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A History of Sanskrit Literature c15.s1: 1. Bhartṛhari

A History of Sanskrit Literature c15.s1

Language
English

1. Bhartṛhari

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A HISTORY of Sanskrit lyric¹ and gnomic verse is impossible in the absence of any chronology, and, apart from minor poems which will be discussed later, our first great monument after Kālidāsa of these kinds of verse, in which Indian poets admittedly excel, is to be found in the Çatakas of Bhartṛhari. As we have them, they are handed down as three collections each theoretically of a hundred stanzas, in varied metres, of pictures of love, *Çṛṅgāraçataka*, of indifference to things of sense, *Vairāgya*, and of wise conduct, *Nīti*. It is obvious that a form like this allows of interpolation and addition, and the task of arriving at a definitive text which we can reasonably assert to be original is probably beyond our means of accomplishment. What we can say is that for a considerable number of stanzas in each of the Çatakas the concurrence of manuscript evidence renders reference to the original extremely probable. A perplexing fact is that the collections contain stanzas from well-known works such as the *Tantrākhyāyika*, the *Çakuntalā* of Kālidāsa, the *Mudrārākṣasa* of Viçākhadatta, and stanzas which in the anthologies are ascribed to authors other than Bhartṛhari. If the anthologies were trustworthy, it would be possible to deduce important results from these facts, but, as they are full of errors and frequently contradict themselves, it is hopeless to draw any chronological conclusions or to derive from these references or the stanzas from other works actually included any support for the theory that the collections are really an early anthology.²

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¹ Cf. P. E. Pavolini, *Poeti d'amore nell' India* (Florence, 1900).

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² Cf. Peterson, *Subhāṣitāvali*, pp. 74 f. ; Aufrecht, *Leipzig Catal.*, No. 417 ; Hertel, WZKM. xvi. 202 ff. ; Pathak, JBRAS. xviii. 348.

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Indian tradition, none of it early, unquestionably sets down the Çatakas as the work of one man, and does not consider them anthologies. Of this man unfortunately no clear memory remained, but, as this applies equally even to Kālidāsa, the only conclusion which can be drawn is that like that writer he belonged to a fairly early date, before authors became sufficiently self-conscious to ensure the handing down of their memory by embodying references to themselves in their poems. But we do learn from the Buddhist pilgrim I-tsing that about forty years before he wrote, therefore about 651, there died in India a grammarian, Bhartṛhari, certainly the author of the *Vākyapadīya*, the last independent contribution to Indian grammatical science. Of him I-tsing¹ tells the tale that he ever wavered between the monastic and the lay life, moving seven times between the cloister and the world in the manner permitted to Buddhists. On one occasion, when entering the monastery, he bade a student have a chariot ready for him without, that he might depart in it if worldly longings overcame his hard-won resolution. I-tsing also cites a verse in which Bhartṛhari reproaches himself for his inability to decide between the attractions of the two lives. It is natural, therefore, to accept the suggestion of Max Müller² that we have here a reference to the author of the Çatakas, though it is certain that I-tsing does not actually refer to them, for the vague terms in which he alludes to his writing on the principles of human life cannot well be treated as a real allusion to the Çatakas. It is also clear that Bhartṛhari in the Çatakas is not a Buddhist, though he, like Buddhists, arrives at counsels of freedom from desire and resignation, but a Çaiva of the Vedānta type, to whom Çiva appears as the most perfect presentation of the final reality, the Brahman. We may, of course, suppose that Bhartṛhari was once a courtier—as his reflections on the miseries of serving the great attest—and a Çaiva, and that in old age he became a Buddhist, and that I-tsing either did not learn of his Çatakas or deliberately ignored them. Or he may even have composed the Çatakas after his investigation of Buddhism had decided him upon abandoning that faith; such a fact I-tsing would not record with any pleasure, even if he knew of it. Or, if he were a mere compiler, the difficulty would disappear. It must, however, be said that it is not probable that we are to explain the notices as a confusion on the part of I-tsing of two Bhartṛharis, one older, the poet, and the grammarian, for it has been shown by very substantial evidence¹ that Bhartṛhari the grammarian was actually a Buddhist, a fact which explains in large measure the neglect accorded to his work. On the whole it seems most probable that Max Müller’s conjecture may stand.

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¹ *Records of the Buddhist Religion*, pp. 178 ff.; cf. Erm. La Terza, OC. xii, i. 201 f.

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² *India* (1883), pp. 347 ff.

