Srimati Prema Nandakumar (b. 1939; M.A., 1958; Ph.D., 1961) had a first class academic career in Andhra University. She is a close student of classical and modern Tamil literature, and her translation of Subramania Bharati's poems has been sponsored by UNESCO and Sahitya Akademi. She has published short biographies of Sri Aurobindo, the Mother and Bharati. She has contributed numerous critical papers to learned journals and scholarly publications, and 28 of her writings on Indian, English, American and Commonwealth Lit-erature have been collected in The Glory and the Good. And her book reviews and essays on literary and educational themes have been appearing regularly in the Hindu, the Deccan Herald, the Indian Express, Triveni and other papers and journals.
A writer of fiction in Tamil and English, one of her collections of Tamil short stories, Amudathuli Uthinnthadu, received the first prize awarded by Tamil Nadu Government for the best collection published in 1983. And her Atom and the Serpent, a Novel of Campus Life in India Today, has been hailed as a "blisteringly honest novel" and "by any standard...a remarkable first novel".
Prof. Henry W. Wells wrote in Literature East and West: "It is safe to say that among the younger Indian critics none possesses more breadth of knowledge or depth of understanding than Prema Nandakumar's. Her collection of 28 essays, The Glory and the Good, would alone establish her position... The book issues spontaneously from the heart and soul of India".
THIS book is substantially the same as the thesis for which the Andhra University, on the unanimous recommendation of a Board consisting of Professors Vivian de Sola Pinto, H.O. White and T.J.B. Spencer, awarded the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy on me at the Annual Convocation held in December 1961. The present publication has been kindly sponsored by the Andhra University, with the help of a grant-in-aid from the University Grants Commission, and I am duly grateful to both my Alma Mater and the U.G.C. for thus facilitating the publication of this book so soon after the award of the Degree.
During the last several months I have been asking myself why, having wavered for quite some time between Virginia Woolf and Savitri as my subject for the Ph.D. course, I finally chose the latter. I should perhaps say rather that whereas I chose Virginia Woolf, Savitri chose me. Sri Aurobindo's portraits adorn the walls of my parental home, and I have grown up in silent and reverent admiration of the Master. As a girl I was once privileged to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram at Pondicherry. And which Hindu girl reacts otherwise than with love and gratitude towards the my hic heroine, Savitri? That I should wish to study Sri Aurobindo's avitri was thus not surprising: what was really surprising was hat I took so long to reach a decision which, once made, seemed altogether the right thing. My first post-graduate enthusiasm had been the great Tamil poet, Subramania Bharati, some of whose poems I translated into English and published with an Intro-duction as Bharati in English Verse. Now Bharati had been Sri Aurobindo's intimate friend at Pondicherry for about 10 years, and what could be more appropriate than my turning from Bharati to Sri Aurobindo ?
There has been no end to my good fortune. Firstly, the subject itself, which I now think is the greatest-the most inspiring that a woman, at any rate a Hindu woman, could think of or write about. Secondly, I have had constant advice and help from my father, Professor K. R. Srinivasa Iyengar, who is not only the author of the standard biographical study of Sri Aurobindo but is also one of the eminent authorities on the subject. Thirdly, the University Grants Commission were good enough to award a research scholarship to me to enable me to prosecute my studies without saddling myself with teaching duties. Fourthly, in November 1959, Mr. A. B. Purani the author of the only book on Sri Aurobindo's Savitri was our guest for a few days, and gave on 25 November an inspiring lecture in the University on Savitri. Having been closely associated with Sri Aurobindo for about 30 years, Mr. Purani is one of the very few people who can now talk with real authority on the Master's thought and message. I was privileged to discuss the plan of my book with him, clear up several of my difficulties, and even to look into some of his private lecture notes on Savitri. Finally, certain review assignments by Madame Sophia Wadia for the Aryan Path and the Indian P.E.N. enabled me during the last few years to read and write about Sri Aurobindo's posthumous publications-notably Hion and the plays-while Sri Nolini Kanta Gupta, Secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, gave me no small encouragement by publishing my first essay on Savitri ("The Exordium') in the quarterly journal,
The Advent. On the other hand, the more I studied, the more I began to feel bewildered. Savitri is a colossal poem of nearly 24,000 lines. The mere attempt to "understand" it left me often despairing whether I would ever be able to bring my project to some sort of conclusion. I was for a while quite lost in Aswapathy's "Worlds", and the "Descent into Night" was a terrible experience. But I persevered, and my father was always there to help me out whenever I floundered. The collateral studies took me to vast new oceans of knowledge. There were Sri Aurobindo's own works, formidable in their bulk and weight and manifoldness of knowledge. I was advised to read Evelyn Underhill's classic treatise on Mysticism, and this took me to other books on Mysticism and the great Mystics. I also took deep draughts from the springs of modern English and American poetry. Browsing in the University Library, I read whatever seemed to have relevance to my subject in its wider perspective, and took numerous notes and carefully card indexed them. As the months passed I had the feeling of a person who has foolishly ventured far into the sea and finds, whichever way he turns, nothing but an endless expanse of water. The shore seems to be nowhere.
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