Before the advent of the European scholarship in the field of Indian historical research beginning sometime around the last quarter of the eighteenth century, there was practically no controversy about the date of the Mahabharata war which was generally believed to have occurred at the end of Dwapar Yuga and about 36-37 years before the beginning of the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C. which coincided with Lord Sri Krishna’s withdrawal from this earth. For this date of Kaliyuga there is an overwhelming amount of evidence in Indian literature and in numerous inscriptions dated according to various prevalent Indian Eras.
Beginning with its victories in the battles of Plassey (1757) and Buxar (1764), the British East India Company progressively took possession of the subcontinent. With the tacit backing and support of Warren Hastings – infamous as the Butcher of Bengal – the “Asiatic Society of Bengal” was founded by Sir William Jones in 1784 with thirty Europeans present on the occasion. One of the main activities of this Society was to collect the old manuscripts, inscriptions in stone and metal, icons, coins etc. to serve as a base for the spread of the European view of Indian religion, culture and history. The European scholars doing research in these fields to serve these ends enjoyed the patronage, the prestige and other advantages that naturally flow to the ruling race. They could, therefore, easily brush aside all established Indian views and positions in these areas and progressively impose their own outlook and views and theories constructed to support them without any possibility of effective resistance from Indians who under the British were reduced to the condition of extreme penury* – destructive of all scholarly effort – with millions and millions simply starving to death.
*Even after more than six hundred years of foreign rule, India was one of the most developed countries till 1750 when India had 25 percent of the world’s manufacturing output while Europe and America combined had less than 18 percent. By 1900, India’s share collapsed to about 2 percent while that of Europe and America jumped to 84 percent. More than 30 million Indians died of starvation during the British rule in addition to the massive butchery of innocents which took place after the freedom struggle of 1857.
Another very important factor that contributed to this movement aiming at the imposition of European views was the triumphant march of European science which armed and equipped the race to subdue the age old cultures of Asia and Africa and to almost completely annihilate the native cultures of North and South America. All opposition to European invasion was easily crushed or set aside even in fields such as religion, culture and history. This was because, as Sri Aurobindo writing in the beginning of the last century observed, “The triumphant & rapid march of the physical sciences in Europe has so mastered our intellects and dazzled our eyes, that we are apt to extend the unquestioned finality which we are accustomed to attach to the discoveries & theories of modern Science, to all the results of European research & intellectual activity. Even in Europe itself, we should remember, there is no such implicit acceptance.”1 But in India, “The successes of European science have cast the shadow of their authority and prestige over the speculations of European scholarship; for European thought is, in appearance, a serried army marching to world-conquest and we who undergo the yoke of its tyranny, we, who paralysed by that fascination and overborne by that domination, have almost lost the faculty of thinking for ourselves, receive without distinction all its camp followers or irregular volunteers as authorities to whom we must needs submit.”2 Most Indian scholars willingly did so to secure the patronage of the rulers. Some even undertook considerable labour to look up ancient Indian literary sources for evidence to somehow support the views of their European masters which, as an article of faith, were considered unquestionable.
The work of Fleet (11-13), a retired I.C.S officer who considered the date of Kaliyuga as a date invented by Indian Pundits as a reference point and without any historical value and the work of Pargiter (25, 26) – again a retired I.C.S and judge of the Calcutta High Court – are considered pioneering works by all the scholars in the field of ancient Indian history. These two and most other European historians and their Indian protégés put the date of the Mahabharata somewhere around 1000 to 1200 B.C. by completely ignoring the traditionally established Kaliyuga Era of 3102 B.C. Max Muller was the third person whose name gained even greater prominence than the above two due to his enormous labours in bringing out his most famous works on the Vedas, Upanishads and other important oriental religious scriptures. Max Muller dated the Vedas to about 1200 B.C. and his is the most famous name-support behind the pernicious and baseless Aryan Invasion Theory.
