Love or Leave Bhartuharis Dilemma

Author(s): Ashok Aklujkar
Publisher: ZZ_Anusandhan

Page 19

3/THE-89 • 19 is morphology-based (cf. stanza nos. 210, 236, 264, 324, etc.). If the author was a grammarian who spent years and years exploring relationships between forms, he could easily utilize his knowledge to create the features we have identified -- as if no deliberate effort was involved. In fact, he does not even have to be a grammarian. The pre-modern Indian educational system usually gave such a strong foundation in grammar even to those who later specialized in fields other than grammar that toying with the morphology of the language became their second nature. Furthermore, we should entertain the possibility that BH might not have edited his compositions to ensure that they contained no repetition or that only the best of stanzas with similar content were retained. This is especially likely to be the case if worldly recognition carried little value for him. He could have composed spontaneously on his favourite themes at different places and just left the compositions for posterity to collect and edit if it wished to do so. Thirdly, exploring the possibilities of language could have been some kind of Yoga for him. Just as a superior Brahmin did not perform the Agni-hotra simply to ensure safe passage for the Sun43 but also as a mental discipline for himself - to cultivate restraint and patience (to keep his blood-pressure down, if you will) or to nourish the spirit of karma-yoga in him, our poet might have worked steadily at thought, language, metres etc. to develop his concentration and to practice a silpa-yoga in the relatively ethereal mediuin of language.
Foot-oton 1. Even a non-specialist of the field is lell this to be a feature of the poems of BH. Wm. Theodore de Bary. in his Foreword to Miller 1967, writed : "The poetry attributed in Bharirihari does so conceive of the Indian people that is, as very worldly and very world. renouncingl. but reveals also the conflict they experience between