Sri Aurobindo’s Ahana and Aswapathy’s invocation in Savitri

SRI AUROBINDO’S AHANA AND

ASWAPATHY’S INVOCATION IN SAVITRI

 

DR VINAYAK KRISHNA GOKAK

Formerly Vice-Chancellor, Bangalore University

The first part of Sri Aurobindo’s Ahana consists of a welcome and prayer by poets or Hunters of Joy extended and offered to the Goddess of Dawn. Incidentally, it also expounds their criticism of traditional Vedanta and their appreciation of the new philosophy of Sri Aurobindo. The poem is couched uncomfortably in hexameters. I say “uncomfortably” because it is one of Sri Aurobindo’s earliest experiments in hexameters and the unquestioned mastery he displays in Ilion, for example, is not seen here. It looks as though hexameters are an unwieldy measure for the poet and that considerable “filling in” or “padding” is needed to keep the metre going. This brings in rhetoric which is an enemy of the inevitable and exact word. It brings in even superfluous words. Another handicap is the philosophy full of subtle distinctions which the poet tries to accommodate in hexametric lines. The result is that the expression of the philosophy loses much in clarity while it does not gain very much in beauty. Moreover, a prayer and a philosophic formulation do not always go well together. Imperfect rhymes which occur often like body-heady; streamlets-hamlets; limit-claim it, etc., affect adversely the sweetness of the lines as much as over-used rhymes such as Buty-Beauty; bosom-blossom, etc.

Again, there is a certain note of incompleteness about Ahana. The poet introduces the poem with the note that the Goddess of Dawn descends on the world where, “amid the strife and trouble of mortality the Hunters of Joy, the Seekers after knowledge, the climbers in the quest of Power are toiling up the slopes or waiting in the valleys. As she stands on the mountains of the East, voices of the Hunters of Joy are the first to greet her.” I suppose it would be clear from this note that, in this dramatic poem, it had been planned to make the seekers and the climbers also speak before Ahana blesses them all, But probably Sri Aurobindo himself had, by this time, remembered the inadequacy of the metrical mould he had selected for the philosophic purpose which was one of his main intentions in the poem. The seekers and climbers are therefore passed over and we have to content ourselves with the statement by Ahana:

“Lo, I come and behind me knowledge descends and with thunder.”

It would be interesting to remember, in this connection that the perfect and comprehensive prayer of Sri Aurobindo on behalf of humanity is to be found, not in Ahana but in Rose of God. The Rose is not merely a gleam from the summit, “the first white dawn of the god-Light”. It embodies the seven ecstacies, which are the seven worlds, and it expresses the five powers of the Divine through its five colours and forms–vermilion Bliss, golden Wisdom, damask or red Power, purple Life and ruby-coloured Love. The poetic attitudes activised in the poem are those of Sublimity, Ardour and Delight. The Rose of God itself is the infinity of Being hidden in the heart of Becoming. The poet’s vision of it is vast as well as intense. The poem is a prayer addressed to the Being to transform humanity into a race of supermen. Being is already at work in the Becoming to bring about this transformation by using its five powers.

The thought in the Poem is complex and elaborate. But it is never obtrusive. It is transparent to the poet’s attitudes and his vision. It does not obscure them, as happens sometimes is Ahana.

Most of the images in the poem are metaphors. The five roses, which are also one, are archetypal symbols.

The language resolves itself into the language of address, the language of collocations describing each rose and, finally, of supplication. The vocabulary consists entirely of poetical words. This reveals great mastery. A more detailed interpretation is given in my An Integral View of Poetry (Abhinav Prakashan, New Delhi).

Sri Aurobindo has tried to bring together Eden and Brindavan in Ahana. Both Soul and Nature were naked and innocent at the time of the dawn of Creation. When the ego and the mind of man arrived on the scene, there arose the knowledge of Good and Evil. Sri Aurobindo equates Brindavan with the paradise that existed before the dawn of creation and with the world of Bliss secret within us. In the biblical story he almost regards Satan as none other than the ego and the mind of man. Brindavan is contrasted with Kailas, the abode of Shiva, and Rudra, (and even his Shiva aspect by implication) is contrasted with Krishna.

II

Another point needs to be scrutinised carefully. As it begins, Ahana speaks both of the individual and collective consummation. There is the reference to the passion to divinise manhood and towards the end of his outburst, the poet even says that, eventually, Life willgrow deathless in our limbs and flesh tingle with the god-glory. The Decree for this Advent is fixed. But the ages are too young as yet and the fire burns too low in our heart.

