TRANSLATIONS

 

SRI AUROBINDO

 

Contents 

 

 

I. FROM SANSKRIT

   

 

 

 

BHAGAVAD GITA

 
 

Chapter One

 
 

Chapter Two

 
 

Chapter Three

 
 

Chapter Four

 
 

Chapter Five

 
 

Chapter Six

 

 

 

KALIDASA

 
 

The Birth of the War-God

 Canto One:

 
 

The Birth of the War-God, Canto Two

 
 

Malavica and the King

 
 

The Line of Raghu

 

 

 

 

Sankaracharya

 
 

Bhavani

 

 

 

 

III FROM TAMIL

 

 IV. FROM GREEK AND LATIN

 
 

The Kural

 

Odyssey

 
 

Nammalwar’s Hymn of the Golden Age

 

On A Satyr and Seeping Love

 
 

Love-Mad

 

A Rose of Women

 
 

Refuge

 

To Lesbia

 
 

To the Cuckoo

     
 

I Dreamed a Dream

     
 

Ye Others

     

 

 

 

 The Birth of the War-God 

 

canto one : third rendering

 

A God concealed in mountain majesty,

Embodied to our cloudy physical sight

In dizzy summits and green-gloried slopes,

Measuring the earth in an enormous ease,

Immense Himaloy dwells and in the moan

Of western waters and in eastern floods

Plunges his hidden spurs. Such is his strength1

High-piled or thousand-crested is his look

That with the scaling greatness of his peaks

He seems to uplift to heaven our prostrate soil.

He mounts from the green luxury of his vales,

Ambitious of the skies; naked and lost

The virgin chill immensity of snow

Covers the breathless spirit of his heights.

To snows his savage pines aspire; the birch

And all the hardy brotherhood which climb

Against the angry muttering of the winds,

Challenge the dangerous air in which they h've.

He is sated with the silence of the stars:

Lower he dips into life's beauty, far

Below he hears the cascades, now he clothes

His rugged sides the gentle breezes kiss

With soft grass and the gold and silver fern.

Holding upon her breast the hill-god's feet

Earth in her tresses hides his giant knees.

Over lakes of mighty sleep, where fountains lapse,

Dreaming, and by the noise of waterfalls,

In an unspoken solitary joy

He listens to her chant. The distant hills

Imagined him the calf to which she lows

When the wideness milks her udders and (Meru is near

The heavenly unseen height; like visible hints

Of his great subtle growths of peace and joy

 

' Of such a strength 

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His dreaming woods arise;) gems brilliant-rayed

She yields and herbs on every mountain marge.

He gives his colours to the Apsara's grace.

The smooth gold of her limbs with harder hues

Stolen from his mineral rocks she loves to stain.

Reflections of those brilliant colourings

Oft on the hangings of the cloudy heavens

Like an untimely sunset's glories lie.1

In such warm infinite riches is he dressed

His fire of life from his cold heights of thought

The great snows cannot slay its opulence.

Though stark they chill the feet of heaven, her sons

Forgive the fault amid a throng of joys

As faints from our charmed sense in luminous floods

The gloomy mark2 on the moon's argent disk,

They have forgot his chill severity

In sweetness which escapes from him in life.

For as from passion of some austere soul

Delight and love have stolen to rapturous birth,

From ice-born waters his delicious vales

Are fed. Indulgent like the smile of God,

White grandeurs overlook wild green romance.

He keeps his summits for immortal steps,

The life of man upon his happy slopes

Roams wild and bare and free, the life of gods

Prone from the unattainable summits climbs

Down the rude greatness of his huge rock-park

As if rejecting the glory of its veils

It peeps out from the subtle gleam of air,

Visible to man by waterfall and glade,

And finds us in the hush of sleeping woods,

And meets us with low whisperings in the night  

 

1 The glamoured splendour of his mineral rocks

  Reflecting all its brilliant colourings

  Upon the hangings of the cloudy heavens

  Like an untimely sunset's glories sleeps.

        2 stain 

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Of their surrounding presence unaware.

Chasing the dreadful wanderers of the hill

The hunter seeks for traces on his side,

He, though soft-falling innocent snows weep off

The cruelty of their red footprints, finds

The path his prey the mighty lions go.

For glittering pearls from the felled elephants

Lain clotted, dropping from the hollow claws

Betray1 their dangerous passage. When he sits

Tired of the hunt on a slain poplar's base

And bares to winds the weariness of his brow

They come fay-breezes dancing on the slopes,

Scattering the peacock's gorgeous-plumed attire,

Shaking the cedars on Himaloy's breast,

With spray from Ganges' cascades on their wings,

To kiss2 the wind-blown tangles of his hair,

Sprinkling their coolness on his soul. He has made

The grottoed glens his chambers of desire,

He has packed their dumbness with his passionate bliss;

Stone witnesses of ecstasy they sleep.

