{"id":2336,"date":"2013-07-13T01:40:57","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2336"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:40:57","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:40:57","slug":"22-bhartrihari-appendix-prefatory-note-vol-05-translations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/05-translations\/22-bhartrihari-appendix-prefatory-note-vol-05-translations","title":{"rendered":"-22_Bhartrihari – APPENDIX – Prefatory Note.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\n\n
\n

\n
\nAPPENDIX<\/font><\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n
\nPrefatory Note on Bhartrihari<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nB<\/font>HARTRIHARI’S <\/b>Century of Morals (Nitishataka), a
\nseries of poetical epigrams or rather
\nsentences <\/i>upon
\nhuman life and conduct grouped loosely round a few
\ncentral ideas, stands as the first of three similar works by one
\nMaster. Another Century touches with a heavy hand Sringar,
\nsexual attraction; the third expresses with admirable beauty of
\nform and intensity of feeling the sentiment of Vairagya, World-disgust, which, before & since Buddha, has figured so largely in
\nIndian life. In a striking but quite superficial manner these brief
\nstanzas remind us of the Greek epigram in the most masterly
\nhands: Mimnermus, Simonides; but their spirit and the law of
\ntheir internal structure relate them rather to a type of literature
\npeculiarly Asiatic.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nClassical Sanscrit literature, as a whole, is governed by an
\ninner stress of spirit which urges it to a sort of lucid density
\nof literary structure; in style a careful blending of curious richness with concentrated force and directness of expression, in
\nthought and matter a crowded vividness and pregnant lucidity.
\nThe poet used one of the infinite harmonic variations of the
\nfour-lined stanza with which our classical prosody teems, or else
\nthe couplet called Arya, noble verse; and within these narrow
\nlimits he sought to give vividly some beautiful single picture,
\nsome great or apposite thought, some fine-edged sentiment. If a
\npicture, it might be crowded with felicitous detail; if a thought,
\nwith pregnant suggestion; if a sentiment, with happy shades <\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\nSri Aurobindo wrote this essay to serve as a preface to his translation of Bhartrihari’s<\/i> <\/p>\n

Nitishataka, called by him first “The Century of Morals” and later “The Century of Life”. When he published the translation in 1924, he substituted the translator’s note<\/i> <\/p>\n

reproduced on page 314 for this more elaborate prefatory note, which is reproduced here as an appendix. <\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 368<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

of feeling; but the whole must be perfectly lucid and firm in its
\nunity. If these qualities were successfully achieved, the result was
\na Subhashita, a thing well said and therefore memorable. Sometimes the Subhashita clarified into a simple epigram, sometimes
\nit overcharged itself with curious felicities, but the true type lay
\nbetween the extremes. Similar tendencies are noticeable in the
\nbest Indian artwork in ivory, wood and metal, and even enter
\nits architecture with that spirit which passed into the Moguls
\nand informing new shapes of loveliness created the Taj. Many
\na small Hindu temple is a visible Subhashita in stone. In India
\nof the classical times the tendency was so strong that poems
\nof considerable magnitude like Kalidasa’s Race of Raghou or
\nMagha’s Slaying of Shishupala are for the most part built up of
\nstanzas on this model; in others there are whole passages which
\nare merely a succession of Subhashitas, so that the account of a
\nbattle or a city scene affects us like a picture gallery and a great
\nspeech moves past in a pomp of high-crested armoured thoughts.
\nA successful Subhashita of the highest type is for all the world
\nas if some great ironclad sailing solitary on the limitless ocean
\nwere to turn its arc-light on a passing object; in the brilliant
\nconcentrated flood of lustre a small vessel is revealed; we see
\nthe masts, funnel, rails, decks, the guns in their positions, men
\nstanding on the deck, an officer on the bridge, every detail clear
\nin the strange artificial lustre; next moment the light is shut off
\nand the scene, relapsing into darkness, is yet left bitten in on the
\nbrain. There is the same instantaneous concentration of vision,
\nthe same carefully-created luminousness and crowded lucidity
\nof separate detail in the clear-cut unity of the picture.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n

