मेरा आजीवन कारावास / माझी जन्मठेप (स्वातंत्र्यवीर सावरकर - काले पानी का ऐतिहासिक संस्मरण)

of these books that I mastered the Bengali language then. While in London and when I
was engaged on the study of all available material for my book on the Indian. Mutiny of
1857, I came across a work on the subject written in Bengali by Babu Rajanikanta. The
book was styled "The History of the Sepoy War." I had it read to me by a Bengali friend
in London. I knew at that time to read and speak in Bengali. But I could not master the
script and was unable to write in Bengali. I mastered it later on, and I can write it now;
yet I must say that while I can make them out when I read Bengali books, they somehow
slip from my memory when I undertake to write Bengali. Life and sayings of Ramkrishna
Paramahansa, Reminiscences of Rabindranath Tagore, his dramas like Chitra, I read all
of them from the library of the Silver Jail. I then turned to the study of old Bengali as in
the Ramayana and in the Mahabharata written in Bengali metre known as the 'payara'
metre. This special metre was used by Michael Madhusudan Dutt in his own Bengali
poems. He slightly modified it to suit his own blank verse. His poems like 'Meghanad
Vadha', 'Kurukshetra' and others made me familiar with this form of unrhymed verse. It
taught to me to appreciate English blank verse. And, at last, I succeeded in adapting it to
Marathi metre after the model of English blank verse. I have employed it to the full in my
longer narrative verse known as 'Gomantak.' Since then it has come to be known as
'Vainayak Vritta.'
As for Marathi books, we had a good collection of the works of ancient Marathi
poets from Dnyaneshwar to Moropant inclusive. We had works on scientific subjects like
those of Dikshit. We had Marathi serial readers for the use of ordinary prisoners; we had
works on Indian History in Marathi from its early days to the close of the Maratha Period,
and a special, comprehensive selection of books on Maratha History. We had, besides, a
full and complete translation in Marathi of the Mahabharata, all the Baroda series of the
Dwaita and the Advaita Bhashyas or commentaries and the translation into Marathi of the
entire text of the 'Brahma Sutras'. In all, this section came to about two hundred volumes.
My friend and collaborator, Mr. Wamanrao Joshi of Nagpur, made a full use of this
collection.
All the Hindi books in the library had to be paid for through our own pockets. We
ordered them in a large number because I was of opinion that every Indian should study
Hindi as his national language. I purchased for that purpose selected Hindi books,
magazines and readers, and stocked them in our library. Later on, there was, by far, a
large addition of political prisoners from the Punjab and the U.P., and Hindi books began
to come in a growing number.
The principal and the largest section in our library, of course, consisted of English
books. Herbert Spencer's volumes on Synthetic Philosophy, including his 'First
Principles', and Sociology and Ethics; all the works of John Stuart Mill; of Darwin,
Huxley and Tyndals, and Haeckel; the writings of Carlyle and Emerson; of historians
like Macaulay and Gibbon; of poets like Shakespeare, Milton and Pope, constituted its
main feature. We had in it Abbot's Life of Napoleon, the Life of Prince Bismark, of
Garibaldi and Mazzini, with Mazzini's complete works. The library contained historical