I have mentioned Adi Shankaracharya's Bhaja Govindam earlier and quoted from parts of it. Here is another shloka. अङ्गं गलितं पलितं मुण्डं दशनविहीनं जातं तुण्डम् । वृद्धो याति गृहीत्वा दण्डं तदपि न मुञ्चत्याशापिण्डम् ॥ 'The body has decayed, the head is grey. The mouth is bereft of teeth. The old man advances holding a staff. Yet, the mass of hope has not released him.' Whenever I read this, I am reminded of a shloka from Bhartrihari. We know precious little about Bhartrihari, or Kalidasa, or about so many other Sanskrit poets. We know little about their personal lives. They left us their works. They didn't tell us who they were. Sanskrit—and Indian languages in general—doesn't have the letter 'I' in capital letters. The 'I' is small case and usually missing altogether. Quite a contrast with this day and age, when every day, I am deluged with messages that say, 'Read my article.' There was a Bhartrihari who was a grammarian and there was a Bhartrihari who was a poet and scholars continue to debate whether they were two different individuals or one. I am referring to Bhatrihari the poet. वलिभिर्मुखमाक्रान्तं पलितैरङ्कितं शिरः। गात्राणि शिथिलायन्ते तृष्णैका तरूणायते॥ This is from Bhratrihari. 'The face is invaded by wrinkles. The head is marked with grey. The limbs of the body have become flaccid. It is thirst (desire) alone that is young in acting.' Do you notice the resemblance between Adi Shankara and Bhratrihari? I have no idea whether Adi Shankara knew about the Bhratrihari couplet. Scholars tell us that Bhratrihari the poet lived in the 5th century CE; so Adi Shankara may have been familiar with what Bhratihari wrote. Bhratrihari, the poet, wrote three sets of verses, with one hundred shlokas in each set. Each such set is therefore known as a shataka. The first set is on shringara (loosely, love), the second set is on niti (loosely, good policy) and the third set is on vairagya (non-attachment). What I have just quoted is from vairagya shataka. As I said, we don't know much about Bhratrihari. (There is a wonderful fictional autobiography Sudhir Kakar recently wrote, titled, The Devil Take Love.) However, he is believed to have been King Vikramaditya's older brother and was the king. But he was a king who was addicted to a life of sensual pleasure and women. (Shringara shataka has beautiful love poetry.) Once, a brahmana gave King Bhratrihari a wonderful mango. The king gave it to his queen. The queen gave it to her paramour, the general. The mango passed on down the line until it returned to the king again. The king was so disgusted that he left the kingdom to his younger brother, King Vikramaditya. He abandoned all worldly pleasures and became a disciple of the sage Goraknath, performed austerities in two caves that you will still see in Ujjain. That's when he composed vairagya shataka.

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