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Bhartrihari
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As is often the case with Sanskrit
writers,
little is known for sure about Bhartrihari, though
he is one of the great lyric poets of India,
still
widely read
and quoted.
He may have been the Buddhist
grammarian
mentioned by the Chinese
traveller
I-tsing, who visited India in the 7th century AD, but the
attribution is unclear, and Bhartrihari appears in his work
more a worshipper of Shiva. Tradition makes him a king
of Ujjain
in the 1st
century BC, who abdicated
in favour of his brother over disgust at his queen's infidelities.
Bhartrihari has certainly some unflattering things to say
about women, but does not appear the pampered ruler so much
a shrewd and needy brahmin. There are also stories of his
vacillating character, drawn equally to pleasure and spiritual
matters, and so continually moving between court and Buddhist
cloisters, but again they are no more than anecdotes. Bhartrihari's
works combine scraps of writings by other poets, including
Kalidasa, but is this plagiarism by Bhartrihari or later
interpolation? Controversy rages and nothing is settled.
Sanskrit literature is notorious for being little interested
in history, and India was only occasionally
united under Indian rulers: the Mauryans,
the Guptas
and the Marathas.
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Bhartrihari's
poetry |
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Bhartrihari
wrote three collections or shatakas
of poems. The Srngara gives us little pictures of
love and love-making. The Vairagya describes a gradual
withdrawal
from worldly matters, and the Niti deals with ethical
conduct. Topics not very conducive to poetry, perhaps, yet
Bhartrihari shows Sanskrit
at its best: profound, pithy and beautifully clear. Each
of the shatakahs contains one hundred poems, generally just
of four lines, sometimes two. But the content of each poem
may be as wide as that of fourteen lines in the English
sonnet, and can print out in more when all nuances are translated.
The poems are entertaining, observant, wry and often deeply
reflective. Kalidasa
is the greater artist, but epic poetry is not dramatic in
a western sense: stereotyped characters, unlikely plots,
long digressions that hold up the story, verbal cleverness,
and a jewelled and increasingly elaborate style, with sentences
that sometime stretch over several pages. Bhartrihari's
pieces are sharply-cut cameos, brilliant poems in miniature,
to which the only equivalent in European languages may be
the scattered fragments of the Greek
Anthology.
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Sanskrit
poetry |
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Being an inflected and quantitative language, Sanskrit
can convey the sense in an unusually compact, clear
and profound manner. Its thought and literature has had
a deep
influence
on European artists,
though their languages (and even the ancient Greek)
lacks the sound effects that Sanskrit
can deploy. Over 70 different measures are found in its
classical poetry, which also employs heavily-jewelled phrases,
stringing long words together (samasa). The cost comes in
the large vocabulary (Monier-Williams lists over 180,000
words), and a grammar
so taxing that even accomplished writers can make mistakes.
Style in early literature — Mahabharata
(the world's longest poem with over 100,000 verses), the
Ramayana
and largely in both Kalidasa and Bhartrihari — is straightforward,
but later work is more ornate:
increasing use of samasa, description piled on description
and erudite word-play. Syntax can also be very free, when
the whole verse has to be read before the sense starts settling
into place. Add that to its classical nature, with little
of an individual outlook from its practitioners, and the
result is a literature splendid but remote
from twentieth century concerns. Why read it? Because of
its beauty, its extraordinary sensitivity to the natural
world, and human nature in particular, and its depiction
of sensual love that goes beyond what is possible in English
while still remaining poetry. The essence of love, kama,
was consciously studied by Sanskrit poets, but finds different
expression in its leading exponents: Bharavi,
Bhatti,
Kumaradasa,
Magha,
Dandin,
Bhavabhuti,
Bilhana,
Sriharsa
and Jayadeva.
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Reading the Sanskrit |
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Reading Bhartrihari in the original Sanskrit
takes some effort, but the Devanagari script can be learned
here,
and several Sanskrit
dictionaries exist online — Cologne,
Capeller's,
Apte,
Huet.
You will probably also require some grammar: T. Egenes's
Introduction to Sanskrit (1989) is a popular choice,
though an Internet search will find others, and
several
online
courses.
The bulky English-Sanskrit Dictionary by Monier Monier-Williams
is easy
to use, and affordable in its 2003 Indian reprint version.
For those happy with translations, there are many sites,
some with very acceptable renderings: everypoet,
urday,
minstrels,
vidyasoft,
and all
poetry. General books on Sanskrit poetry include A.
Berriedale Keith's A History of Sanskrit Literature
(1928/1993), A.K. Warder's Indian Kavya Literature (1972)
and B.S. Miller et al's Columbia Book of Indian Poetry
and J. Brough's Love
Poems from the Sanskrit (1997). D. Sahu's Three
Shatakas of Bhartrihari (2004) provides the full Sanskrit
text in Negari and transliteration, plus an expanded English
translation, and BS Miller's
Bhartrihari (1967) is much recommended. Swami Madhavananda's
translation of Vairagya also has the devangari text,
and an introduction to Sanskrit poetics is here.
To properly appreciate Bhartrihari, however, you will probably
need older scholarly works by Kale Moreshwar Ramchandra,
Gopinath Purohit and N.S. Singh . Books are relatively cheap
in India, and can be ordered safely through abebooks
or alibris:
there are also
many
specialist
bookshops.
As always, The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and
Poetics (1993) provides useful summaries and A.L. Basham's
The Wonder that was India (1954/2004) is a readable
account of pre-Islamic India.
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