONE: TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY PUBLISHED BY SRI AUROBINDO
This part comprises Sri Aurobindo’s final translation and analysis of the Isha Upanishad.
Isha Upanishad. This work, consisting of a translation (with Sanskrit text) and an analysis in four “movements”, was published in the monthly review Arya in ten instalments between August 1914 (the 594
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PART TWO: INCOMPLETE COMMENTARIES FROM MANUSCRIPTS
Before publishing his final translation and analysis in 1914 15, Sri Aurobindo made ten different efforts to write commentaries on the Isha Upanishad The earliest dates from around 1902, the last from mid-1914, that is, just before the time he started publishing his final translation and analysis in the Arya They are arranged here in approximate chronological order Some of them are of considerable length but none was completed or revised for publication All were discovered among his manuscripts after his passing and subsequently transcribed and published in various journals and books.
Isha Upanishad: All that is world in the Universe Circa 1902 Sri Aurobindo abandoned this work after a few pages There is no full stop after the last word written. The Ishavasyopanishad with a commentary in English. Circa 1905 The title page of this work reads in full: “Materials for Bhavani Grantha-/Mala /1 The Ishavasyopanishad /with a commentary in English ” The Sanskrit phrase “Bhavani Grantha-Mala” means “Garland of books for the goddess Bhavani” This commentary apparently was intended to be the first of a series of works for the use of students of Bhawani Mandir, a “temple to the goddess Bhawani” where young men would be trained to do selfless work for Mother India The idea of Bhawani Mandir was primarily that of Barindra Kumar Ghose, Sri Aurobindo’s younger brother, though Sri Aurobindo did write a manifesto setting forth its ideals around 1905 (see Bhawani Mandir in Bande Mataram: Political Writings 1890 1908, volume 6 of THE COMPLETE WORKS OF SRI AUROBINDO) Shortly after writing the pamphlet, Sri Aurobindo lost interest in the project, and does not appear to have written any other works for the proposed “Grantha-Mala” The text of the commentary ends abruptly at the bottom of the last page of the notebook It may have been continued in another notebook
Page – 594 that has been lost Inside the back cover, facing the last page of text, Sri Aurobindo wrote the following: “Hunger is in its nature cannibal, you eat protoplasm & nothing else because you are protoplasm”. The Karmayogin: A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad. Circa 1905 6 This lengthy but still incomplete commentary was written sometime after Sri Aurobindo took up the practice of yoga in 1905, and no later than May 1908, when the second of the two notebooks in which it is written was seized by the Calcutta police at the time of his arrest in connection with the Alipore Bomb Conspiracy He began it, as he had begun “The Ishavasyopanishad”, as a guru-student dialogue, but dropped this form after the first page The commentary contains several passages, totalling around 400 lines or ten printed pages, that are the same as or very similar to passages in “The Ishavasyopanishad” He apparently copied them from that work while writing this one. Sri Aurobindo modified the structure of the commentary while he was working on it See the note on page 170 for details The first two “Chapters”, dealing with verses 1 to 3 of the Upanishad, occupy the first of the two manuscript notebooks that were used for writing the commentary (For some reason Sri Aurobindo wrote “Chapters I to III” on the first page of this notebook This may explain why the first “Chapter” in the second notebook is numbered “IV” ) This second notebook contains the second “Part”, which deals with verses 4 to 6 of the Upanishad. Ish and Jagat. Circa 1912 Editorial title This piece is quite incomplete The Secret of the Isha. Circa 1912 In the manuscript, “Chapter I” is written above the title Only this fragmentary first chapter was written. Chapters for a Work on the Isha Upanishad. Circa 1912 Editorial title These six draft chapters for a proposed “book” (see the last paragraph of chapter [2]) have been reproduced in the order in which they occur in Sri Aurobindo’s notebook The chapters are numbered editorially [1] to [6] Sri Aurobindo’s own working titles and numbers are given Although headed “The Isha Upanishad”, the piece deals with the text of the Upanishad only in chapter [3] and more briefly in chapter [6] Elsewhere it deals, among other things, with Puranic cosmology, the savage and the ascent of the human being, philology, the Veda, and Sri Aurobindo’s method of Vedic and Vedantic exegesis The suggestion on the scope of “dhanam” in chapter [3] may refer to
