SRI AUROBINDO

Hymns to the Mystic Fire

Bibliographical Note

Hymns to the Mystic Fire, containing translations of hymns to Agni from Mandalas 1, 2 and 6 of the Rig-veda, was first published in 1946 with a Foreword by Sri Aurobindo.

An enlarged edition of Hymns to the Mystic Fire was issued in 1952 and contained the following additional material:

1) Revised translations of the “Hymns of the Atris” which had appeared originally in the Arya and subsequently had been published in On the Veda.

2) Translations of other hymns to Agni which had hitherto remained unpublished. A few of these had been found in Sri Aurobindo’s earlier manuscripts and included as they had stood.

Barring some forty hymns not translated, all the remaining Agni-Hymns of the Rig-veda were presented in this volume.

For the purposes of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Edition the 1952 enlarged edition has been used as “Copy”. However, the entire text has been rechecked and several corrections are made. A few hymns to Agni and the article, “The Doctrine of the Mystics”, have been shifted from On the Veda to this volume. In the first two editions of Hymns to the Mystic Fire this article was only partly reproduced.

Certain notes and studies found among Sri Aurobindo’s manuscripts dealing with the hymns to Agni and with “Word-formation” from his material for a full philological reconstruction of the old Aryabhasha, have been added here as a supplement.