(fifth century)
Bhartrhari was a Hindu philosopher, linguist, and poet whose linguistic philosophy has in recent decades been of great interest to Western thinkers, who have compared him with Wittgenstein, Saussure, and Derrida. His three “centuries” of verse survive in a large number of manuscripts, and were influential on writers of lyric poetry (muktaka) not only in Sanskrit but also in all regional Indian dialects in later centuries.
Legends surrounding Bhartrhari say that he was of noble birth, that he was attached for a time to the court of the king, and that he tried seven times to renounce the world before ultimately becoming a recluse and living in a cave. But nothing is certain about his life, not even when he lived (which has been estimated as late as the seventh century), nor is it certain that the same Bhartrhari that wrote the collection of poetry was also the philosopher.We do know that the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim I Ching, who traveled to India in the seventh century, mentions Bhartrhari as a legendary figure at that time. Bhartrhari’s poems, collected in the ´Satakatrayam, are divided into three “centuries” or groups of 100 poems. The three groups comprise poems of ethical or political wisdom (nīti), poems of love (´srngāra), and poems of renunciation of the world (vairāgya). The hundreds of extant manuscripts are full of discrepancies, and among them contain some 700 poems—clearly most of these are poems of a later date that became attributed to Bhartrhari. Modern editors have identified some 200 poems that appear in virtually all manuscripts, and that are therefore attributed to Bhartrhari with some degree of confidence.
The voice that comes through in these poems is often that of a somewhat embittered court poet who resents having to rely on an arrogant but intellectually inferior monarch for survival, and resents the avarice and hypocrisy of other members of the court.“Wise men are consumed by envy,” he says in one poem, and “kings are defiled by haughty ways” (Miller 1978, no. 4). It is also the voice of one who, though wishing to renounce the world in favor of the unchanging ultimate reality beyond the senses, is hopelessly charmed by the beauty of women:
a heady fragrance,
then the touch of her breasts.
I whirl in sensations
which veil what is real.
I fall deceived by senses
cunning in seduction’s art.
(Miller 1978, no. 102)
No doubt it is the philosophical tone of many of these poems, and their rich linguistic texture, that leads a majority of scholars (though by no means all) to identify the poet Bhartrhari with the famous linguistic philosopher and author of the Vākyapadīya. Here, Bhartrhari explains his theory of language, called sphota-vada. Basically his theory is concerned with the relationship of language, meaning, and reality. In Bhartrhari’s theory, no individual syllable contains the whole or a part of the meaning of a word; rather the word’s meaning appears suddenly after all the syllables have been pronounced. Meaning is revealed in a flash of insight or intuition (Pratibhaa). This indivisibility of meaning in the word Bhartrhari equates to the indivisibility of meaning in the universe: Ultimate reality (Hindu Brahman) is meaning, and it is one and indivisible.
Bibliography
■ Coward,Harold G. Bhartrhari. Boston: Twayne, 1976.
■ Hamilton, Sue. Indian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
■ Miller, Barbara Stoler, trans. The Hermit and The Love Thief: Sanskrit Poems of Bharitrihari and Bilhana. New York: Columbia University Press, 1978.