This is the same figure as Shri Yayati Ji in entry 71. The great Chakravarti emperor who borrowed his son's youth for a thousand years of pleasure and emerged with the realization that desire, fed by indulgence, only grows fiercer.
As with Pururava appearing under two names, Yayati's recurrence reflects the compositional structure of the Bhaktamal mool text, where a single figure may be referenced across multiple chhappays for different purposes. The tika tradition preserves each mention faithfully. For the full story, see the earlier entry.
A Thousand Years Proved What Philosophy Could Not
Yayati could have been told that desire is insatiable. The sages had said so for ages. But he had to find it out in his own body, over a thousand borrowed years of youth. He plunged back into the world of pleasure with Puru's vitality coursing through him and spent every season of it chasing enjoyment. At the end of that millennium, he arrived at the realization that has echoed through Indian scripture ever since: desires are never quenched by enjoyment. Like fire fed with ghee, they only blaze the more. The Sanskrit verse, na jatu kamah kamanam upabhogena shamyati, became one of the most quoted lines in the Mahabharata. What moves me about Yayati is that his understanding was not borrowed from a book. It was purchased at enormous cost, through the sacrifice of his son's youth and his own dignity. That kind of knowing does not leave. It burns itself into the heart. And what was left after the burning was the ground in which devotion could grow.
Mahabharata, Adi Parva; Bhaktamal, Entry 71 (Shri Yayati Ji)
The Appetite of the Senses Has No Floor
Yayati was not an ordinary pleasure-seeker. He was a Chakravarti emperor with the resources of the entire earth at his command and, through the grace of his son, a full thousand years of youth in which to use them. If any soul in history had the conditions to find satisfaction through sensory enjoyment, it was Yayati. He did not find it. What he found instead, at the end of those thousand years, was the recognition that the vessel has no bottom. You can pour the whole ocean in and still the hunger whispers for more. This is not pessimism. This is the most honest observation about the structure of desire that I have encountered in any tradition. The craving does not diminish with feeding. It deepens. Recognizing this is not defeat. It is the beginning of freedom. Yayati saw clearly what a lifetime of ordinary experience could easily obscure, and that clear seeing was the first real step he ever took toward God.
Mahabharata, Adi Parva; Bhagavata Purana, Canto 9; Bhaktamal Entry 71 commentary
What Puru Taught by Saying Yes
Four of Yayati's sons refused him when he asked them to accept his curse of old age. Only Puru, the youngest, son of Sharmishtha, stepped forward without complaint and took his father's decrepitude onto his own young body. I have spent time sitting with what Puru's yes means. He did not negotiate. He did not weigh his own comfort against his father's need. He simply gave what was asked. The Mahabharata says that Yayati was deeply moved and that it was from Puru's line, honored precisely for this act of selfless devotion, that the Kuru dynasty arose and the Pandavas eventually came. Puru's willingness planted a seed that grew into one of the most dharmic lineages in all of history. Yayati's story thus carries a teaching about the son as well as the father: that selfless giving, offered without calculation, becomes the ground of something great. The detachment Yayati spent a thousand years discovering, Puru already possessed in his youth.
Mahabharata, Adi Parva; Bhaktamal, Entry 71 (Shri Yayati Ji)
Vairagya That Is Earned Runs Deep
There is a difference between the renunciation of someone who has never tasted the world and the renunciation of someone who has consumed it whole and found it empty. Yayati's vairagya was the second kind. He did not turn away from pleasure because he was afraid of it or because he had never had the chance to try it. He turned away because he had tried it as thoroughly as any human being ever has, with every resource and a thousand years, and he had arrived at an honest conclusion. The Bhaktamal says that through the power of devotion to God, Yayati attained the supreme abode. That attainment was not easy or quick. It was the earned fruit of a life that did not skip any steps. When I hear teachers speak of vairagya I sometimes wonder whether I have earned any. Yayati's story reassures me that God does not require a clean history. He requires an honest one.
Bhaktamal, Entry 71 (Shri Yayati Ji); Mahabharata, Adi Parva
Returning What Was Borrowed
After a thousand years, Yayati went back to Puru. He returned the youth that had been lent and took the weight of old age back onto himself. Then he crowned Puru king, honoring the son who had given everything freely. This act of return strikes me as one of the most spiritually complete gestures in all of the epics. He did not hold onto what was not his. He did not keep the borrowed blessing past its purpose. He gave it back with gratitude and stepped willingly into what remained. Yayati then went to the forest with Devayani and Sharmishtha and turned the same fierce intensity that had once powered a thousand years of indulgence toward penance, prayer, and the worship of the Lord. He was not a different person. He was the same person, pointed in a different direction. The Bhaktamal records that through God's bhajan, he attained paramdhama. The vessel that once overflowed with desire was the same vessel that, emptied and offered, became fit for God.
Bhaktamal, Entry 71 (Shri Yayati Ji); Mahabharata, Adi Parva
Hindi text from OCR scan (Khemraj Shrikrishnadas Prakashan, CC0). May contain errors.