Collated by Tusar Nath Mohapatra
The original tale from the Arabian Nights provides the foundational plot: The good Wazir, Al-Fazl, is tasked by the Sultan of Bassora to buy a beautiful and accomplished slave-girl, Anis al-Jalis, for ten thousand dinars. Before presenting her to the Sultan, the Wazir brings her to his own home to recover from her journey. There, his handsome but reckless son, Nur al-Din Ali, sees her, and they fall instantly in love. Believing his father bought her for him, Nur al-Din consummates their relationship.
Sri Aurobindo notes that he divested the ancient legend of its original character as a heroic myth, using it instead as the nucleus for a romantic story in the Elizabethan model. The setting is a fictionalized Syria, a Greek colony with a Hellenized people. He states that such "outrages on history" are permissible in a romantic work where the stage is the human mind and the subject is humanity's passage from a semi-primitive temperament to a brighter humanism and the first stirrings of a deeper spiritual being. The play thus becomes a symbolic drama of the evolution of human consciousness.
No specific source for the plot of Eric is known. Sri Aurobindo seems to have made free use of names and events from the history of Norway in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. This period, known as the Viking Age, was a time of significant conflict and consolidation, as local chieftains (jarls or earls) vied for supremacy and the country moved toward a unified monarchy. Figures like Eric Bloodaxe and Olaf II of Norway are historical, but Sri Aurobindo's characters are romantic creations rather than historical portraits. The play captures the ethos of the Norse sagas—tales of heroism, feud, fate, and the complex interplay of love and honour—while infusing it with his own philosophical themes.
As stated in his author’s note, Sri Aurobindo took the plot of Vasavadutta from the Kathasaritsagara ("Ocean of the Streams of Story"), an eleventh-century Sanskrit story-cycle by Somadeva Bhatta. The action takes place a century after the war of the Mahabharata. India is divided into several kingdoms, with three major powers: Magadha in the East, Avunthy in the West ruled by the formidable Chunda Mahasegn, and Cowsamby in the Centre. The minister of Cowsamby, Yougundharayan, strives to maintain the power of the young King Vuthsa Udaian against the dominance of Avunthy. The play begins after Mahasegn has suffered recent, though not decisive, defeats at the hands of Vuthsa.
Collected Plays—Thematically Structured Rodogune (A Dramatic Romance) Persons of the Drama Characters Characters Princes of Syria ANTIOCHUS ANTIOCHUS, - twin-brothers, Princes of Syria, sons of Nicanor and Cleopatra. TIMOCLES TIMOCLES, - twin-brothers, Princes of Syria, sons of Nicanor and Cleopatra. Royal House of Syria NICANOR NICANOR - of the royal house, general-in-chief of the Syrian armies. Greek Nobles of Syria THOAS THOAS, - Greek nobles of the Kingdom of Syria, generals of its armies. LEOSTHENES LEOSTHENES - Greek nobles of the Kingdom of Syria, generals of its armies. CALLICRATES CALLICRATES - a young Greek noble of Syria. Court Officials PHAYLLUS PHAYLLUS - an official, afterwards Minister of Timocles. MELITUS MELITUS - a Court official. Other Characters PHILOCTETES PHILOCTETES - a young Greek noble of Egypt, friend of Antiochus. THERAS THERAS - a gentleman in waiting. AN EREMITE. AN EREMITE. Female Characters Royal Women CLEOPATRA CLEOPATRA - an Egyptian princess, sister of the reigning Ptolemy, Queen of Syria; widow successively of King Nicanor and his brother Antiochus. RODOGUNE RODOGUNE - a princess of Parthia, prisoner in Antioch. Other Female Characters EUNICE EUNICE - daughter of Nicanor. CLEONE CLEONE - sister of Phayllus, in attendance on the Queen. MENTHO MENTHO - an Egyptian woman, nurse of Antiochus. ZOŸLA ZOŸLA - an attendant of Cleopatra. Persons of the Drama
https://incarnateword.in/compilations/collected-plays-thematically-structured/characters
How are time and consciousness related, and do they exist at all? Theoretical physicist Ivette Fuentes has a radical starting point: throw away everything you think you know. Only by stripping away every assumption, she argues, can we begin to rebuild our understanding of reality, consciousness, and time, and how they're connected. Tap here to watch Fuentes debate "Time's Great Mystery" alongside Hilary Lawson, Wahida Khandker, and Tim Maudlin. iai.tv/video/times-gr…
https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2102035856240357597
We often assume that our memories are stored in our brains, just like a hard drive stores data. bit.ly/4AfiMbS In this talk, philosopher Victoria Trumbull argues this is a radical mistake: she argues that the brain enables memory without containing it, and that time itself stores memory.