But the Subhashita is not peculiar to India, it pervades Asia.
\nThe most characteristic verse of China and Japan is confined to
\nthis style; it seems to have overmastered Arabian poetry; that it
\nis common in Persian the Rubaiyat of Omar and the writings
\nof Hafiz and Sadi would appear to indicate. In India itself we
\nfind the basis of the style in some of the Upanishads, although
\nthe structure there is more flexible and flowing, not yet trained
\nto the armoured compactness of classic diction. Subsequently
\nthe only class of writing which the spirit of the Subhashita did<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 369<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nnot invade, was that great mass of epic and religious literature
\nwhich made its appeal to the many and not to the cultured few. In
\nthe Mahabharat, Ramayan and the Puranas we have the grand
\nnatural stream of Hindu poetry flowing abundantly through
\nplain and valley, not embanked and bunded by the engineer.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nKalidasa and Bhartrihari are the two mightiest masters of
\nthe characteristic classical style as it was at its best, before it
\ndegenerated into over-curiosity. Tradition tells us they were contemporaries. It is even said that Bhartrihari was an elder brother
\nof Vikramaditya, Kalidasa’s patron,
\n\u2014 not of course Harsha of
\nthe sixth century to whom European scholarship has transferred
\nthe distinction, but the half-mythical founder of Malava power
\nin the first century before Christ. To account for the succession
\nof a younger brother, the old and common story of the fruit
\nthat changed hands till it returned disastrously to the first giver,
\nis saddled on the great moralist. King Bhartrihari understood
\nthat his beloved wife was unfaithful to him, and, overwhelmed
\nby the shock, fell wholly under the influence of Vairagya, abandoned his crown to Vikrama and sought the forest in the garb
\nof an anchorite. The second stanza of the Century of Morals
\ncommemorates the unhappy discovery. But the epigram has no
\nbusiness in that place and it is doubtful whether it has a personal
\napplication; the story itself is an evident fiction. On the other
\nhand the notion of some European scholars that Bhartrihari
\nwas a mere compiler of other people’s Subhashitas, is not much
\nbetter inspired. Undoubtedly, spurious verses were introduced
\nand a few bear the mark of their extraneous origin; but I think
\nno one who has acquired a feeling for Sanscrit style or is readily
\nresponsive to the subtle spirit in poetry can fail to perceive that
\nthe majority are by one master-craftsman. The question is for
\nthose to decide who have learned to feel the shades of beauty
\nand peculiarities of tinge in words (a quite different thing from
\nshades of meaning and peculiarities of use) and to regard them
\nnot as verbal counters or grammatical formations but as living
\nthings. Without this subtle taste for words the finer personal elements of style, those which do not depend on general principles
\nof structure, cannot be well-appreciated. There are collections<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 370<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

of Subhashitas in plenty, but the style of Bhartrihari is a distinct
\nstyle and the personality of Bhartrihari is a distinct personality.
\nThere is nothing of that infinite variety of tone, note, personal
\nattitude \u2014 I do not refer to mere shiftings of standpoint and
\ninconsistencies of opinion \u2014 which stamp a collection; there is
\none characteristic tone, a note strong and unmistakeable, the
\npersistent self-repetition of an individual manner. All is mint of
\na single mind.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n

