

iS81.] Dr. Mitra — Note on a Manuscript of the Bhatti Kavya. 137 



is an honorific title, meaning a learned man or a professor, and its deri- 

 vative form Bhatti is very unlike a proper name, and the latter com- 

 mentators felt the necessity of searching for something to replace it. 

 How they fell upon Bhartrihari it is not easy to guess. It may at first 

 sight appear that they thought that Bhatti must be a corruption of some 

 other word, and as Bhatti is the vernacular form of Bhartri the con- 

 clusion was drawn that Bhatti stood for Bhartrihari. This is, however, 

 not philologically correct, inasmuch as Bhatti, the corruption of Bhartri, 

 takes the dental and not the cerebral t, and Bhatti is invariably written 

 with the cerebral and not the dental letters. To Englishmen, most of 

 whom cannot pronounce the dental letters, this may not appear a serious 

 objection, but to Indians the distinction is so marked that it is difficult to 

 conceive a confusion in this respect. There must have been some other 

 cause, but I know not what it was. There is nothing, however, to preclude 

 the use of Bhatti as a proper name. The diminutive of Bhatta would be 

 Bhatti, and the young son of a Bhatta may well be called by the affec- 

 tionate diminutive " the little professor" or " teacherling." Indian 

 languages abound in such affectionate epithets, and they are not unknown 

 in Europe. By long usage such epithets stick fast, and cannot afterwards 

 be cast off. In many instances they have absolutely set aside the names 

 given at christening. It may be added that nick-names have often been 

 used as proper names, and the question then naturally arises, is Bhatti the 

 proper or the nick-name of the author, but there is nothing to decide it. It 

 might have been the one or the other, but certain it is that it was the 

 most popular name, and the author was best known by it. 



The next question refers to the name of the author's father. The 

 authorities quoted above give Svami or S'risvami, S'ridhara Svami, Bhar- 

 trihari and Chandragupta. The last two occur in aphocryptical stories, and 

 may at once be rejected as false. Jaymafigala is the oldest, and appears to 

 be a very cautious and critical scholiast, and he gives the first name which 

 may be accepted as the most authentic. Svami is certainly a title, but 

 there is nothing to prevent its use as a proper name, and if we accept the 

 S'ri which precedes it as a part of the name and not an honorific epithet, 

 there would be nothing to object to it. It may, however, be more reason- 

 ably taken to be an abbreviation, or the use of the literary title instead 

 of the proper name. The use of titles for proper names is by no means 

 uncommon. 



The poet at the end of his work gives a stanza in which he describes 

 his patron who, he says, was king S'ridhara-sena of Balabhi. The stanza 

 runs thus : — 



