THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY,
A JOURNAL OF ORIENTAL RESEARCH.
A TRANSLATION OF THE NÍTIŚATAKAM, OR HUNDRED VERSES
ON ETHICS AND POLITICS, BY BHARTṚIHARI.
BY PROF. C. H. TAWNEY, M. A., CALCUTTA.
THE following translation[1] is made from the recent edition of Bhartṛiham's Nítiśatakam and Vairâgyaśaiakam by Kâshinâth Trimbak Telang, M.A., LL.B.[2] In the introduction prefixed to his edition he maintains "the tradition of king Bhartṛihari's full authorship of these works." He then arrives at the conclusion that our author flourished about the close of the first and the beginning of the second century of the Christian era." It is unnecessary to recapitulate his arguments here, as No. XI of the Bombay Sanskṛit Series may be presumed to be in the hands of most readers of the Antiquary.
I proceed to extract from Lassen's Indische Alterthumskunde (vol. II. p. 1174) some remarks on these poems and their authorship. "The opinion I before expressed, that the date of the composition of the three hundred short poems which by universal tradition are ascribed to Bhartṛihari, must be placed before the overthrow of the older Gupta dynasty,[3] is of course untenable if the passage in which Buddha is represented as a tenth incarnation of Vishṇu really formed part of the original collection, but I have already remarked above that the earliest evidence of the reception of Śâkya Mnni among the incarnations of the Brâhnmnic god is to be found in an inscription of the tenth century, and that the passage in question must therefore be regarded as an interpolation. Another allusion, i.e. to the Purâṇas as containing doctrines to which the author attaches no value, cannot help us to fix his date, as we may understand by the expression the older works that passed under that title.[4] I base my opinion that the poems in question must be referred to so early a period principally upon their great literary merits, which render them conspicuous among the productions of the Indian muse. They place before us in terse and pithy language the Indian views about the chief aspirations of youth, manhood, and old age, about love, about concerns with things of this world, and about retirement from them into lonely contemplation. They contain a rich store of charming descriptions of lovers and their various states of feeling; of shrewd and pointed remarks about human life, about the worth of virtue and the evils of vice, and of sage reflections on the happiness of ascetics, who in their lonely retirement contemplate all things with indifference. On account of the perfect art with which they are composed, these short poems are worthy of being ranked among the masterpieces of Indian genius. Some
- ↑ The Sentences of Bhartṛihari have already appeared in more than one European dress. Pot. von Bohlen published a Latin version with a commentary at Berlin in 1833; D. Galanos translated, them into Greek under the title of Ινδικων μεταφρηστων Προδρομος, published by G. K. Typaldos at Athens, 1845; and H. Fauche gave a French version in 1852.—Ed.
- ↑ The poems are also to he found in Haberlin's Anthology (Calcutta, W. Thacker & Co., 1847). This seems to be the edition used by Professor Lassen.
- ↑ i.e. before the end of the third century after Christ.
- ↑ Of which Lassen supposes the present eighteen Purânas to be a rifacimento.
