Three linked collections of compact Sanskrit poems consider ethical judgment, desire, social life, learning, and renunciation. Bhartrihari gives the chamber an Indian aphoristic tradition in which wisdom includes both skill in the world and freedom from it.
Sources for Bhartrihari — The Śatakas of Bhartrihari
Bhartrihari — The Śatakas of Bhartrihari in Wisdom Literature
Held in the Wisdom Literature chamber of the Babel Nexus Index.
- Maxims of Ptahhotep (Egyptian) (−2400)
- The Instructions of Shuruppak (Sumerian) (−2600)
- Instructions of Amenemhat (Egyptian) (−1900)
- Disputations or Literary Debates (Sumerian) (−2000)
- The Poem of the Righteous Sufferer (Ludlul bēl nēmeqi, Babylonian) (−1300)
- The Story of Aḥikar (Aramaic) (−500)
- Counsels of Wisdom (Babylonian) (−1000)
- Dialogue of Pessimism (Babylonian — "Nothing Is Of Value") (−1000)
- Instructions of Šūpê-amēli (Akkadian) (−1100)
- Instructions of Kagemni (Egyptian) (−2300)
- Nig-Nam Nu-Kal — "Nothing is of Value" (Sumerian) (−2000)
- Maxims of Ali ibn Abi Talib (c. 660)
- Buddhism — The Dhammapada (−300)
- The Book of Proverbs — King James Version (1611)
- Ecclesiastes — King James Version (1611)
- Sa'di — The Gulistan; or, Rose Garden (1852)
- Sa'di — The Bustan of Sa'di (1911)
- Seneca — Moral Epistles to Lucilius, Volume I (1917)