Sri Aurobindo

Letters of Sri Aurobindo

Volume 1

Letter ID: 195

Sri Aurobindo — Roy, Dilip Kumar

1932 (?)

I shall go through Prabodh Sen’s letter, but it may take me some time. What is the exact scope of the discussion with Anilbaran¹, is it that he does not recognise the reality of the mātra vṛtta² as a separate principle of Bengali metre? That I suppose was the position before. Originally, indeed there was only one stream recognised,– that I remember very well, for it was the time when I was learning and assiduously reading Bengali literature; at that time what you now call svara vṛtta³ was regarded as mere popular verse or an old irregular verse form. Afterwards with the advent and development of Tagore’s poetry, one began to hear of two recognised principles of Bengali metre, svara (I was going to say kṣara) and akṣara⁴? Is it Anilbaran’s contention that only these two are real and legitimate? Whatever it be Anilbaran is a born fighter and if you tell him that all the Mahārathis⁵ are against him and his smashing defeat a foregone conclusion, he will only gallop faster towards the battle. My own difficulty is that I have not yet grasped the principle of the mātrā vṛtta – what is it that determines the long or the short mātrā in Bengali? Satyen Dutta’s dealings with it I can follow (...)

¹ Anilbaran Roy (3 July 1890 – 3 November 1974), a professor of Philosophy. At the call of Deshbandhu C. R. Das he joined politics and became one of the leaders of the Freedom Struggle as waged by Mahatma Gandhi, and went to jail. Later on he gave up Gandhi’s ideal and turned to Sri Aurobindo. He joined Sri Aurobindo on May 24 1926.

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² System of metrical measure depending on differentiating alphabetical letters into long and short.

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³ System of versification measured by the number of letters in each foot.

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⁴ System of versification in which the number of letters and not the sounds is taken into account.

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⁵ Great fighters.

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