The slavery to the opinion of European historians which began in 19th century not only continues unabated even at present but has, if anything, assumed a most pernicious character after independence in 1947 under the dominance of the pseudo-secularism of the Congress and the efforts of the leftist historians with their partisan* and deep-rooted hostility and blind intolerance of all that India and its religious culture has stood for. The result – as succinctly pointed out by Rajaram and Frawley (29: 9-11) – has been that “When we open a history book used in our schools today, we find that it invariably begins with a description of the Indus Valley Civilization. It usually starts off with an account of the discovery of the two major sites Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, followed by a brief description of what was found there. We will also be told how this civilization went into decline and finally disappeared by 1500 BCE. The main cause of this disappearance, the reader is then informed, was the invasion of India by nomadic tribes from Central Asia called the Aryans. According to this account, these invading Aryans, who are said to have entered India through the passes in the northwest, fought and overcame the inhabitants of the Indus Valley and established themselves over much of North India. They are then said to have composed their literature, the most important of which is the Rigveda. The history of India begins in earnest with the records of the Aryans following their invasion.
*Their attitude towards Christianity and Islam is markedly different. This is inexplicable, except as a political expediency, given the fundamental opposition of Marxism to all religions regardless of their shades and colours.
…this scenario is somehow supported by linguistic evidence, namely, the fact that people of North India and South India speak languages from different families; North Indians speak Aryan languages while South Indians speak languages of the Dravidian family. Such a person may also be familiar with the usual account that the inhabitants of the Indus Valley Civilization, which in the popular mind is synonymous with the sites of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, were Dravidians whose civilization the invading Aryans destroyed. The invading Aryans were said to be blond and blue eyed while the Dravidians were said to be dark skinned. The evidence for this we are told is found in the Rigveda. All this one is also told has been reconstructed by great European scholars, notably Max Muller, believed by most educated Indians to be the greatest of them all. This invasion is said to have taken place around 1500 BCE, though one is not told the basis for this determination. The composition of the Vedas, according to this scenario, began about 1200 BCE or 1000 BCE, though once again, we are not told the basis for this.
From all of this it would be natural for one to conclude the Aryan invasion theory to be a careful reconstruction based on archaeology and historical linguistics. This however is not the case at all. The origins of the theory go back to eighteenth century Europe – and to the political, racial, religious and nationalistic forces that were then part of the scene. This was long before there was any Indus archaeology, and even before it was clearly recognized that Indian and European languages were related. We need to seek elsewhere for the origins of this theory.
The two most influential forces that went into creating this theory were European racism – especially anti-Semitism – and German nationalism. It was written into Indian history books by British educational authorities, but it was essentially a European and not a British creation. Comparative linguistics, let alone archaeology did not even exist at the time. In fact, comparative linguistics is largely the result of the European discovery of the Sanskrit tongue – without a doubt one of the most momentous discoveries in the history of linguistics. It is standing history on its head to now claim the theory to be the result of archaeology and comparative study of languages. If anything, Indus archaeology dramatically contradicts the invasion theory.
This theory had its origins in eighteenth century Europe but received its full embellishment only in the nineteenth century. It seemed to strike no one as odd – at least at the time – that this invasion by light skinned people of a land inhabited by dark skinned people, happened to be an exact replay of the contemporary European experience in colonizing Asia and Africa. Substituting European for Aryan, and Asian or African for Dravidian will give us a description of any of the numerous European colonial campaigns in Asia or Africa of the time. So according to this theory, the Aryans were carbon copies of European colonizers.”3
All this was done to serve the Christian missionary and the colonial interests and the European scholars instinctively – and one would like to believe not consciously or deliberately – put together and gave expression to theories which served these interests by driving a wedge between the Indian people on the basis of differences in language, color and caste. According to Devan Nair, the former president of Singapore, as a result of the falsely constructed Aryan Invasion Theory, “The damage inflicted on the political perceptions of the population poses a threat to the very integrity of India as a unique political and cultural entity. Witness the two most dominant political parties of Tamil Nadu, the DMK and the ANNA DMK (the ‘D’ standing for ‘Dravida’). They swallowed hook, line and sinker the shallow, ill-researched ‘findings’ of 19th Century European indologists.”*
*A passage from a message entitled “Neo-Colonial Captive Minds” by Devan Nair, the former President of Singapore, posted to the egroup of the Educational Council on Indic Traditions (ECIT), http://www.infinityfoundation.com/ECITneocolonialframe.htm
Rajaram and Frawley have written extensively on the various forces behind the Aryan Invasion Theory and Max Muller’s contribution to it. According to them, “Frederick Max Müller (1823-1901) is now generally regarded as probably the greatest Indologist of his generation and a peerless Vedic and Sanskrit scholar. He was neither, but circumstances favored him and he proved himself highly adaptable. He is also widely regarded as a great lover of India and Indian culture. His contribution to the study of Indian literature and religion was certainly significant – at least from a Western point of view. His approach to interpretation of the Rigveda however does not command today the same authority that it did a hundred years ago, at least among those who are prepared to go to the original. He was completely wrong as regards both history and chronology, and his ignorance of science led him to formulate interpretations that can only be called folklore. Yet the immense prestige that his name still commands, combined with near total ignorance of Sanskrit language and of the Vedas on the part of many modern Indologists and historians, has given his readings an authenticity bordering on infallibility. They continue to misguide scholars even today.
