Shataka Trayadi Subhashit Sangraha

SR No.: 002915
Original Sutra Author: Bhartuhari
Author: Dharmanand Kosambi
Publisher: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan
Publication Year: 1948
Total Pages: 346
Language: Hindi, English
Classification: Book_Devnagari & Literature
File Size: 22 MB

Page 100

INTRODUCTION
79
incarnations of Vişņu in 285. Unfortunately, all three stanzas belong to the second group, so that their dates need not coincide with that of Bhartphari.
It might have been easier to attack the problem had anything been known with certainty about other works by the same author, or any reference to him by early poets But we have already seen that Kşemendra, Sridharadása and Bhimärjunasoma know the name but not the stanzas of Bhartrhari. The earliest known reference to a great poet Bhartphari is by Somadeva in his Yaśastilakacampü [959 A. D. 1, though nothing is said there of any of the salakas; but Somadeva gives stanza 3 as by Vararuci-Kātyāyana, while its philosophy was familiar to Buddhists from Digha-nikāya 26. 21-22. Similarly for Merutunga, who givos a Bhartrhari legend at the end of his Prabandhacintämani ( 1304 A. D.), only to report our stanza 50 as by Bhartphari's teacher (with our 400 as Bhartphari's rejoinder)! As for other writings, we have disposed of the apocryphal Vitavrtta and Vijñānašataka. Occasionally, one hears of some other work by our Bhartrhari, but it has been impossible to run any such effort to earth. Among them may be mentioned the Rāhatakavya to which Nāthūrāma Premi refers (without being able to find it now) on p. 4 of the preface to his edition of Subhacandra's Jžānārņava [Bombay, NSP, 1907]; and a 22-stanza Rāmāyaṇa. We have, therefore, only general tradition to guide us as to the authorship of the sata kas,
5. 2. The traditions. There are four major candidates for the honour. The best known is the grammarian Bhartphari who wrote the Vākyapadiya, and whose death, according to I-tsing, occurred about A. D. 652. There is nothing in common to the two except the name, and as the Vākyapadiya is the last work in the great tradition of classical Sanskrit grammar, the solecisms we have noted earlier would seem to exclude the possibility of identification. Moreover, the author of our group I stanzas could not have lived so late as the 7th century. Finally, that Bhartshari, on reading I-tsing closely, is seen to be an ardent Buddhist (not the voluptuary that Max Müller, J. J. Meyer and others have juistakon lain tu bel, but there is nothing in our collection that could be tx:wed to such an itullor.
Aking Bharthāri is mentioned in Tāranātha's history of Buddhism (A. Schiefner: T.'s. Geschichte d. Buddhisnaus, p. 195 ) as ruler of Mālavā and descended from a long line of Malava kings; the epoch is ambiguously stated as at tho time of Dharmakirti's death. If the Buddhist logician Dharmakirti is meant, we have again to solve another problem of date, but it would be difficult to push the time back beyond the 7th century. However, this king seems to be intimately linked to another even more legendary figure, the Natha-panthiya siddha Bhartrlari. In Taranatha's bistory, the name of Jalandhara, another Nátha pontiff, occurs soon after that of the king, so that the association is not modern. But confusion has put Bhartphari as the brother - in fact or by adoption of a king Vikrama, who is in turn identified with a supposed founder of the Vikrama era of B. C. 57. There is, in any case, nothing whatsoever to show that this double Bhartphari ever wrote any Sanskrit poetry, though many of our Rajasthāni MSS have Nätha dedications so that the scribes seem to have made up their minds about the