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¹ Pathak, JBRAS. xviii. 341 ff.

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The question of compilation is more difficult still, and it seems unnecessary to exclude the probability that in his collections Bhartṛhari may have included work not his own, as well as verses composed by himself. Indeed, it would be difficult to find any convincing ground for suggesting that this is not the case with the *Nīti* and *Vairāgya Çatakas*.² The case of the *Çṛṅgāra-çataka*³ is different, for unquestionably there is a definite structure which may be, of course, the work of a skilled compiler, but which more naturally suggests the product of a creative mind. The Çataka opens with pictures of the beauty of women and the passion of love as it varies with the changing seasons of the year, and the joys of its fruition. We pass thence to stanzas in which the joys of dalliance are contrasted with the abiding peace brought to man by penance and wisdom, and finally the poet reaches the conviction that beauty is a delusion and a snare, that woman is sweet but poisonous as a snake on man’s way in life, that love leads only to worldly attachment, and that the true end of man lies in renunciation and in God, Çiva or Brahman. We may, therefore, adopt with moderate certainty the view that in this Çataka we have much more individual work than in the other two, though we need not suppose that Bhartṛhari held any views—quite foreign to Indian poets—which would have prevented him from including in his poem a predecessor’s work, and still less, of course, a slightly improved edition of such work. Some weight must certainly be allowed to the fact that the Indian tradition is consistent, and that it cannot be explained as in the case of the *Cāṇakya Nītiçāstra* by the fame of a name, for Bhartṛhari stands isolated.

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² Ed. K. T. Telang, BSS. 11, 1885.

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³ Ed. P. von Bohlen, Berlin, 1833; NSP. 1914. Cf. Winternitz, GIL. iii. 139 f.

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Nothing for history or chronology can be derived from the legends which make him out to have been a brother of the famed Vikramāditya, and the attempted identification of him with Bhaṭṭi, author of the *Bhaṭṭikāvya*, has no plausibility.

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Bhartṛhari’s poetry exhibits Sanskrit to the best advantage. The epics unquestionably lack life and action, their characters are stereotyped, and their descriptions, admirable in detail, tend to be over-elaborate and to lose force by this very fact. In Bhartṛhari each stanza normally can stand by itself and serves to express one idea, be it a sentiment of love, of resignation, or of policy, in complete and daintily finished form. The extraordinary power of compression which Sanskrit possesses is seen here at its best; the effect on the mind is that of a perfect whole in which the parts coalesce by inner necessity, and the impression thus created on the mind cannot be reproduced in an analytical speech like English, in which it is necessary to convey the same content, not in a single sentence syntactically merged into a whole, like the idea which it expresses, but in a series of loosely connected predications. The effect which the best stanzas of the lyric and gnomic poets achieve is essentially synthetic, as opposed to the analytic methods of modern poetry, and it follows inevitably that a series of stanzas of this kind is too heavy a burden for the mind; considered, however, each in itself, as they should be, these stanzas, like those of the Greek anthology,¹ present us with an almost infinite number of brilliant poems in miniature, on which it would often be hard to improve. It must be remembered that the use of the longer metres gives a Sanskrit poet the opportunity of compressing into a single stanza material sufficient to fill a compact English sonnet, so that there is no need to restrict within too narrow limits either the thought or the expression.

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¹ Cf. J. W. Mackail, *Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology* (1906).

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Bhartṛhari speaks in many tones; his picture of the magnanimous man is:

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*vipadi dhairyam athābhyudaye kṣamā: sadasi vākpaṭutā yudhi vikramaḥ*
*yaçasi cābhirucir vyasanaḿ çrutau: prakṛtisiddham idaḿ hi mahātmanām.*

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‘Constancy in misfortune, gentleness in prosperity, in the council-chamber eloquence, in battle valour, delight in glory, love of holy writ: these are innate in the noble man.’ His picture of the stages of life is impressive:

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*āyur varṣaçataṁ nṛṇāṁ parimitaṁ rātrau tadardhaṁ gataṁ*
*tasyārdhasya parasya cārdham aparaṁ bālatvavṛddhatvayoḥ*
*çeṣaṁ vyādhiviyogaduḥkhasahitaṁ sevādibhir nīyate*
*jīve vāritaraṅgabudbudasame saukhyaṁ kutaḥ prāṇinām?*