It was Max Müller more than anyone who is responsible for the fiction of the Aryan invasion theory and the absurdly late Vedic chronology – dating of the Rigveda to 1200 BCE. Under pressure from critics he later disowned his chronology admitting: “Whether the Vedic hymns were composed in 1000, 1500 or 2000 or 3000 B.C., no power on earth will ever determine!” But advocates of the Aryan invasion theory have chosen to ignore his later retraction, just as they have chosen to disregard his earlier racist formulations. …It is worth noting however that in his Vedic chronology, he was strongly influenced by the then current Biblical belief that the creation of the world took place at 9:00 AM on October 23, 4004 BCE!
…Assuming the date 4004 BCE for the creation of the world (as Max Müller did), leads to 2448 BCE as the date for the Biblical flood. Granting another thousand years for the waters to subside and for the soil to get dry enough for the Aryans to begin their invasion of India, we obtain c.1400 BCE for the event. Adding another 200 years before they could begin composing the Rigveda brings us right to Max Müller’s date of 1200 BCE. …he used a ghost story from Somadeva’s KathDsaritsDgara to claim support to this date.”4
Though he was not a missionary in the literal sense, Max Muller’s work was infused with the Christian missionary spirit. In 1868, he wrote to the Duke of Argyle, the then Secretary of State for India, “The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed – and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault will it be?”5
Max Müller’s translation of the Veda was adversely motivated which he was careful never to express except in intimate private letters such as the one written to his wife in December 1866, “I hope I shall finish that work, and I feel convinced, though I shall not live to see it, that this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India, and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung up from it during the last three thousand years”6
Swami Vivekananda could clearly see the European design behind this theory. Speaking more than hundred years ago and addressing Indian Pundits he said, “And this I say to you – to our Pundits – also, ‘You are learned men, hunt up your old books and scriptures, please, and draw your own conclusions.’
Whenever the Europeans find an opportunity, they exterminate the aborigines and settle down in ease and comfort on their lands; and therefore they think the Aryans must have done the same! The Westerners would be considered wretched vagabonds if they lived in their native homes depending wholly on their own internal resources, and so they have to run wildly about the world seeking how they can feed upon the fat of the land of others by spoliation and slaughter; and therefore they conclude the Aryans must have done the same! But where is your proof? Guess-work? Then keep your fanciful guesses to yourselves!
