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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY,
A JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH.
A TRANSLATION OF THE NITISATAKAM, OR HUNDRED VERSES
ON ETHICS AND POLITICS, BY BHARTRIHARI.
BY PROF. C. H. TAWNEY, M.A., CALCUTTA. THE following translation is made from the to be found in an inscription of the tenth century,
recent edition of Bhartrihari's Nitišatakam and that the passage in question must therefore and Vairágyzsatakam by Kashinath Trimbak be regarded as an interpolation. Another alTelang, M.A., LL.B. In the introduction pre- lusion, i.e. to the Puranas as containing doctrines fixed to his edition he maintains " the tradition to which the author attaches no value, cannot of king Bhartrihari's full authorship of these help us to fix his date, as we may understand works." He then arrives at the conclusion that by the expression the older works that passed onr author flourished about the close of the first under that title. I base my opinion that the and the beginning of the second century of the poems in question must be referred to so early Christian era." It is unnecessary to recapitulate a period principally upon their great literary his arguments here, as No. XI. of the Bombay merits, which render them conspicuous among Sanskpit Series may be presumed to be in the i the productions of the Indian muse. They place hands of most readers of the Antiquary. before us in terse and pithy language the Indian
I proceed to extract from Lassen's Indische views about the chief aspirations of youth, Alterthumskunde (vol. II. p. 1174) some remarks manhood, and old age, about love, about concerns on these poems and their authorship. "The with things of this world, and about retirement opinion I before expressed, that the date of the from them into lonely contemplation. They composition of the three hundred short poems contain a rich 'store of charming descriptions which by universal tradition are ascribed to of lovers and their various states of feeling; Bhartrihari, must be placed before the over- of shrewd and pointed remarks about human throw of the older Gupta dynasty, I is of course life, about the worth of virtue and the evils of untenable if the passage in which Buddha is vice, and of sage reflections on the happiness of represented as a tenth incarnation of Vishnu ascetics, who in their lonely retirement contemreally formed part of the original collection, but plate all things with indifference. On account I have already remarked above that the earliest of the perfect art with which they are composed, evidence of the reception of Sakya Muni these short poems are worthy of being ranked among the incarnations of the Brahmanic god is among the masterpieces of Indian genius. Some
• The Sentences of Bhartrihari have already appeared in + The poems are also to be found in Häberlin's Anthology more than one European dress. Pet. von Bohlen published (Calcutta, w. Thacker & Co., 1847). This seems to be the & Latin version with a commentary at Berlin in 1833; D. edition used by Professor Lassen. Galanos translated them into Greek under the title of
I i.e. before the end of the third centary after Christ. Ivk peradpacewy IIpopopos, published by G. K. Typaldos at Athens, 1845; and H. Fauche gave a French $ Of which Lassen supposes the present eighteen Purs. version in 1852.- ED.
Das to be a rifacimento.
