A History of Indian Literature v3.c35.s9.22

v3.c35.s9.22

But against this commonly accepted hypothesis that Bhartṛhari’s śatakas are merely anthologies¹ stand two strong facts. Firstly the unanimous and unbroken tradition of India. It is not suggested that a similar tradition has made Vyāsa the poet of the Mahābhārata and Cāṇakya the writer of the collection of sayings that are associated with his name. Vyāsa is an old sage, whom the people voluntarily made the author of old venerable texts, that were desired to be accorded a special religious status. Cāṇakya is a very famous chancellor who on account of his wisdom in administration has been made the carrier of all epigrams concerning statesmanship and afterwards also of those concerning wordly wisdom. But the name of Bhartṛhari is famous just as a writer of gnomic stanzas and as that of a grammarian : then the tales, that have got tagged to his name are of very late origin and perhaps originated in the first place on the basis of the epigrammatic stanzas that pass under his name. In the second place, not only the three śatakas, but rather the Śṛṅgāraśataka alone exhibits completely explicit physiognomy of the poet. The verses of the Śṛṅgāraśataka and also a majority of verses of both the other śatakas bear such definite individual traits, that J. J. Meyer could call Bhartṛhari “one right charactersistic brain of old India” that represents the “typical Hindu” in his wavering between glowing sensuality and asceticism and that H. Oldenberg², notwithstanding the fact that he doubts the authorship of Bhartṛhari and leaves the question “how far to him, an individual, does the definite personality correspond”, openly calls him an Indian living in a forest”. What is so especially a characteristic for Bhartṛhari, that is attainment of the renunciation of the world from pleasures of lust, has never been said so clearly as in the verse in which he says :