In what Veda, in what Sukta, do you find that the Aryans came into India from a foreign country? Where do you get the idea that they slaughtered the wild aborigines? What do you gain by talking such nonsense?”7
Even though more than hundred years have passed since Swami Vivekananda wrote this, the nonsense still continues in India. It has not been possible for our Pundits and learned men to hunt up our old books and scriptures and draw their independent conclusions. The reason is that we have lost, nationally, the capacity to go behind the outer symbols and phrases to the real purport of the Vedic and Vedantic seers. Even those Indian Pundits – and they are still a minority – who have been able – as result of their own and other sympathetic occidental investigations and research in this field – to see the truth of all that constituted and was behind the Aryan invasion theory and free themselves from the hold of this pernicious doctrine are still not able at all to penetrate into the deeper meaning of the Veda and remain stuck into the grooves created by the European Vedic scholarship. This spiritual opacity of the Indian Intelligence is a great national loss as it has practically shut us off from the perennial source of the great vitality and creativity of our spiritual culture. According to Sri Aurobindo, “…the increasing intellectualisation of the Indian mind has been responsible for this great national loss. Our forefathers who discovered or received Vedic truth, did not arrive at it either by intellectual speculation or by logical reasoning. They attained it by actual & tangible experience in the spirit, – by spiritual & psychological observation, as we may say, & what they thus experienced, they understood by the instrumentality of the intuitive reason. But a time came when men felt an imperative need to give an account to themselves & to others of this supreme & immemorial Vedic truth in the terms of logic, in the language of intellectual ratiocination. For the maintenance of the intuitive reason as the ordinary instrument of knowledge demands as its basis an iron moral & intellectual discipline, a colossal disinterestedness of thinking, – otherwise the imagination and the wishes pollute the purity of its action, replace, dethrone it and wear flamboyantly its name & mask; Vedic knowledge begins to be lost & the practice of life & symbol based upon it are soon replaced by formalised action & unintelligent rite & ceremony. Without tapasya there can be no Veda. This was the course that the stream of thought followed among us, according to the sense of our Indian tradition. The capacity for tapasya belongs to the Golden Age of man’s fresh virility; it fades as humanity ages & the cycle takes its way towards the years that are of Iron, and with tapasya, the basis, divine knowledge, the superstructure, also collapses or dwindles. The place of truth is then taken by superstition, irrational error that takes its stand upon the place where truth lies buried builds its tawdry & fantastic palace of pleasure upon those concealed & consecrated foundations, & even uses the ruins of old truth as stones for its irregular building. But such an usurpation can never endure.”8
And yet – although, hopefully it is in its last phase before passing into oblivion – it still endures and all the discussion on the meaning of the Veda and the derivation of fantastic historical and other conclusions with flimsy support in certain passages in the Rigveda – which have nothing much to do with the history of even the outer forms of society and have been shown by Sri Aurobindo to have a much deeper spiritual import – is still common to most ancient Indian history books and even the classical and most prestigious eleven volume series edited by R.C. Majumdar entitled “The History and Culture of the Indian People”, which is considered to be the first history of India written exclusively by her own people, is not free from this taint.
Fortunately, however, it is no longer a smooth sailing for the above mentioned traditional historical approaches at present, for, an opposition to such injurious handling of our past is increasing among the learned Indologists working in various branches of knowledge. For example, Sri K.Ramsubramanian of the IIT, Mumbai speaking on “The origin and Development of Mathematics in India”, at the Physics Colloquium of the BARC, Mumbai, on June 7, 2013, after describing in detail the sound Indian mathematical tradition starting from the period of PulbasÓtras (800 B.C.), had the following to say in his concluding remarks, “…I would like to conclude with the words of Claude Alvares,* (* In his introduction to The Indian Science and Technology in the 18th Century by Dharmapal, Other India Press, Goa, 2000.)
All Histories are elaborate efforts at myth-making… If we must continue to live with myths, however, it is far better we choose to live by those of our own making rather than by those invented by others for their own purposes…
Making the students aware of the major achievements of their own civilization – particularly in their impressionable age – is likely to boost their self-confidence and self-esteem which are important ingredients in building nation.
That much at least we owe as an independent Society and Nation !!”
We cannot expect any good to come out of the myths about our past invented by those who show a lack of sympathy for Indian spiritual culture because they have no capacity for understanding it.
A. The Root of the Problem: The European Misunderstanding of Indian Literature and, Based on it, of Its Society, History, Polity, Religion and Culture
“The main difference between our country and Europe is this, our life is turned inward, Europe’s outward. We judge of good and evil, etc., from the point of motive, Europe judges it on the basis of action done. Knowing God as one who dwells within and who knows all that passes in our minds we seek Him in the soul, Europe looks upon Him as the King of the world and seeks and worships Him in the world outside. The heaven of Europe is in the material world; worldly riches, beauty, luxury are welcome and to be sought after; if they imagine any other heaven, that too is a reflection of these riches, beauty and luxury. Their God is akin to our Indra, who rules his world empire, sitting like an earthly monarch on a bejewelled throne, swollen by the hymns and prayers of a thousand flatterers. Our Shiva is the supreme among gods, yet he is but a beggar, out of his senses, uncaring and forgetful; our Krishna is a youth, fond of laughter, fun and love, it is in his nature to be playful. The God of Europe never laughs or plays, since His majesty is hurt by these activities, His godhead suffers. The extrovert attitude is at the back of it – signs of wealth are, for them, the support of splendour, they cannot see a thing unless they see the sign, they have no divine, no subtle vision, everything is material. Our Shiva is a beggar, but to the spiritual seeker he easily gives away all the wealth and wisdom of the three worlds; he is generous to a fault, but the wisdom beyond the reach of the wise is his inborn possession. Our loving, gay Krishna is the hero of the Kurukshetra, father of the worlds, friend and companion of the universe. India’s immense knowledge and subtle vision, unfettered divine vision pierces through the material veils and brings out the inner attitude, the true truth, the inner and subtle principles.
