Bharthari

Tradition identifies King Bharthari as the former ruler of the real city of Ujjain, located in what is today Madhya Pradesh. Ujjain and its surroundings—an area that Rajasthani villagers even today call by its traditional name of Malva—is a frequent point of reference in local lore. Dhara Nagar, another name for Ujjain, is often the kingdom inhabited by any king who appears in Rajasthani women's worship stories. Bharthari's birth story, as told by Madhu, includes the founding of Dhara Nagar, by the grace of Nath gurus and the acts of a haughty donkey who is Bharthari's progenitor, Gandaraph Syan,^[10] cursed by his father to enter a donkey womb.

Bharthari, the legendary king of Ujjain who turns Nath yogi, is generally considered to be identical with the Sanskrit poet Bhartrihari, renowned for three sets of eloquent verse on worldly life, erotic passion, and renunciation.^[11] The legends surrounding the poet Bhartrihari

[10] As Nathu transcribed Madhu's pronunciation, this prince's name is sometimes Gandarap and sometimes Gandaraph , sometimes Syan and sometimes Sen . I regularize this.

[11] Whereas books about the Sanskrit poet often refer to the legendary king, the legends of Bharthari rarely refer to the Sanskrit poet—an exception being Duggal's retelling (Duggal 1979). Miller, who gives us some beautiful translations of Bhartrihari's poems, notes, "In spite of the legend, the content of the verses suggests that the author ... was not a king, but a courtier-poet in the service of a king" (Miller 1967, xvii). Bhartrihari the poet may be the same as Bhartrihari the Sanskrit grammarian, author of a famous treatise, the Vakyapadiya . Coward 1976 and Iyer 1969, 10–15, both favor this identification; Miller 1967 is more skeptical.

identify him, as Madhu identifies his Bharthari, as the elder brother of the Hindu monarch, Vikramaditya; Bharthari's decision to renounce the world brings Vikramaditya to the throne. The name of Vikram is associated with a fixed point, 58–57 B.C. , from which one major system of Hindu dating, the Vikrama era, begins. However, King Vikramaditya's status as a historical personage is also open to doubt.^[12]

The tale of Bhartrihari's renunciation takes up but a few pages in the cycle of Sanskrit stories surrounding Vikramaditya. These have been translated and retold in English and are often summarized in introductions to collections of the Sanskrit poet's work.^[13] The plot involves a circular chain of deception that will inevitably recall to Western readers the French farce and opera plot evoked by the title La Ronde .

A Brahman, as a reward for his intense austerities, receives the fruit of immortality from God; he presents this prize to King Bhartrihari, who gives it to his adored wife, Pingala.^[14] She, however, passes it on to her paramour, and he to a prostitute who offers it once more to the king. Having extracted the truth from each link in this chain, and stunned not only by his queen's perfidy but by the generally fickle ways of the world, Bhartrihari decides then and there to pursue a more stable reality, turning the rule of his kingdom over to Vikramaditya.^[15]

Madhu Nath's version of Bharthari's story does not include any

[12] For the historicity of King Vikramaditya see Edgerton 1926; Sircar 1969.

[13] See Edgerton 1926 for translations from the Sanskrit; see also Bhoothalingam 1982 who adapted a Tamil version of the Sanskrit for young readers in English. For an elaborate, embellished retelling in Hindi see Vaidya 1984, 7–24. Versions of the story are also referred to in Miller 1967; Kale 1971; Wortham 1886.

[14] As a woman's name, Pingala is rare. The RSK lists a variant, Pingala as a name of the goddess Lakshmi as well as the name of Bhartrihari's wife. Its primary meaning, however, is one of three main, subtle channels in the human body described by yogic physiology.

[15] Some elaborations on the story have Bhartrihari first exiling Vikramaditya after the debauched queen accuses him of assaulting her honor in order to cover up her real indiscretion. Then Bhartrihari must recall Vikramaditya and exonerate him before following the guru Gorakh Nath to a renouncer's life (Duggal 1979).

reference to tins circle of illicit connections. Pingala here is an impeccably true wife. Rather than woman's infidelity, the premise of Madhu Nath's tale is that even the most faithful woman is part of the illusory nature of the universe and thus not worth loving. Jackson in a note on the lore surrounding Bharthari's Cave—a famous shrine in Ujjain—and Rose in his ethnographic survey of the Northeast both relate stories similar to Madhu Nath's in which Pingala is true (Jackson 1902; Rose 1914). Gray translates a fifteenth-century Sanskrit play, the Bhartrharinirveda of Harihara, that also has a plot very similar to the Rajasthani folk telling (Gray 1904). However, to my knowledge all the popular published dramas and folk romances (kissas ) ^[16] about King Bharthari and Queen Pingala center on the fruit of immortality and Pingala's deceit (but she usually reforms in the end).

