The English of Savitri Volume 2

The English of Savitri Volume 2 deals with Book Three, The Book of the Divine Mother. This volume, the second in the series The English of Savitri, is based on classes led by Shraddhavan at Savitri Bhavan. The classes aim at assisting the understanding and appreciation of Savitri – a legend and a symbol, Sri Aurobindo’s mantric epic which The Mother has characterised as ‘the supreme revelation of Sri Aurobindo’s vision’.

Readers who have appreciated volume 1 of this series, dealing with Book One of Savitri, will be surprised to find that this second volume does not continue in sequence with Book Two, The Book of the Traveller of the Worlds. Instead it leaps to Book Three, The Book of the Divine Mother. This, explains Shraddhavan, is because the immense journey through all the planes of existence followed by King Aswapati in the fifteen cantos of Book Two was too daunting a task to be taken up immediately. The weekly study sessions at Savitri Bhavan covering Book Two stretched over almost two years, and not all the recordings have yet been transcribed. Moreover, it appeared that much editing of the talks would still have to be done. As the sessions covering Book Three were ready for publication, it was decided to publish these texts as Volume 2 in the series.

The author also announced that it will not be possible to continue publishing detailed sentence-by-sentence explanations as was done for Book One for every part of the epic – which is a pity as these explanations are extremely helpful, in particular for non-native English speakers. The immediate plans are to publish an explanation of Book Seven, and possibly Book Ten. Interested readers are advised to subscribe to Savitri Bhavan’s English Journal Invocation to read the explanations of Section 1 of Book Two, Canto One, The World Stair, which started to be serialised from issue #43, November, 2015.

The English of Savitri Volume 2 : Book Three, The Book of the Divine Mother. Published by Savitri Bhavan, Auroville. 272 pages, hard-bound. Price in India Rs. 450.

Available from savitribhavan.org,

from sabda.sriaurobindoashram.org,

and as an e-book from www.auro-ebooks.com