* * *
The same order is observed about good and evil. We look at the inner attitude. There may lurk holy feeling behind an activity that we condemn, just as behind the outwardly good or sanctimonious conduct may lie hidden the self-seeking of a scoundrel; good and evil, joy and sorrow are subjective factors, the outer activity is but a veil. We know this; though for the sake of the social order we respect outward good and evil as evidence of the activity, but the inner attitude is what we really cherish. The renunciant, sannyÀsin, who behaves like inert-mad-fiend, jaÄonmattapiÙacabat, as beyond rules and conventions, duty or otherwise, beyond good and evil, such a one, who has risen above laws, we call the supreme person. The western intellect is unable to accept such a principle; he who behaves as inert it treats him as inert, he who behaves as if he is mad it treats him as off his head, he who behaves like a fiend, it treats him as a disgusting, lawless devil; for it has no subtle vision, and is unable to look at the inner attitude or truth.
* * *
Bound to this outward view of things European scholars say that at no time was there democracy in India. In the Sanskrit language words to describe democracy are not found, those days there were no legislative bodies like the modern parliament, the absence of the outer signs of democracy denotes the absence of democracy. We too on our part have been content to accept as valid this western view. In our ancient Aryan rule there was no lack of democracy; its external instruments were no doubt insufficient, but the democratic attitude permeated the core of society and the government, and stood guard over the people’s welfare and progress. First, every village was run entirely on democratic lines, the villagers would come together and, on the basis of the general will and guided by the elderly and leading personalities provided for the administration of the village, and of society; this rural democracy was kept intact during Mughal rule, it vanished only the other day, under the oppression of the British government. Secondly, even in the small principalities, where there existed conditions favourable to a convention of the masses, this custom was in force. In Buddhist literature, in Greek records, in the Mahabharata there is abundant evidence in support of this. Thirdly, in the larger kingdoms, where it was impossible for these ingredients or external conditions to be available, the democratic attitude guided the monarchy. The subjects may not have a legislative body, but neither did the king have the least right to pass laws or modify the existing laws. The king was but the keeper of the codes, conventions and laws which the subjects were in the habit of observing. The Brahmins, like the lawyers and judges of today, would explain to the king these regulations admitted and observed by the subjects and they would record in writing the gradual changes which they had observed. The responsibility of governing was indeed the king’s, but that power was also severely limited by laws; other than these the king had to act in accordance with the wishes of his subjects, he would never do anything that might displease his subjects, this political practice was observed by all. If the king violated this rule, the subjects were no longer obliged to respect and follow him.”9
Because of their materialistic and extrovert nature, the Western scholars have thoroughly misunderstood and failed to assign its true and legitimate value to the genius of India that has found expression in its rich and vast literary creations which give expression to the profound truths of existence both in their fundamentals and in their varied richness on all the three lower planes – the planes of action, feeling and thought.