It is most probably for this reason that Ahana’s assurance, when it comes confines itself only to the individual plane and to the individual soul’s place in the Ras, the dance of Divine Delight. Poison and nectar have been dispensed to the “sensuous mortal” who has lived as in walls. He has been lured and then left:

“We two together shall capture the flute and the player relentless. Son of man, thou hast crowned thy life with the flowers that are scentless.”

When dawn has seized and devoured his desires like a lioness, man will live free as in Eden of old. Ahana will teach him how to have Shyam “for slave and for master.” Man should trample the Delight that submits to him and be ready to be trampled by the sweetness that insults him. He will then know what the dance meant. He will then fathom the song as well as the singer. He will then take his place in the Ras and his share of the ecstacy after.

III

But the solution to the individual as well as collective dilemma, the latter of which was left almost untouched in Ahana, is adumbrated in the scene between Aswapathy and the Divine Mother in Savitri. Rose of God moves in the rhythm of pentametric lines as well as Alexandrines, as contrasted with the somewhat loose structure of the hexameters in Ahana. Savitri moves in disciplined blank verse which is Aurobindonean to the core.

The dilemma of the collectivity which was discussed in some of the clumsy hexameters of Ahana is posed squarely by Aswapathy before the Divine Mother when, in answer to his long search and penance, she appears in vision before him. She first tells him that he should ask no more than what he has won for himself:

“How shalt thou speak for men whose hearts are dumb,
Make purblind earth the soul’s seer-vision’s home
Or lighten the burden of the senseless globe?

All things shall change in god’s transfiguring hour.”

But Aswapathy poses the question.

“How long shall our spirits battle with the night
And bear defeat and the brute yoke of Death,
We who are Vessels of a deathless Force
And builders of the godhead of the race?”

He even goes a step further. He tells the Divine Mother:

“I know that thy creation cannot fail.
All life is fixed in an ascending scale
And adamantine is the evolving Law;
In the beginning is prepared the close.
This strange irrational product of the mire,
This compromise between the beast and god,
Is not the crown of thy miraculous world.
I know there shall inform, the inconscient cells,
At one with Nature and at height with heaven,
A spirit vast as the containing sky
And swept with ecstasy from invisible founts,
A god come down and greater by the fall.”

Sri Aurobindo speaks here of the inevitable evolution from inconscience to superconscience. He speaks of this god who is to come down:

“Even as of old man came behind the beast.”

A race of supermen is thus bound to arise. Aswapathy says that this is fixed by the evolving Law. Even the coming of the omnipotent’s pioneers–His prophets–has given an indubitable assurance of this advent. These prophets Sri Aurobindo describes in a marvellous passage:

“Forerunners of a divine multitude
Their tread one day shall change the suffering earth
And justify the light in nature’s face.”

All that Aswapathy prays for is, now that the splendid youth of Time has passed and failed and the heart of ancient Mother Earth is weary,

“O Truth defended in thy secret sun,

Incarnate the white passion of thy force,
Mission to earth some living form of thee.

Let a great word spoken from the heights
And one great act unlock the doors of Fate.”

Then comes the assurance from the Divine Mother and it is pure nectar:

“O strong forerunner, I have heard thy cry.
One shall descend and break the iron Law…

Fate shall be changed by an unchanging will.”

In Ahana, Sri Aurobindo had said that the Decree of the Advent stands sure in the hands of our destiny. It is fixed to its hour. But still, it is fated to happen only when a mightier soul is created while kindling earth’s bodies. He had said:

“Far-off the gold and the greatness, the rapture too splendid and dire:
Are not the ages too young? Too low in our hearts burns the fire.”

Ahana brings only a gleam on the summits, a cry in the distance for the soulthat sees and listens.

Nevertheless, he welcomes Ahama:

“Come! let thy sweetness and force be a breath in the breast of the future.
Making the god-ways alive immortality’s golden-red suture.”

The inevitability of the Decree is foreseen even in Ahana. What is new in Savitri is “the insistent prayer to unlock the doors of Fate.” And this the Divine Mother answers by promising to be born as Savitri.

It may be said that Savitri is, after all, an epic poem and that the assurance and the advent take place only in the world of imagination. But there isthe vision experienced by the Mother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram on 29th February 1956 and the assurance arising out of it:

“Lord, Thou hast willed, and I execute. A new light breaks upon the earth. A new world is born.

The things that were promised are fulfilled.”