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‘To man is allotted a span of a hundred years; half of that passes in sleep; of the other half, one-half is spent in childhood and old age; the rest is passed in service with illness, separation, and pain as companions. How can mortals find joy in life that is like the bubbles on the waves of the sea?’ The acts of man’s life are finely depicted in a manner in its own way as finished as Shakespeare’s:

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*kṣaṇaṁ bālo bhūtvā kṣaṇam api yuvā kāmarasikaḥ*
*kṣaṇaṁ vittair hīnaḥ kṣaṇam api ca sampūrṇavibhavaḥ*
*jarājīrṇair aṅgair naṭa iva valīmaṇḍitatanur*
*naraḥ saṁsārānte viçati yamadhānīyavanikām.*

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‘For a moment man is a boy, for a moment a lovesick youth, for a moment bereft of wealth, for a moment in the height of prosperity; then at life’s end with limbs worn out by old age and wrinkles adorning his face, like an actor, he retires behind the curtain of death.’ The utter unsatisfactoriness of life is insisted upon:

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*ākrāntaṁ maraṇena janma jarasā yāty uttamaṁ yauvanam*
*saṁtoṣo dhanalipsayā çamasukhaṁ prauḍhāṅganāvibhramaiḥ*
*lokair matsaribhir guṇā vanabhuvo vyālair nṛpā durjanair*
*asthairyeṇa vibhūtayo ’py upahatā grastaṁ na kiṁ kena vā?*

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‘By death is life assailed; by old age the delight of youth departeth, by greed contentment, the calm of inner joy through the coquetries of forward ladies; envy attacks our virtues, snakes trees, villains kings; all power is transient. What is there that another doth not overwhelm or it another?’ The might of time to obliterate all is sadly recognized:

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*sā ramyā nagarī mahān sa nṛpatiḥ sāmantacakraṁ ca tat*
*pārçve tasya ca sā vidagdhapariṣat tāç candrabimbānanāḥ*
*udvṛttaḥ sa ca rājaputranivahas te bandinas tāḥ kathāḥ*
*sarvaṁ yasya vaçād agāt smṛtipathaṁ kālāya tasmai namaḥ.*

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‘That fair city, that mighty king, the circle of vassal princes at his side, that assembly of learned men, those maidens with faces like the moon or the Bimba, that haughty ring of princes of the blood, those minstrels and their ballads—all are but memories, and to time, who hath wrought this deed, let us pay homage due.’ Yet men are blind to the fate that awaits them:

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*ādityasya gatāgatair aharahaḥ saṁkṣīyate jīvitaṁ*
*vyāpārair bahukāryabhāragurubhiḥ kālo na vijñāyate*
*dṛṣṭvā janmajarāvipattimaraṇaṁ trāsaç ca notpadyate*
*pītvā mohamayīṁ pramādamadirām unmattabhūtaṁ jagat.*

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‘With the rising and the setting of the sun man’s life day by day wears away; struggling beneath the burden of active toil we note not the passing of time; birth, age, misfortune, death we see and tremble not; the world is maddened by drinking too deep of the draught of carelessness and confusion.’ The ascetic’s life is compared with that of the king greatly to its advantage, and a touch of quiet humour enlightens the picture of the old age for which the poet pines:

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*Gaṅgātīre himagiriçilābaddhapadmāsanasya*
*brahmadhyānābhyasanavidhinā yoganidrāṁ gatasya*
*kiṁ tair bhāvyaṁ mama sudivasair yeṣu te nirviçaṅkāḥ*
*kaṇḍūyante jaṭharahariṇāḥ çṛṅgam aṅge madīye.*

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‘When will those days come when I can take my seat on Ganges’ bank on a rock of the snowy mountain, and fixing my thoughts for ever on Brahman fall into the deep sleep of contemplation, while the old deer fearlessly rub their horns on my limbs?’ The end is union and merger in the highest spirit, the absolute:

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*mātar medini tāta māruta sakhe jyotiḥ subandho jala*
*bhrātar vyoma nibaddha eṣa bhavatām antyaḥ praṇāmāñjaliḥ*
*yuṣmatsaṅgavaçopajātasukṛtodrekasphurannirmala-*
*jñānāpāstasamastamohamahimā līye pare brahmaṇi.*

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‘O mother earth, father wind, friend fire, loved kinsman water, brother ether, for the last time I clasp my hands before you in homage. I now merge in the highest Brahman, since through my abundance of good deeds, born of union with you, I have won pure and brilliant knowledge and thus have cast aside all the power of confusion.’

