Vairagya-Satakam of Bhartrhari: The Hundred Verses on Renunciation

The Vairagya-Satakam is one of the three series of hundred verses which have come down to us under the title of Subhasita-trisati (lit. ‘The happily worded three centuries’) and associated with the name of the poet Bhartrhari. In some manuscripts, these verses exceed the number implied in the above name, but we have followed the authority of an edition published by the Nirnaya-Sagar Press of Mumbai, which maintains the exact original number. Tradition attributes the authorship of these verses to Bhartrhari, the elder brother of the most renowned King Vikramaditya of Ujjanin. Controversy has not yet settled the point as to which Vikramaditya was the brother of the poet and when exactly he reigned at Ujjanin. The hundred verses of the Vairagya-Satakam are divided into ten groups under the following ten headings: condemnation of desire; , futile efforts to give up sense-objects;, condemnation of the poverty of a supplicant attitude; delineation of the evanescence of enjoyments;, description of the working of Time, or the principle of change;, a comparison as to how a monk stands to a king;, control of mind by stimulating wisdom in it;, discrimination of the immutable reality from the mutable; worship of Siva;, the way of life for an Avadhuta, or a realized ascetic characterized by the highest spiritual freedom.