SOURCE: "Sri Aurobindo: The Prose Canon," in Perspectives on Indian Prose in English, edited by M. K. Naik, Humanities Press, 1982, pp. 72-103.

In the following essay, Nandakumar provides a chronological survey of Aurobindo's prose works.

During a literary career that spanned almost sixty years, Sri Aurobindo was continuously active with his pen. He left no literary form untouched. Perhaps because of his world-wide fame as a spiritual seer, he is now better known as the author of Savitri, but this cosmic epic was but one facet of his total literary achievement.

If poetry was his first love, Sri Aurobindo was an equally tireless practitioner of the 'other harmony' of prose. In fact, the collected prose works of Sri Aurobindo comprise about twenty-five massive volumes in the Centenary Library. In sheer amplitude, depth, richness, and uniform distinction of style, he has not been surpassed—or even equalled—by any...