Three Shatakas of Bhartrihari- Sringara, Vairagya and Niti (Aphorisms on Love, Dispassion and Ethical Conduct)

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The poet Bhartrihari probably flourished in the first century B.C. His Three Shatakas maps the journey of the human mind through different stages of growth and maturity: from the pleasures of erotic love and ecstatic celebration of senses through an indignant rejection of earthly pleasures to an equanimity, a calm attained by the taming of the temptations through meditation and philosophical contemplation on the nature of things.

In keeping with Hindu view of life, the ancient poet gives as much importance of love as to dispassion (Vairagya) and ethical conduct (Niti). Vairagya or dispassion is not a state of mind, which only the world-weary people can attain. Even the romantic and worldly people are visited by it when the going gets tough, when they are let down by the people they hold dear. In that sense it is a universal condition of being.

One hundred aphorisms on ethical conduct (Niti Shataka) enshrine the quintessence of the Vedantic view of life. Contrary to conservative interpretation, Bhartrihari makes the Law of Karma subservient to the human freewill and individual effort, thereby reinstating the dignity of man.

The present translation of the Three Shatakas in English will prove to be very useful as it also contains the Sanskrit Text with English transliteration. It is hoped that readers of all age groups will find something interesting and instructive in this collection of three hundred verses.

Dr. Dharanidhar Sahu teaches English and American Literature in Berhampur University. His PH.D. dissertation has been published as CATS ON A HOT RIN ROOF: A Study of the Alienated Characters in the Plays of Tennessee Williams by Academic Foundation, New Delhi in 1990. His English novel THE HOUSE OF SERPENTS has been published simultaneously by Orient Longman, India and Sangam Books, London in 1996. His second novel RITES OF PASSAGE is to be published shortly by Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi. His English stories and a research articles have come out in many national journals.

The Three Satakas of Bhartshari has had a most eventful journey through the centuries. It has passed through many redactions, emendations and recensions. It has also been corrupted by a number of self- effacing interpolators who found the loose and accommodative structure of the Satakas a viable medium for perpetuating their compositions, if not their names. In the recent years, many eminent Sanskrit scholars such as M.R. Kale, D.D. Koshambi and K.V. Sarma, to quote a few, have done extensive and exclusive research on the identity of Bharthari and the structure of the Three Satakas attributed to him.

The name Bhartshari is an archaeological conundrum, for at least three seminal texts of antiquity The Three Satakas, the Bhattikavya and the Vakyapadiya - have been attributed to the person or persons bearing the same name. Some twentieth-century Sanskrit scholars, using internal/textual evidences and historical findings as their sources of reference, have conclusively proved that the author of the Vakyapadiya was a Buddhist grammarian who flourished in the first half of the 7th century. A Chinese traveller I-tsing who visited India in the second half of the 7th century mentioned in his travelogue that a certain Buddhist grammarian named Bhartrhari had died forty years before his visit. But the poet of the Three Satakas was a worshipper of Lord Shiva and the Brahmin as the opening, invocatory verses of the Vairagya and the Niti Satakas clearly illustrate. As regards the Bhattikavya, the scholar-critics aver that its eponymous author Bhatti, traditionally confused with Bhartshari, was a different individual, because his command over Sanskrit grammar was greater than that of the poet Bhartshari who wrote the Three Satakas. They were somewhat disconcerted to discover certain solecisms and clumsy constructions in the Satakas, which an astute grammarian like Bhatti could well have avoided. However, these scholars seem to be oblivious of the fact that quite a number of epigrams, particularly those faulty and awkward ones, might have been interpolated into the original satakas by the latter-day scribes. As it is not possible to know the genuine from the spurious, it is safe to be guided by the scholars and assume that there was a poet named Bhartrhari in ancient India, whose only extant opus was the Three Satakas such as the Niti Sataka, the srngara sataka and the Vairagya Sataka.

The job of situating Bharthari in the historical/chronological context has never been easy either. This problem of dating is not peculiar to Bhartrhari alone, but more or less to all celebrity authors of antiquity, because there had never been an epoch-making emperor or personality in ancient India, who could be known to, and accepted by, all; because, perhaps, the ancient Sanskrit writers, compilers and redactors caught up between the fleeting nature of earthly time and the unchanging aspects of eternity considered the act of marking out the cease-less flow of time a banal and mundane activity. That apart, when the date of the epoch-maker is not certain, the very act of counting on the strength of his birth or coronation becomes equally uncertain. Take for example the Samvat era which begins with the reign (or birth) of Vikramaditya who, according to the tradition, happens to be the younger brother of Bhartshari, the poet of the Three Satakas. Some antiquarians, archaeologists and Sanskrit historiographers place him in the Ist century BC (56 BC) and some others in the 6th century AD (544 AD) and yet some others place him somewhere in between. On the whole, fixing the exact date of Bhartrhari is bound to be based on speculation.