Sri Anirvan and Ekalavya

from Tusar N. Mohapatra <tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com> date 22 June 2008 21:21 subject Re: sri anirvan

Thanks for the enquiry but I have no personal acquaintance with Sri Anirvan. He is great to us as he was the person at a distant place who, like Ekalavya, received the permission as well as power for the first translation of The Life Divine, which he ably accomplished. This fact alone makes him immortal, as there was no dearth of scholars in the Sri Aurobindo Ashram then.

All the best, Tusar

from Tusar N. Mohapatra <tusarnmohapatra@gmail.com> date 24 June 2008 16:34 subject Re: Sri Anirvan

Dear Debabrata babu,

Namaskar. Thanks for opening up a bit and expressing yourself freely on Sri Anirvan. At one place you say that,

[Sri Aurobindo did not give anyone the permission to translate Life Divine.]

But, I could lay my hands on the following statements:

"Sri Anirvan accepted on condition that their guru, Sri Aurobindo would agree." [from the preface of the book, Letters from a Baul]

and,

"He was the first to translate The Life Divine into Bengali with Sri Aurobindo's full approval. [from the recollections of NKS published in Mother India, April, 2005]

That apart, it was shocking to know that his translation has been abandoned by the Ashram. That means, when I rhetorically compared him with Ekalavya, I was spot on. However, let this matter be debated and some alternate publisher might agree for its publication.

By the way, J.L. Mehta talks about Sri Anirvan's work on the Veda very reverentially in his book, Philosophy and Religion (p.163).

Yours fraternally, Tusar

NB: [the translation has received constant and full attention of the Ashram Trust. PM 6:45 PM]