And wonderful luminous herbs from night's dim banks

Give light to see the joy those thrilled rocks keep

When the strong forest-wanderer is lain

Twined with his love, marrying with hers his sighs,

Moved to desire in their stony dreams.

Nor only human footsteps tread the grass

Upon his slopes, nor only mortal love

Finds there the lovely setting of the hills

Amid the broken caverns and the trees,

In the weird moonlight pouring from the clouds

And the clear sunlight glancing from the pines

A wandering choir, a flash of unseen forms,

Go sweeping sometimes they and leave our hearts

Startled with hintings of some greater life,

The Kinnar passes singing in his glades.

Then stirred to repeat the echoes of their voice,3

 

'recall      2 They drive

3 Then stirred to keep some sweetness of their voice, 

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He fills the hollows of his bamboo stems

With the wind sobbing from the deep ravines

And in a moaning and melodious sound

Breathes from his rocky mouths, as if he meant

To flute, tune-giver to wild minstrelsies.

The delicate heels of the maned Kinnari

Are with his frosted slabs of snow distressed.

But with the large load of her breasts and hips

To escape the biting pathway's chill unease

She is forbidden: she must not break the grace

Of her slow1 motion's tardy rich appeal.

She too in grottoed caverns lies embraced,

Forced from the shame-fast sweetness of her limbs

The subtle raiment leaves her fainting hands

To give her tremulous beauty to the gaze

Of her eternal lover. But thick clouds

Stoop hastily bowed to the rocky doors

And hang chance curtains against mortal eyes,

Shielding the naked goddess from our sight.

The birch-leaves of his hills love-pages are.

In ink of liquid metals letters strange

We see make crimson signs; they lie in wait

Upon the slopes, pages where passion burns,

The flushed epistles of enamoured gods

Where divine Circes pen heart-moving things.

The Apsaras rhyme out their wayward dance,

The smooth gold of their limbs by harder hues

Of minerals stained, attracting seize

The curious fancy in love's straying eyes.

When far down the clouds droop to his girdle waist

Holding the tearful burden of their hearts,

Drifting grey melancholy through the skies,2

There by the low-hung plateaus' wideness lain

The siddhas in soft shade repose, or flee

Soon up chased by wild driving rain for refuge

To summits splendid in the veilless sun.

Earth's mighty animal life has reached his woods.

 

1 dumb    2 air, 

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The lion on Himaloy keeps his lair,

The elephant herds there wander. Oozing trees

Wounded by stormy rubbings of the tuskers' brows

Loose down their odorous tears in creamy drops,

And winds upon the plateau burdened pant

Weaving the air into a scented dream.

The yaks are there; they lift their bushy tails

To lash the breeze and scatter gleamings white:

With candour casting snares for heart and eye

The moonbeams lie upon the sleeping hills.

Like souls divine who in a sweet excess

All-clasping draw their fallen enemies

Into1 the impartial refuge of their love

Out of the ordered cruelties of life,

He takes into his cavern bosom hunted night.

Afraid of heaven's radiant eyes, crouched up,

She cowers in Nature's great subliminal gloom,

A trembling fugitive from the ardent day,

Lest one embrace should change her into light.

Himaloy's peaks outpeer the circling sun.

He with his upstretched brilliant hands awakes

Immortal lilies in the unreached tarns,

Morning has found miraculous blooms unculled

By the seven sages in their starry march.

Such are the grandeurs of Himaloy's soul,

Such are his divine moods; moonlit he bears,

Of godward symbols the exalted source,

The mystic Soma-plant upon his heights.

He by the Father of sacrifice climbs crowned,

Headman and dynast of earth's soaring hills.

 

These were the scenes in which the Lovers met.

here lonely mused the silent Soul of all,

And to awake him from his boundless trance

Took woman's form the beauty of the world;

Then infinite sweetness bore a living shape;

She made her body perfect for his arms.

 

1'To 

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With equal rites he to his giant bed

That mind-born child of the world-fathers bore.

Mena, a goddess of devising heart,

Whom for her wisdom brooding seers adored,

The shapers of all living images,

He sought, Mena named. They knew him for the peer

Of Meru, their sublime celestial home,

They gave him one, their thought's sweet-visioned pride,

Whose womb made steadfast like himself his race.

