Bartrihari was a sixth century Indian poet who wrote Bartrihari Satak a book of Sanskrit poetry comprising of three sections of a hundred verses each. The first section, the Shringar focuses of love and love-making. The second section Vairagya talks about the gradual withdrawal from worldly matters. The third section, Niti has verses on ethical conduct. Bartirahi’s poetry displays great depth and intensity of feelings as the writings move between pleasures of flesh and spiritual pursuits of the soul. Most of the poems have just four lines and sometimes two, but as in miniature paintaings where the small size enhances the beauty of the paintaings, these poems through a few words convey profound meaning. Presented in this book are selections from the original Sanskrit poems along with their English translations by Dr Ramesh Chandra Shah, an eminent Hindi poet, novelist and critic who has been a professor of English in the University of Bhopal.

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“Bharatrihari Satakas underline the three leading motives of the mind, its reflective interest in life and turn for high and strong thinking, its preoccupation with the enjoyment of the sense and its ascetic spiritual turn.” — Shri Aurobindo