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Thus speaks the old man in Bhartṛhari; a very different note is struck in the stanzas which celebrate love without *arrière-pensée* or thought of the to-morrow:

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*adarçane darçanamātrakāmāḥ : dṛṣṭau pariṣvaṅgarasaikalolāḥ* *āliṅgitāyāṁ punar āyatākṣyām : āçāsmahe vigrahayor abhedam.*

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‘When we see not our loved one, we are content to long to gaze upon her; seen, our one aim is the joy of close embraces; embraced, our one prayer is that her body and our own may be made one.’ Every act, every emotion, in the beloved has its charm:

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*smitena bhāvena ca lajjayā bhiyā: parāṅmukhair ardhaka-ṭākṣavīkṣaṇaiḥ* *vacobhir īrṣyākalahena līlayā : samastabhāvaiḥ khalu bandhanaṁ striyaḥ.*

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‘Smiles, sentiment, shame, fear, glances averted, half-turned towards us, and side-long looks, loving words, jealousy, disputes, and play : all these are the weapons by which women bind us.’ It is absurd to call maidens by that name (*abalā*, feeble):

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*nūnaṁ hi te kavivarā viparītabodhā* *ye nityam āhur abalā iti kāminīnām* *yābhir vilolataratārakādṛṣṭipātaiḥ* *Çakrādayo ’pi vijitās tv abalāḥ kathaṁ tāḥ?*

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‘Feeble-minded indeed those great poets who ever say that loving maids are weak (women); how can they be deemed weak whose flashing star-like glances have laid low Çakra and other gods?’ Another graceful play on words extols love’s archery:

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*mugdhe dhanuṣmattā keyam apūrvā tava dṛçyate* *yayā vidhyasi cetāṁsi guṇair eva na sāyakaiḥ.*

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‘Without parallel, o fair one, assuredly is thy marksmanship. With thy bowstrings (charms), not thine arrows, thou dost pierce our hearts.' A pretty picture shows us the beloved in the forest:

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*viçramya viçramya vane drumāṇāṁ: chāyāsu tanvī vicacāra kācit*

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*stanottarīyeṇa karoddhṛtena: nivārayantī çaçino mayūkhān.*

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‘With many a pause midst the shade of the forest trees moved the slender girl, shielding herself from the moonbeams by raising from her bosom her outer robe.’ Two views of women are possible, as helps or hindrances:

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*saṁsāre ’sminn asāre kunṛpatibhavanadvārasevākalaṅka-

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vyāsaṅgadhvastadhairyāḥ katham amaladhiyo mānasaṁ saṁvidadhyuḥ* *yady etāḥ prodyadindudyutinicayabhṛto na syur ambhojanetrāḥ* *preṅkhatkāñcīkalāpāḥ stanabharavinamanmadhyabhāgās taruṇyaḥ.*

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‘In this unhappy world, where high courage is overwhelmed by the shame brought by waiting in the ante-chambers of evil kings, how could noble men find comfort in their hearts, were it not for the tender maidens, with the beauty of the rising moon, with lotus eyes, whose girdle-bells tinkle as their slender waists bend beneath the burden of their breasts?’

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*saṁsārodadhinistārapadavī na davīyasī*

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*antarā dustarā na syur yadi nāryo mahāpagāḥ.*

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‘The path across the ocean of life would not be long, were it not that women, those mighty unfordable streams, hinder the passage.’

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*kāminīkāyakāntāre kucaparvatadurgame*

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*mā saṁcara manaḥpāntha tatrāste smarataskaraḥ.*

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‘O wandering heart, stray not in the forest of woman’s fair body, nor in the steeps which are her breasts, for there lurks Love, the highwayman.’

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The predominant metre of Bhartṛhari is the Çārdūlavikrīḍita, which in Böhlen’s edition¹ is found in 101 verses; then comes the Çikhariṇī in 48, the Çloka in 37, the Vasantatilaka in 35; the Sragdharā and the Āryā each occur 18 times, while the Gīti variety of the Āryā type is found twice, in one case in an unusual form. Other metres are sporadic; they include the Indravajrā type, Mālinī, Hariṇī, Mandākrāntā, Pṛthvī, Drutavilambita, Vaṅçasthā—in one stanza an Indravajrā line is included—and Çālinī; Rathoddhatā and Vaitālīya each occur twice, while there is a single example of each of the Dodhaka, Puṣpitāgrā, and Mātrāsamaka of 16 *morae*.

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¹ Stanzler, ZDMG. xliv. 34 f.; Gray, JAOS. xx. 157 ff.

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