Although I have called attention to a dramatic dichotomy between types of Pingalas in Nath traditions, let me note that these striking differences mask an underlying symmetry. In the end, it is women—true or false, beloved or despised—whom yogis abandon. Madhu Nath's version actually seems at one moment in the arthav to consider Pingala's fanatic fidelity as yet another dangerous feminine wile. Gorakh Nath implies that by becoming sati Pingala was trying to kill her husband. And yet if we shift perspectives once again, we may view both types of Pingalas as the impetus for Bharthari's enlightenment, and thus as valued positive forces in these tales of renunciation.^[17]

Bharthari and Gopi Chand's relationship—both as maternal uncle

[16] For popular folk romances based on the Vikram cycle, including brief references to Bharthari and the fruit of immortality, and an insightful discussion of "women's wiles" in this genre, see Pritchett 1985, 56–78.

[17] With a script that explains Bharthari's infatuation and Pingala's perfidy through predestination, one version of the tale actually makes such a collapse nicely logical. Dehlavi's Hindi play Bharthari Pingala frames the fruit-of-immortality circle with a glimpse into Bharthari's previous birth as one of Gorakh Nath's disciples, Bharat Nath. While on an errand for his guru, Bharat Nath is distracted by a beautiful fairy and sports with her in the woods. The fairy is punished for misbehaving with a yogi by Indra, the king of the gods, who forces her to take a human birth. Bharat Nath is given the same sentence by his guru. Indra tells the fairy that she will deceive her husband and cause him to renounce the world, consequently suffering the heavy sorrow of widowhood in her youth (Dehlavi n.d., 32). To mitigate Bharat Nath's misery, Gorakh promises his errant disciple that the same beautiful female who caused his downfall will bring about his reunion with the guru (26). In this frame Pingala's infidelity represents not lack of character but a cosmic plan. Bhoju reports hearing a very similar version from a Brahman schoolteacher who saw it performed in Alwar; that tale tidily made Pingala's lover an incarnation of Guru Gorakh Nath.

and nephew, and as two Naths with immortal bodies—is mentioned in several versions other than Madhu Nath's (Dehlavi n.d.; Dikshit n.d., 264). In Rajasthani folklore not contained within the epic tales themselves, Bharthari and Gopi Chand are paired as immortal companions still wandering the earth. Thus they appear as the authors of hymns (bhajans ) to the formless lord (Gold 1988, 1O9) and are recalled in proverbs: "As long as sky and earth shall be / Live Gopi Chand and Bharthari" (Jab tak akash dharati, tab tak Gopi Chand Bharthari ). Most of the longer versions of Bharthari's tale make some reference to his gaining an "immortal body" (amar kaya ), but none is particularly illuminating about the nature of this immortality. Madhu Nath never refers to immortality in telling the tale of Bharthari, but when Gopi Chand receives the blessing (or curse) of immortality from Jalindar Nath, in part 4 of his separate tale, Bharthari is with him and shares in the fruit.

Distinctive to Madhu's telling is a general concern for mundane detail: many descriptions of actions and relationships, well understood or easily imagined in village thought, that do not advance the story line but rather situate it in familiar experience. These include a gathering of village elders in time of crisis; the technology of potters; the negotiations of patrons and clients; the mutuality and interdependence of subjects and rulers. Such familiar scenes or situations may, moreover, be suddenly spiced with magical occurrences or divine intervention: donkeys talk to village elders, a guru's play spoils the carefully crafted pots; messengers come from heaven to straighten out the king and save his subjects. It would seem that Madhu and his teachers, in adapting a traditional tale for village patrons, elaborate both the familiar and the magical to strike a captivating blend. And yet, as we will see, although Gopi Chand's story certainly shares some stylistic and thematic qualities with Bharthari's, it follows a different recipe.