Page:The Autobiography of Maharshi Devendranath Tagore.djvu/80

32 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF required by the Act, and never doubted the validity of marriages solemnised in the presence of God.

A few years before my father s death, he had completed his Autobiography; and when finished, he entrusted it to his favourite disciple Priyanath Shastoi for publication, conferring upon him the full benefits of its copyright. The right of translation and publication in other than the original Bengali language was given to my brother Rabindranath and myself, jointly. Although he had originally objected to its publication during his lifetime, he was induced upon reconsideration to withdraw the objection, and the book was published shortly before his death, with certain supplementary letters in the form of an Appendix.

The Autobiography contains no stirring adventures, or sensational incidents of any kind. Its value consists in its being a record of the spiritual struggle of a noble soul against early associations, conventionality, and family ties the struggle of a soul striving to rise from empty idolatrous ceremonial to the true worship of the One living God; the Brâhma of the Upanishads, the Power which operates in the universe, creating, sustaining, and destroying, the Eternal Spirit immanent in the world without and in the soul of man. The record, in fine, is one of an illumined life struggling towards more light, and shedding its brilliance on all around. However much the convincing diction of the original may