Bhartrihari’s Centuries are important to us as the finished
\nexpression of a thoroughly typical Aryan personality in the most
\nsplendid epoch of Indian culture. The most splendid, not the
\nbest; for the vigorous culture mirrored in the epics has been left
\nbehind; the nobly pure, strong and humane civilisation which
\nproduced Buddha gives way to a civilisation a little less humane, much less masculine, infinitely less pure, yet richer, more
\nvariously coloured, more delightful to the taste and senses; the
\nmillennium of philosophy and heroism yields to the millennium
\nof luxury and art. Of the new civilisation Kalidasa is the perfect
\nand many-sided representative; he had the receptive, alchemistic
\nimagination of the great world-poets, Shakespeare, Homer and
\nValmekie, and everything that was in his world he received into
\nthat alembic with a deep creative delight and transmuted into
\nforms and sounds of magical beauty. Bhartrihari’s was a narrower mind and intenser personality. He represents his age in
\nthose aspects which powerfully touched his own individual life
\nand character, but to others, not having catholicity of moral temper, he could not respond. He was evidently a Kshatriya; for all
\nhis poetry breathes that proud, grandiose, arrogantly noble spirit
\nof the old magnanimous Indian aristocracy, extreme in its self-assertion, equally extreme in its self-abnegation, which made the
\nancient Hindu people one of the three or four great peoples of antiquity. The savour of the Kshatriya spirit in Bhartrihari is of the
\nmost personal, intimate kind, not the purely poetic and appreciative delight of Kalidasa. It is with him grain of character, not
\nmere mental impression. It expresses itself even in his Vairagya
\nby the fiery and ardent, almost fierce spirit which inspires his asceticism, \u2014 how different from the fine quietism of the Brahmin!<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 371<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nBut the Century of World-disgust, although it contains some of
\nhis best poetry, is not to us his most characteristic and interesting
\nwork; we find that rather in the Century of Morals.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis Century is an admirable, if incomplete poetic rendering
\nof the great stock of morality which our old writers summarised
\nin the one word Arya,
\n\u2014 Aryan, noble. The word Arya has been
\nthought to correspond very closely to the English idea of a gentleman, \u2014 inaccurately, for its conception is larger and more
\nprofound in moral content. Arya and Anarya correspond in
\ntheir order of ideas partly to the totality indicated by the word, <\/p>\n

gentleman<\/i>, and its opposite, partly to the conceptions knightly
\nand unknightly, partly to the qualities suggested in an English
\nmind by the expressions English and unEnglish as applied to conduct. The Aryan man is he who observes in spirit and letter the
\nreceived code of a national morality which included the higher
\nniceties of etiquette, the bold and chivalrous temper of a knightly
\nand martial aristocracy, the general obligations of truth, honour
\nand high feeling, and, crowning all, such great ideals of the Vedic
\nand Buddhistic religion, \u2014 sweetness, forbearance, forgiveness,
\ncharity, self-conquest, calm, self-forgetfulness, self-immolation
\n\u2014 as had entered deeply into the national imagination.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe ideas of the Century of Morals are not in themselves
\nextraordinary, nor does Bhartrihari, though he had a full share
\nof the fine culture of his age, appear to have risen in intellectual originality beyond the average level; it is the personality
\nwhich appears in the Centuries that is striking. Bhartrihari is,
\nas Matthew Arnold would have said, in the grand style. He has
\nthe true heroic turn of mind and turn of speech; he breathes
\na large and puissant atmosphere. High-spirited, high-minded,
\nhigh of temper, keen in his sympathies, admiring courage, firmness and daring aspiration above all things, thrilling to impulses
\nof humanity, kindliness and self-sacrifice in spite of his rugged
\nstrength, dowered with a trenchant power of scorn and sombre
\nirony, and occasionally of stern invective, but sweetening this
\nmasculine severity of character with varied culture and the old
\nhigh Indian worship of knowledge, goodness and wisdom, such
\nis the man who emerges from the one hundred and odd verses of<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 372<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

the Shataka. The milder and more feminine shades of the Aryan
\nideal he does not so clearly typify. We have often occasion to
\nask ourselves, What manner of men did the old Aryan discipline, uniting with the new Helleno-Asiatic culture, succeed in
\nproducing? Bhartrihari is at least one type of its products.
\n<\/span>\n<\/p>\n