Their joys of love were like themselves immense,

Then in the wide felicitous lapse of time

The happy tumult of her being tossed

In long and puissant ecstasies bore fruit,

Bearing the banner of her unchanged youth

And beauty to charmed motherhood she crossed.

Mainac she bore the guest of the deep seas,

Upon whose peaks the serpent-women play,

Race of a cavernous and monstrous world,

With strange eyes gleaming past the glaucous wave,

And jewelled tresses glittering through the foam.

Not that his natural air who great had grown

Amid the brilliant perils of the sun,

From Indra tearing the great mountains' wings

With which they soared against the threatened sky,

Below the slippery fields the fugitive sank,

His sheltered essence bore no cruel sign,

Nor felt the anguish of the heavenly scars.

They disappointed of that first1 desire

Mixed in a greater2 joy. It took not earth

For narrow base, but forced the heavens down

Into their passion-trance clasped on the couch

Calm and stupendous of the snow-cold heights.

Then to a nobler load her womb gave place.

For Daksha's daughter, Shiva's wife, had left

Her body lifeless in her father's hall

In that proud sacrifice and fatal, she

The undivided mother infinite,

 

1 former                  2 larger 

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Indignant for his severing thought of God.

Now in a trance profound of joy by her

Conceived she sprang again to a livelier birth

To heal the sorrow and the dumb divorce.

Out of the unseen soul the splendid child

Came like bright lightning from the invisible air,

Welcome as Fortune to an earthly king

When she is born with daring for her sire

And for her mother policy sublime.

Then was their festival holiday in the world,

Then were the regions subtle with delight:

Heaven's shells blew sweetly through the stainless air

And flowery rain came drifting down; Earth thrilled

Back ravished to the rapture of the skies,

And all her moving and unmoving life

Felt happiness because the Bride was born.

So that fair mother by this daughter shone,

So her young beauty radiated its beams

As might a land of lapis lazuli

Torn by the thunder's voice. As from the earth

Tender and green an infant lance of life,

A jewelled sprouting from the mother slab

The divine child lay .on her mother's breast.

They called her Parvati, the mountain child,

When love to love cried answer in the house

And to the sound she turned her lovely face.

A riper day the great maternal name

Of Uma brought. Her father banqueted

Upon her as she grew his sateless1 eyes,

Who saw his life like a large lamp by her

Fulfilled in light; like Heaven's silent path

By Ganges voiceful grown his soul rejoiced;

It flowered like a great and shapeless thought

Suddenly immortal in a perfect word.

Wherever her bright laughing body rolled,

Wherever faltered her sweet tumbling steps,

All eyes were drawn to her like winging bees

 

' unsated

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Which sailing come upon the wanderer wind

Amid the infinite sweets of honeyed spring

To choose the mango-flowers' delicious breast.

Increasing to new curves of loveliness

Fast grew like the moon's arc from day to day

Her childish limbs. Along the wonderful glens

Among her fair companions of delight

Bounding she strayed, or stooped by murmurous waves

To build frail walls on Ganges' heavenly sands,

Or ran to seize the tossing ball, or pleased

With puppet children her maternal mind

And easily out of that earlier time

All sciences and wisdoms crowding came

Into her growing thoughts like swans that haste

In autumn to a sacred river's shores.

They started from her soul as grow at night

Born from some luminous herb its glimmering rays.

Her mind, her limbs betrayed themselves divine.

Thus she prepared her spirit for mighty life,

Wandering at will in freedom like a deer

On Nature's summits, in enchanted glens,

Absorbed in play, the Mother of the world.

            Then youth a charm upon her body came

Adorning every limb, a heady wine

Of joy intoxicating to the heart,

Maddened the eyes that gazed, from every limb

Shot the fine arrows of Love's curving bow.

Her forms into a perfect roundness grew

And opened up sweet colour, grace and light.

So might a painting grow beneath the hand

Of some great master, so a lotus opens

Its bosom to the splendour of the sun.

On the enamoured earth at every step her feet

Threw a red rose, like magic flowers they went

Moving from spot to spot their petalled bloom.

Her motion from the queenly swans had learned

Its wanton swayings; musically it timed 

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The sweet-voiced anklets' murmuring refrain.

And1 rising to that amorous support

From moulded knee to ankle the supreme

Divinely lessening curve so lovely was

It looked as if on this alone were spent

All her Creator's cunning. Well the rest

Might tax his labour to build half such grace!

Yet was that miracle accomplished. Soft

In roundedness, warm in their smooth sweep, her thighs

Were without parallel in Nature's work.

