Sri Aurobindo

Autobiographical Notes

and Other Writings of Historical Interest

Part One. Autobiographical Notes

2. Sri Aurobindo’s corrections of statements in a proposed biography

Life in Baroda, 1893–1906

Language Study at Baroda [3]

[Sri Aurobindo took regular lessons in Bengali from Dinendra Kumar Roy at Baroda.]

No, there were no regular lessons. Dinendra lived with Sri Aurobindo as a companion and his work was rather to help him to correct and perfect his knowledge of the language and to accustom him to conversation in Bengali than any regular teaching.

[Another version:] Sri Aurobindo was not a pupil of Dinendra Kumar; he had learnt Bengali already by himself and only called in Dinendra to help him in his studies.

Sri Aurobindo . . . engaged a teacher – a young Bengali littérateur – and started mastering Bengali. . . .

About the learning of Bengali, it may be said that before engaging the teacher, Sri Aurobindo already knew enough of the language to appreciate the novels of Bankim and the poetry of Madhusudan. He learned enough afterwards to write himself and to conduct a weekly in Bengali, writing most of the articles himself, but his mastery over the language was not at all the same as over English and he did not venture to make speeches in his mother tongue.