Page – 595 Sri Aurobindo’s discussion of this word in Appendix [3] of Draft A of “The Life Divine” (see below) This would indicate that this chapter was written after that draft. The Upanishad in Aphorism: The Isha Upanishad Circa 1913 14 (placed before the next piece in order to keep the three drafts of “The Life Divine” together) The first paragraph of this “commentary” consists of a translation of the first verse of the Isha Upanishad The rest is an exploration, in aphorisms, of various related ideas. The Life Divine: A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad [Draft A] Circa 1912 Sri Aurobindo wrote this draft in pencil on unused pages or parts of pages of two notebooks that he had used a number of years earlier to make fair copies of literary works He originally headed the piece “The Isha Upanishad” Later he changed the heading to “The Secret of Divine Life /A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad”, and still later to “The Life Divine /A Commentary on the Isha Upanishad” “Introduction”, written below the heading, was at one point changed to “Foreword” In the 18 July 1912 entry of Record of Yoga, his yogic diary, Sri Aurobindo wrote: “the Life Divine commenced” It was probably to this draft that he was referring Note also the indirect reference to the Titanic disaster, which took place in April 1912 Several passages written for this piece but not worked into the text are reproduced in an appendix published at the end of the text. The Life Divine [Draft B] Circa 1913 14 Sri Aurobindo wrote this draft in pen in three notebooks The five chapters of which it is composed are the beginning of “Part II / The First Movement” of a planned complete commentary The following outline, written on the first page of the manuscript, shows the structure of this proposed work: Part I The Upanishad Part II The First Movement God, Life & Nature Part III The Second Movement Brahman Self Blissful and All-Blissful Part [IV] The Third Movement God in World Vidya & Avidya Part [V] The Fourth Movement Surya & Agni Part [VI] The Divine Life Of these six parts, only “Part II The First Movement” was worked on The Life Divine [Draft C] 1914 This draft consists of two chapters, numbered II and III by the author Although they have the same heading
Page – 596 as “Draft A” and “Draft B”, they seem to be destined not so much for a commentary on the Isha Upanishad as for an independent philosophical writing (They contain no direct commentary on the Upanishad but occasionally mention it ) They seem in fact to represent a transitional stage between the “Life Divine” commentary on the Isha Upanishad and The Life Divine, Sri Aurobindo’s principal philosophical work, which began to be published in the Arya in August 1914 The first instalment of Sri Aurobindo’s final translation and analysis of the Isha Upanishad (see Part One above) appeared in the same issue.
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Sri Aurobindo published a translation of the Isha Upanishad on 19 June 1909 in the first issue of the Karmayogin, a weekly review of politics and culture This was a revised version of a translation he had completed and typed around 1900 He published his final translation and analysis in the Arya between August 1914 and May 1915 Around 1921, the Arya text was reprinted by the Arya Publishing House, Calcutta The same publisher brought out an “authorised edition”, which was said to be “revised and enlarged”, in 1924 That edition in fact contained no real enlargement (other than the restoration of the analysis of verses 4 5, which had inadvertently been omitted in 1921) and only slight authorial revision Two more editions were brought out by the Arya Publishing House during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime, in 1941 and 1945 These contained a few minor changes Several more editions were brought out after 1950 In 1971 the work was included in The Upanishads, volume 12 of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library The text in the present volume has been checked against the texts printed in the Arya and in the first four editions. None of the ten incomplete commentaries published in Part Two appeared during Sri Aurobindo’s lifetime All have been transcribed from his manuscripts Four were published in 1971 in The Upanishads, one in the Supplement to the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library (1973), and the other five in the journal Sri Aurobindo: Archives and Research between 1977 and 1983.
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