The greatness of her hips on which life's girdle

Had found its ample rest, deserved already

The lap of divine love where she alone

Might hope one day embosomed by God to lie.

Deep was her hollowed navel where wound in

Above her raiment's knot the tender line

Of down slighter than that dark beam cast forth

From the blue jewel central in her zone.

Her waist was like an altar's middle and there

A triple stair of love was softly built.

Her twin large breasts were pale with darkened paps

They would not let the slender lotus thread

Find passage, on their either side there waited

Tenderer than delicatest flowers the arms

Which Love must turn,2 victorious in defeat,

His chains to bind down the Eternal's neck.

Her throat adorning all the pearls it wore,

With sweep and undulation to the breast

Outmatched the gleaming roundness of its gems.

Crowning all this a marvellous face appeared

In which the lotus found its human bloom

In the soft lustres of the moon. Her smile

Parted the rosy sweetness of her lips

Like candid pearls severing soft coral lines

Or a white flower across a ruddy leaf.

Her speech dropped nectar from a liquid voice

To which the coil's call seemed rude and harsh

 

' Soft         2 would make,

Page – 121


And sob of smitten lyres a tuneless sound.

The startled glance of her long lovely eyes

Stolen from her by the swift woodland deer

Fluttered like a blue lotus in the wind,

And the rich pencilled arching of her brows .

Made vain the beauty of Love's bow. Her hair's

Dense masses put voluptuously to shame

The mane of lions and the drift of clouds.

He who created all this wondrous world

Weary of scattering perfection1 wide;

To see all beauty in a little space

Had fashioned only her. Called to her limbs

All possibilities of loveliness

Had hastened to their fair attractive seats,

And now the artist eyes that scan all things

Saw every symbol and sweet parallel

Of beauty only realised in her.

Then was he satisfied and loved his work.

The2 sages ranging at their will the stars

Saw her and knew that this indeed was she

Who must become by love the beautiful half

Of the Almighty's body and be all

His heart. This from earth's seers of future things

Himaloy heard and his proud hopes contemned

All other than the greatest for her spouse.

Yet dared he not provoke that dangerous boon

Anticipating its unwakened hour,

But seated in the grandeur of his hills

Like a great soul curbing its giant hopes,

A silent sentinel of destiny,

He watched in mighty calm the wheeling years

She like an offering waited for the fire,

Prepared by Time for her approaching lord.

 

But the great Spirit of the world forsaken

By that first body of the Mother of all,             

Not to her second birth yet come, abode

 

1 his marvels                          2 His

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In crowded worlds ascetic, stern,

And passionless and unespoused,

The Master of the animal life absorbed

In dreamings, wandering with his demon hordes,

Desireless in the blind desire of things.

At length like sculptured marble still he paused,

To meditation yoked. With ashes smeared

Clothed in the skin of beasts

He sat a silent shape upon the hills.

Below him curved Himadri's slope; a soil

With fragrance of the musk-deer odorous |         

Was round, and there the awful Splendour mused.

Mid cedars sprinkled with the sacred dew

Of Ganges, softly murmuring their chants

In streams subdued the Kinnar minstrels sang.

Where oil-filled slabs were clothed in resinous herbs,

His grisly hosts sat down, their bodies stained

With mineral unguents; bark their ill-shaped limbs

Clad....1 and their tremendous hands

Around their ears had wreathed the hillside's flowers.

On the white rocks compact of frozen snow

His great bull voicing loud immortal pride

Pawed with his hoof the argent soil to dust.

Alarmed the bisons fled his gaze; he bellowed

Impatient of the mountain lion's roar.

Concentrating his world-vast energies,

He who gives all austerities their fruits

Built daily his eternal shape of flame,

In what impenetrable and deep desire ?

The worship even of gods he reckons not

Who on no creature leans; yet worship still

To satisfy his awe the mountain paused

And gave his daughter the great Soul to serve.

She brought him daily offerings of flowers

And holy water morn and noon and eve

And swept the altar of the divine fire

And plucking heaped the outspread sacred grass,

 

'BIank in MS. 

Page – 123


Then showering1 over his feet her falling locks

Drowned all her soft fatigue of gentle toils

In the cool moonbeams from the Eternal's head.

Though to austerity of trance a peril

The touch of beauty, he repelled her not

Surrounded by all sweetness in the world

He can be passionless in his large mind,

Austere, unmoved, creation's silent king.

So had they met on the summits of the world.

Like the still spirit and its unawakened force

Near were they now, yet to each other unknown,

He meditating, she in service bowed.

Closing awhile her vast and shadowy wings

Fate over them paused suspended on the hills.

 

1 She raining 

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