Writing on the greatness of Indian literature Sri Aurobindo observed, “The ancient and classical creations of the Sanskrit tongue both in quality and in body and abundance of excellence, in their potent originality and force and beauty, in their substance and art and structure, in grandeur and justice and charm of speech and in the height and width of the reach of their spirit stand very evidently in the front rank among the world’s great literatures. The language itself, as has been universally recognised by those competent to form a judgment, is one of the most magnificent, the most perfect and wonderfully sufficient literary instruments developed by the human mind, at once majestic and sweet and flexible, strong and clearly-formed and full and vibrant and subtle, and its quality and character would be of itself a sufficient evidence of the character and quality of the race whose mind it expressed and the culture of which it was the reflecting medium. The great and noble use made of it by poet and thinker did not fall below the splendour of its capacities. Nor is it in the Sanskrit tongue alone that the Indian mind has done high and beautiful and perfect things, though it couched in that language the larger part of its most prominent and formative and grandest creations. It would be necessary for a complete estimate to take into account as well the Buddhistic literature in Pali and the poetic literatures, here opulent, there more scanty in production, of about a dozen Sanskritic and Dravidian tongues. The whole has almost a continental effect and does not fall so far short in the quantity of its really lasting things and equals in its things of best excellence the work of ancient and mediaeval and modern Europe. The people and the civilisation that count among their great works and their great names the Veda and the Upanishads, the mighty structures of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, Kalidasa and Bhavabhuti and Bhartrihari and Jayadeva and the other rich creations of classical Indian drama and poetry and romance, the Dhammapada and the Jatakas, the Panchatantra, Tulsidas, Vidyapati and Chandidas and Ramprasad, Ramdas and Tukaram, Tiruvalluvar and Kamban and the songs of Nanak and Kabir and Mirabai and the southern Shaiva saints and the Alwars, – to name only the best-known writers and most characteristic productions, though there is a very large body of other work in the different tongues of both the first and the second excellence, – must surely be counted among the greatest civilisations and the world’s most developed and creative peoples. A mental activity so great and of so fine a quality commencing more than three thousand years ago and still not exhausted is unique and the best and most undeniable witness to something extraordinarily sound and vital in the culture.”10
A criticism – like that of Archer*(* William Archer, “India and the Future”, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1917) – which belittles and ignores such a record stands convicted at once of blind malignity and incredible prejudice and does not really merit refutation. The fitting parallel to such an attitude and judgement would be “… if an Indian critic who had read European literature only in bad or ineffective Indian translations, were to pass it under a hostile and disparaging review, dismiss the Iliad as a crude and empty semi-savage and primitive epos, Dante’s great work as the nightmare of a cruel and superstitious religious fantasy, Shakespeare as a drunken barbarian of considerable genius with an epileptic imagination, the whole drama of Greece and Spain and England as a mass of bad ethics and violent horrors, French poetry as a succession of bald or tawdry rhetorical exercises and French fiction as a tainted and immoral thing, a long sacrifice on the altar of the goddess Lubricity, admit here and there a minor merit, but make no attempt at all to understand the central spirit or aesthetic quality or principle of structure and conclude on the strength of his own absurd method that the ideals of both Pagan and Christian Europe were altogether false and bad and its imagination afflicted with a “habitual and ancestral” earthiness, morbidity, poverty and disorder. No criticism would be worth making on such a mass of absurdities …”11
Now, leaving aside the narrowness and bigotry of the European religious spirit and the associated mental outlook which have found expression – to a greater or lesser extent – in most occidental writings on India and its society, polity and culture, the main reason behind the Western attitude towards India even among the secular minds of the West genuinely sympathetic to it is that, “… there is a rift between the two mentalities and what is delightful and packed with meaning and power to the one has no substance, but only a form, of aesthetic or intellectual pleasure for the other. This difficulty is partly due to an inability to enter into the living spirit and feel the vital touch of the language, but partly to a spiritual difference … At bottom it is an insufficient comprehension of the quite different spirit behind, the different heart of this culture that produces the mingled attraction and dissatisfaction. The subject is too large to be dealt with adequately in small limits …”12 It may be well to look a little more deeply into it.
To be continued…
References
- Sri Aurobindo Archives and Research, Issue April 1985, p.41, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
- Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library, Vol.27, p.180, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
- Vedic Aryans and the Origins of Civilization, Rajaram, N.S. & Frawley, David, Voice of India, 2001, pp.9-11
- Ibid, p.23-25
- Max Muller : A Secular Christian Missionary and Distorter of the Veda, Paliwal, K.V., Hindu Writers Forum, New Delhi, 2006, p.27
- Ibid, p.26
- Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda,Vol.5, p.534-35, Mayawati Memorial Edition
- Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Vol.17, p.308-309, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
- Bengali Writings, pp.253-55, Published by Madanlal Himatsingka on behalf of All India Books, Pondicherry
- Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo, Vol.20, p.314-15, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry
- Ibid, p.316
- Ibid, p.317
