Since 1980, Shraddhavan has been teaching English in Auroville through close readings of Sri Aurobindo’s revelatory epic Savitri: a legend and a symbol. In August 1998 these classes were resumed at Savitri Bhavan, with a growing number of students, including young Tamil teacher-trainees from the Arul Vazhi School located in Promesse, Auroville. These classes were given the name ‘The English of Savitri’ and they concluded in May of 2009 as this group reached the end of the poem. This book is based on the transcripts of a new series of classes given by Shraddhavan between August 2009 and October 2010, which have been edited for conciseness and clarity, while aiming to preserve some of the informal atmosphere of the course. Edited transcripts of these classes began to be published serially in the Bhavan’s journal of Study Notes on Savitri, ‘Invocation’, from issue 32 onwards, since it was felt that they may be of interest to a wider audiance. They are now being published in book form in several volumes by Yukta Prakashan publishers of Vadodara. This suggested the idea of collecting the original English articles into a book form as well. This is the first such volume, covering all the five cantos of Book One of the poem, ‘The Book of Beginnings’.

In this epic spiritual poem, Sri Aurobindo reveals his vision of mankind's destiny within the universal evolution. He sets forth the optimistic view that life on earth has a purpose, and he places our travail within the context of this purpose: to participate in the evolution of consciousness that represents the secret thread behind life on Earth.

Sri M. P. Pandit goes through Sri Aurobindo’s epic poem Savitri: a Legend and a Symbol and provides us a systematic prose summary of the poem with its key issues, points and organization, opening up Sri Aurobindo’s master work in a useful and concise way.

Comprised of six of the author's essays in English on Sri Aurobindo's epic Savitri, this book introduces the reader to the thematic richness and complexity of the poem. It also gives an insight into Aswapathy's yoga and why Sri Aurobindo gives it such prominence, and points to the unique place Book III has in Sri Aurobindo's vision of the future of man. The book also includes a Preface by Dr M. V. Nadkarni, a noted lecturer on Savitri.

Featuring leading scholars in their fields, this book examines receptions of ancient and early modern literary works from around the world (China, Japan, Ancient Maya, Ancient Mediterranean, Ancient India, Ancient Mesopotamia) that have circulated globally across time and space (from East to West, North to South, South to West). Beginning with the premise of an enduring and revered cultural past, the essays go on to show how the circulation of literature through translation and other forms of reception in fact long predates modern global society; the idea of national literary canons have existed just over a hundred years and emerged with the idea of national educational curricula. Highlighting the relationship of culture and politics in which canons are created, translated, promulgated, and preserved, this book argues that such nationally-defined curricula were challenged by critics and writers in the wake of the Second World War.

Having applied the standards of modern critical theory, it may sound fruitless to account for biographical details of writer in interpreting his work as the biographical details either hold no importance or have nothing to do with the work of art in the sense that once a work of art is born, it looses its connection with the creator. Moreover, even in the moment of creation, the author remains detached from his creation. However, there are some exceptions to this. It has been observed that the biographical details are of immense help in partly making sense of what the concerned author has encoded. These details can be correlated to his writing. In the case of some writers, their life has a special relation with what they write, how they led their life, what inspiration they sought, what influences they received and imbibed in their personality, what experiences they lived with, and what events and occasions they confronted. All these partly go into the making of a literary personality.

These lectures were given under the auspices of the Sri Aurobindo-Mira Lecture Series of the South Gujerat University during 1980-1981, with an added lecture given in the USA in 1977. They provide a brief overview and introduction to the spiritual epic Savitri: A Legend and a Symbol

Most of the papers presented at various national and international seminars.

Almost all of the essays collected in this volume were written for and first published as monthly instalments in Next Future, the e-journal of the Sri Aurobindo Society Pondicherry. The 47 instalments ended with the passing of Dr. Nadkarni in September 2007, and cover Savitri Book by Book, Canto by Canto, from the beginning up to the climactic point in the middle of Book Eleven, where Savitri is offered four boons of merger with the Supreme, and asks instead for the Supreme Peace, Oneness, Energy and Bliss ‘for Earth and Men’. Dr. Nadkarni has written other essays on Savitri as well as giving many other talks, but this collection represents a masterly ‘Introduction’ (as he modestly called it) to the revelatory poem which he loved so much and understood so well. It has been compiled and published at the request of his family, and we feel sure that it will be welcomed by Savitri readers and students all over the world, and to a certain extent make up for the great loss that his many admirers experienced when he passed away in September 2007 at the age of 74.

Indian writing in English, especially fiction, continues to capture the attention of readers all over the English-speaking world. Conversely, the strong and flourishing tradition of poetry in English from India has not impacted the contemporary world in the same manner as the fiction. This book creates a debate to highlight the well-grounded and confident tradition of Indian Poetry in English which began almost two hundred years ago with the advent of the British. Individual essays on poets before and since the Indian Independence focus on the poetry of Derozio, Tagore, Aurobindo and Naidu right down to the modern and contemporary poets like Ezekiel, Mahapatra, Ramanujan, Kolatkar, Das, Moraes, Daruwalla, de Souza, Jussawalla and Patel who ushered in a change both in terms of subject matter and style. On either side of the Atlantic, this book which includes a substantial Introduction, Select Bibliography and Index is of value to scholars, teachers and researchers on Indian Poetry in English.