Bharthari (king)
Indian Raja and saint
Bharatthari is the hero of many folk stories in North India. He was the King of Ujjain, before renouncing the world and abdicating in the favor of his younger brother Vikramaditya. He was based on a historical figure named Bhartrihari.
Stories of Bharthari and his nephew King Gopi Chand of Bengal, who are considered Nath panth yogis, abound in the Indian folklore of Rajasthan, Punjab, Gujarat, Haryana, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal.
Many of the details about the lives of Bharthari and his brother Vikramaditya are from the tales of Baital Pachisi (Twenty five tales of Baital), translated as 'Vikram and The Vampire' by Sir Richard Francis Burton in 1870.
Folklore
Bhartrhari was the elder son of King Gandharva Sena, who received the kingdom of Ujjain from The celestial god Indra and the King of Dhara.
When Bhartrhari was king of 'Ujjayani' (modern day Ujjain), there lived a Brahman who got the fruit of immortality from the celestial wish granting tree, Kalpavriksha, as a result of long austerity. He decided to offer it to King Bhartrhari. The king wanted his beloved queen, Pinglah or Ananga Sena (as per Maha Kavi Kalidas), to be youthful, and thus gifted her the fruit. Raja Bhartrhari's last and youngest wife.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bharthari (king)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.