Selected Quotes by Sri Aurobindo on Indian Culture

The Upanishads are the supreme work of the Indian mind, and that it should be so, that the highest self-expression of its genius, its sublimest poetry, its greatest creation of the thought and word should be not a literary or poetical masterpiece of the ordinary kind, but a large flood of spiritual revelation of this direct and profound character, is a significant fact, evidence of a unique mentality and unusual turn of spirit.  

Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India and other essays on Indian culture: 329 *

Indian Literature : Epics and Puranas 

 

This idea, the sense of this necessity, a constant urge towards its realisation is evident throughout the whole course of Indian history from earlier Vedic times through the heroic period represented by the traditions of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and the effort of the imperial Mauryas and Guptas up to the Mogul unification and the last ambition of the Peshwas, until there came the final failure and the levelling of all the conflicting forces under a foreign yoke, a uniform subjection in place of the free unity of a free people.

 

Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India and other essays on Indian culture: 427 *

 

Indian art

 

Indian art demands of the artist the power of communion with the soul of things, the sense of spiritual taking precedence of the sense of material beauty, and fidelity to the deeper vision within.

Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India and other essays on Indian culture :467 *

All art reposes on some unity and all its details, whether few or sparing, lavish or crowded and full must go back to that unity and help its significance.

 

Sri Aurobindo, The Renaissance in India and other essays on Indian culture: 274

*

The first and lowest use of Art is the purely aesthetic, the second is the intellectual or educative, the third and highest the spiritual. By speaking of the aesthetic use as the lowest, we do not wish to imply that it is not of immense value to humanity, but simply to assign to it its comparative value in relation to the higher uses. The aesthetic is of immense importance and until it has done its work, mankind is not really fitted to make full use of Art on the higher planes of human development.

 

Sri Aurobindo, EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS

Part Four. On Art, The National Value of Art [2] : 440

*

It is necessary that those who create, whether in great things or small, whether in the unusual masterpieces of art and genius or in the small common things of use that surnd a man's daily life, should be habituated to produce and the nation habituated to expect the beautiful in preference to the ugly, the noble in preference to the vulgar, the fine in preference to the crude, the harmonious in preference to the gaudy. A nation surrounded daily by the beautiful, noble, fine and harmonious becomes that which it is habituated to contemplate and realizes the fullness of the expanding Spirit in itself.

Sri Aurobindo, EARLY CULTURAL WRITINGS

Part Four. On Art, The National Value of Art [2] : 454

 

***