\n

And yet in the end a doubt breaks in. Was he altogether
\nof his age? Was he not born in an alien time and an evil day?
\nHe would have been better at home, one fancies, with the more
\nmasculine temper depicted in the Mahabharata. Certainly he
\nended in disgust and fled for refuge to ascetic imaginations not
\nwholly characteristic of his time. He had lived the life of courts,
\nwas perhaps an official of high standing and seems to have
\nexperienced fully the affronts, uncertainties, distastes to which
\nsuch a career has always been exposed. From the beginning
\nstray utterances point to a growing dissatisfaction and in the
\nend there comes the poignant cry of a thwarted life. When we
\nread the Century of Passion, we seem to come near the root of
\nhis malady. As in the earlier Century he has subdued to the law
\nof poetical form the ethical aspects of life, so now will he deal
\nwith the delight of the senses; but how little of real delight there
\nis in this misnamed Century of Passion! Bhartrihari is no real
\nlover, certainly; but neither is he a genuine voluptuary. Of that
\nkeen-edged honey-laden delight in the joy of the senses and the
\nemotions which thrills through every line of Kalidasa’s Cloud,
\nthere is no faintest trace. Urged into voluptuous experience by
\nfashion and habit, this high and stern nature had no real vocation
\nfor the life of the senses; in this respect, and who shall say in how
\nmany others, he was out of harmony with the moral atmosphere
\nof his times, and at last turned from it all to cry aloud the holy
\nname of Shiva by the waters of the pure and ancient river, the
\nriver Ganges, while he waited impatiently for the great release….
\nBut this too was not his vocation. He had too much defiance,
\nfire, self-will for the ascetic. To have fallen in the forefront of
\nancient heroic battle or to have consummated himself in some
\ngrandiose act of self-sacrifice, this would have been his life’s
\nfitting fulfilment, the true end of Bhartrihari.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n________<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 373<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\nThe edition followed in the main is that of Mr. Telang in the
\nBombay Sanscrit Series. The accepted order of the verses, although it admits a few gross errors and misplacements, has
\nnevertheless been preserved. All the Miscellaneous Epigrams at
\nthe end have been omitted from the rendering;1<\/font><\/sup> and three others,
\nthe 90th which has crept in from the Shakuntala of Kalidasa,
\nthe 104th which is an inferior version of an earlier epigram and
\nthe 18th which has come down to us in a hopelessly corrupt
\ncondition. The 27th epigram occurs in the Mudrarakshasa but
\nhas been admitted as it is entirely in Bhartrihari’s spirit and manner and may have been copied into the play. Some other verses
\nwhich do not bear internal evidence of Bhartrihari’s authorship
\nin their style and spirit, have yet been given the benefit of the
\ndoubt.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe principle of translation followed has been to preserve
\nfaithfully the thought, spirit and images of the original, but
\notherwise to take the full licence of a poetical rendering. In
\ntranslation from one European tongue into another a careful
\nliteralness may not be out of place, for the genius, sentence
\nstructure and turns of thought of European languages are not
\nvery dissimilar; they belong to one family. But the gulf between Sanscrit and English in these respects is very wide, and any
\nattempt at close verbal rendering would be disastrous. I have
\nmade no attempt to render the distinctive features of Bhartrihari’s style; on the contrary I have accepted the necessity of
\nsubstituting for the severity & compact massiveness of Sanscrit
\ndiction which must necessarily vanish in translation, the greater
\nrichness & colour preferred by the English tongue. Nor have I
\nattempted to preserve the peculiar qualities of the Subhashita;
\nBhartrihari’s often crowded couplets and quatrains have been
\nperforce dissolved into a looser and freer style and in the process
\nhave sometimes expanded to considerable dimensions. Lines of
\ncunningly wrought gold have had to be beaten out into some
\ntenuity. Otherwise the finer associations & suggestions of the
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n1 <\/font> Sri Aurobindo included a series of "Miscellaneous Verses" in the final
\ntranslation. \u2014 Ed.<\/font><\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 374<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\n

original would have been lost or blurred. I hold it more pardonable in poetical translation to unstring the language than to
\ndwarf the spirit and mutilate the thought. For in poetry it is not
\nthe verbal substance that we seek from the report or rendering
\nof foreign masterpieces; we desire rather the spiritual substance,
\nthe soul of the poet & the soul of his poetry. We cannot hear
\nthe sounds & rhythms loved & admired by his countrymen and
\ncontemporaries; but we ask for as many as we can recover of
\nthe responses & echoes which that ancient music set vibrating
\nin the heavens of their thought.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n

<\/p>\n

Page \u2013 375<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

APPENDIX   Prefatory Note on Bhartrihari   BHARTRIHARI’S Century of Morals (Nitishataka), a series of poetical epigrams or rather sentences upon human life and conduct…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-05-translations","wpcat-48-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}