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4 Yoga in the Vairāgya-Śataka of Bhartr .hari In addition to establishing himself in the classical Indian tradition as a grammarian and a metaphysician, and having established a basis for literary criticism, Bhartr .hari is also well known for his Sanskrit poetry. In popular Indian thought, Bhartr .hari is identified as a king who was discouraged by the inconstancy of women and was thus led to renounce the world of sensuous experience. One of his verses recounts the experience with the depth and compactness that characterizes his poetry. She who is the constant object of my thought Is indifferent to me, Is desirous of another man, Who in his turn adores some other woman, But this woman takes delight in me . . . Damn her! Damn him! The God of love! The other woman! And Myself!1 Tradition seems to have consistently maintained that Bhartr .hari, the poet, was the same Bhartr .hari who composed the Vākyapadīya and a commentary on the Mahābhās .ya of Patañjali. This ancient tradition identifying Bhartr .hari the poet with Bhartr .hari the grammarian was called into question by scholars writing around 1900 (e.g., M. R. Kale2 ) and more recently by D. D. Kosambi.3 Kosambi’s argument, however , although meticulously researched, depends for its strength on the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing’s suggestion that the Bhartr .hari of the Vākyapadīya was a Buddhist. Since Bhartr .hari the poet shows no trace of Buddhism, Kosambi felt that there must be two different Bhartr .haris. However, the contents of that work are thoroughly Brāhmanical in nature. This, plus the dating of Bhartr .hari as prior to the fifth century CE (on the basis of Bhartr .hari quotations in the works of Din .n .āga), has led recent scholarship to 41 re-examine the identity thesis of the classical tradition.4 Not only does the author of this book adopt the traditional viewpoint on this question, but it is suggested that Bhartr .hari’s assumption of Patañjali’s classical Yoga in the Vākyapadīya (see chapter 2) also occurs in his poetry and is further evidence for the identity thesis. Thus, in addition to introducing the reader to Bhartr .hari’s poetry, this chapter takes as its point of focus the Yoga psychology assumed in the verses of the Vairāgya-Śataka. BHARTR . HARI THE POET Bhartr .hari’s Vairāgya-Śataka, or “Hundred Verses on Renunciation,” is a poem of ancient India that may still be found upon the lips of Indians today. The Vairāgya is the third in a trilogy of poems by Bhartr .hari, each one hundred verses in length. The other two poems are entitled the Nīti-S´ataka (on politics and ethics), and the Śr .ñgāra-Śataka (on passionate love). The fact that these very old poems are still a part of the consciousness of contemporary India is one important reason for their study. Perhaps even more important, however, is the way in which both the world-transcending ideals of Indian religion and the Indian experience of sensual love are held in tension within the poems. While the West has identified both full enjoyment of the senses and the rigorous renunciation of the senses with India, most often these two aspects have remained quite disconnected. Bhartr .hari’s poetry, especially the Vairāgya, includes both the sensuous and the sense-renouncing aspects of the Indian consciousness in a way that presents a rounded exposure of India to the modern reader. In the Vairāgya, Bhartr .hari presents us with the creative tension between a profound attraction to sensual beauty and the yearning for liberation from it. From this study valuable insight may be gained as to how Indian religion, art, and culture can be at once so sensuous and so spiritual.5 A śataka, in Sanskrit poetry, is a hundred detached verses having a common theme such as vairāgya, or renunciation. Each four-line verse is intended to convey a complete mood, or rasa, and to stand on its own as an aesthetic entity. Bhartr .hari’s verses are characterized by the amount of complex thought and detail that he compresses into a simple metrical pattern. Barbara Miller, who has successfully translated his verses into English, suggests that “the stanzas may be compared to the miniature paintings which illustrate the manuscripts of medieval India. Profusion is forced into a miniature...

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