practised austerities. A book called the Nathalilamrta recording from hearsay stories about the celebrities of the Natha sect of Yogis contains an account of Bhartrhari's life in a loose, legendary style. But it is easy to make out that, when all clue to authenticity about the real facts of Bhartrhari's life became lost to tradition, the memory of a career so stimulating to imagination was not allowed to go down so hopelessly denuded of facts, and the process of adding limbs and features to the stump of an older tradition naturally went on. Add to this process such floating legendary materials as the story about a gift made to one's beloved proving her infidelity by changing hands till it reached the donor again, or the miracles with which the then famous sect of Yogis used to be credited and, so on, and you hope to get a fairly good biography of, Bhartrihari such as gradually gained currency in tradition.
The verses, composed—maybe, with stray exceptions—by Bhartrihari himself, cannot be made to give any clue to his individual life, for his poetry seeks to create effect through style and sentiment too conventional to yield themselves to such use. But still his life-long lessons from experience and observation must have been reflected in their peculiar trend and emphases in the movements of sentiment through the verses; and it may be possible fora reader of penetrative intellect to trace out from such nice shades the bare outline of a deeper life of hard-fought struggles and late-won victory. A nature, straight-
