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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY,
A JOURNAL OF ORJENTAL RESEARCH.
METRICAL TRANSLATION OF THE VAIRAGYA SATAKAM. OR HUNDRED STANZAS ON ASCETICISM, BY BHARTRIHARI.
BY PROF. C. H. TAWNEY, M.A., CALCUTTA. THE stanzas of Bhartrihari on Vairágya police, and thus it eventually returned into the
1 (Le Renoncement, as the word is trans- king's hands, who in a fit of disgust quitted lated by M. Regnaud) strike a note familiar to his throne and retired into the forest. This all students of Sanskrit literature. The Moha story, whether true or not, is entirely in harmony Mudgara and other poems (many of which are with the spirit of the stanzas on asceticism, of referred to in the commentary of Mr. K. T. which we are now attempting a metrical renTelang) treat in much the same style the same dering. There is nothing to our notions very topic of the vanity of all earthly enjoyments, meritorious in a king who had felt the "sad and the duty of retiring into a forest and me satiety of pleasure, and was as weary of the ditating on the Supreme Soul, or some favourite joys as of the cares of empire, exchanging them individualization of that all-pervading divinity. for grass and the fruits of the jungle. But But it is perhaps scarcely an over-refinement similar retirements have taken place in Euroto detect in these stanzas something more than pean history, though perhaps of a less sincero this. It is hardly possible to read them without character. being struck by the reflection that the tradi- The Vairágya of the Hindu ascetic differed tional account of Bhartrihari explains the little from that of the Greek cynic. Mr. Lewis fact that so many of his bitterest taunts are di- tells us that "Diogenes ate little, and what he rected against kings and their courtiers. Even ate was of the coarsest. He tried to live upon if we had no tradition of the kind, we should raw meat and unbciled vegetables, but failed be inclined to invent one for ourselves, and it His dress consisted solely of a cloak. When he is quite possible that the one we possess has asked Antisthenes for a shirt, he was told to been so invented. All we contend for is that fold his cloak in two; he did so. A wallet and a many of these stanzas were written by cne large stick completed his accoutrements. Seswho, if not a king himself, had been brought ing a little boy drinking water out of his scooped into intimate relation with kings, and thor- hand, he threw away his cup, declaring it superoughly understood the tricks of the trade. The fluous. He slept under the marble porticoes or account which is given in the Vetálapancha- in his celebrated tub. Decency of any kind he vinsati is-that Bhartrihari had a fruit studiously outraged." We shall find many expresented to him which conferred immortality. pressions in the following stanzas strangely in This he bestowed on his favourite wife, who harmony with this description of the habits of gave it to her paramour, the head of the city the dog-philosophers, and may perhaps be re
