Bhartṛhari K175

Ryder

            
            A WASTED LIFE-I
            
            No stainless wisdom have I learned;
            
            No honest money have I earned;
            
            No fond obedience have I brought
            
            To parents, with a heart well-taught;
            
            I never dreamed of sweet embraces,
            
            Of sparkling eyes and roguish faces:
            
            My life was wasted like the crow's:
            
            I lived on strangers' bread and blows.

Mādhavānanda

            
              विद्या नाधिगता कलङ्करहिता वित्तं च नोपाजिर्तं
            
                शुश्रूषापि समाहितेन मनसा पित्रोर्न संपादिता ।
            
              आलोलायतलोचना: प्रियतमा: स्वप्नेऽपि नालिङ्गिता:
            
                कालोऽयं परपिण्डलोलुपतया काकैरिव प्रेर्यते ।।४७।।
            
            47. विद्या नाधिगता etc.—Knowledge free from defect has not been mastered; कलङ्करहिता means ‘free from doctrines incapable of proof.’ वित्तं च etc.—Riches neither have been earned. शुश्रूषापि etc.—Services to parents have not been rendered with single-mindedness. कालोऽयं etc.—Like crows, all the time has been passed in greediness for food, i.e., maintenance obtainable from others.
            
            [These three stanzas (Nos. 45, 46, 47) strike a rather anomalous note. Here the poet personates a man whose life has been, like the lamp burning in a deserted abode, a thorough failure. Such a man is looking back on his youthful years of unmitigated worthlessness. But are the reflections he is making here typical of those who are at the threshold of true renunciation?  By no means are they typical. The poet here simply takes up a particular case of an aspirant after renunciation which may serve his poetical purposes best. This aspirant has had in his youth no taste of glory either as a pious man, a dutiful son, a scholarly student, a brave warrior, or a lover of women. He appears to lament here that none of the fourfold aim of human life (धर्म, religious merit; अर्थ, wealth; काम, fulfilment of desires; and मोक्ष, liberation) has been pursued by him in the past with the slightest success. Perhaps he means that that is best calculated to impress on his mind the vanity of all the ends of a householder’s life. But this impression of vanity and consequent non-attachment may very well come, and come with perhaps greater completeness, to men who had the ability to succeed in life, and such men may not at all look back with any lingering regret on enjoyments they are going to leave behind, whether their harvest had been actually reaped by them or not. There is even some incon­sistency in the ring of regret running through these stanzas. But the poet is here more concerned with dramatic effect than psycho­logical precision.]