https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2102082963764552184
One of Britain’s most provocative thinkers, John Gray is a political philosopher famous for dismantling liberalism and exposing the illusions of human progress. bit.ly/463JPcr In this conversation with Hilary Lawson, Gray argues the real purpose of philosophy is disruption, not conversion.
https://x.com/IAI_TV/status/2102057790546100683
This is one of the pieces by Vygotsky that I’d actually recommend to everyone. He makes the most persistent existential query: what sort of person does a social order produce when we get greater social knowledge and technical skill at the same moment we reduce individual scope? I like the section about how industry itself is becoming proof for psychology, like a history of skills baked into people and machines. Even with the 1930s-era optimism about socialist change, that tension seems hard to completely shed. marxists.org/archive/vygots…
https://x.com/praxiss/status/2102099997701357863
Milan Kundera used to say "Totalitarian power requires the world to be taken with absolute seriousness, and that laughter is the enemy of that seriousness." Lampooning works as a harpoon puncturing the egos the size of whale. And that's why the discomfiture, anger, fuming..
https://x.com/catcheronthesly/status/2102041236110815584
From Political Freedom to Human Emancipation: Revisiting Marx
by Pon Chandran countercurrents.org/2026/09/from-p…
Pon Chandran revisits Karl Marx’s distinction between political emancipation and human emancipation, examining the limits of formal equality when social and economic life remains shaped by property, class and competition. The article then turns to Marx’s reflections on machinery and the General Intellect in the Grundrisse, where technological development increasingly reduces the direct labour required for production. This creates a tension between the reduction of labour-time and its continued role as the measure of value. Chandran explores Marx’s conception of free time as a basis for individual and social development, and the possibility of organising technology around collective human well-being.
https://x.com/Countercurrents/status/2102234128167170551
He is absolutely right. Why should a Muslim love or respect a Hindu, whom his religious doctrines condemn as a Kafir? Religion is the primary and permanent foundation of identity and unity for any group of people. Language, geography, and socio-economic status are distant, temporary secondary factors. When will Hindus understand this fundamental force that drives the world?
https://x.com/MNageswarRaoIPS/status/2102205828610789799
People often wonder why so many left-wing French women defend Islam and Muslim women with such fervor. The answer isn’t solidarity. It’s contempt. For many of them, the Muslim woman isn’t a woman like any other. She’s the cleaning lady. The one who runs the vacuum cleaner while we head to the protest march. The one who watches the kids while we write op-eds on emancipation. The one we pity, protect, parade around—but never treat as an equal.
From there, her “emancipation” isn’t even a topic. Why bother? In their minds, she’s destined to serve: the men in Islam, the bourgeois leftists in France. Housekeeping, errands, childcare, caregiving. An endless chain of service. So you can defend the veil, downplay polygamy, hush up female genital mutilation or honor killings, and still feel generous. You’re not talking about a sister. You’re talking about a subordinate. True emancipation means breaking free from all submission. But without that bond of submission, the Muslim woman is no longer an ally. She becomes a rival.
https://x.com/AB_France01/status/2102016640028217467
Complex societies are often marked by profound inequality and hierarchy: some people benefit much more than others. The second point is that, once they have emerged, complex societies are always threatened by some degree of internal dissent and rebellion (e.g. some people who feel that they aren’t getting the most out of the problem-solving bargain). They have two basic strategies for dealing with these threats: (i) boosting their perceived legitimacy or (ii) coercion and control... societies collapse when they reach a point of rapidly declining marginal returns on their investments in problem solving capacity.https://rword.substack.com/p/the-collapse-of-complex-societies
At 92, Gulzar writes with the same discipline that's helped him refine & reinvent his art decade after decade - building an enormous body of work known for its tenderness. This summer, I spent time with him at his Mumbai home for this @nytimes profile:
https://x.com/MujMash/status/2101999592510542204
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