Vakyapadiya of Bhartrihari
by K. A. Subramania Iyer | 1965 | 391,768 words
The English translation of the Vakyapadiya by Bhartrihari including commentary extracts and notes. The Vakyapadiya is an ancient Sanskrit text dealing with the philosophy of language. Bhartrhari authored this book in three parts and propounds his theory of Sphotavada (sphota-vada) which understands language as consisting of bursts of sounds conveyi...
This book contains Sanskrit text which you should never take for granted as transcription mistakes are always possible. Always confer with the final source and/or manuscript.
Verse 2.76
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.76:
वाक्यानां समुदायश्च य एकार्थप्रसिद्धये ।
साकाङ्क्षावयवस्तत्र वाक्यार्थाऽपि न विद्यते ॥ ७६ ॥vākyānāṃ samudāyaśca ya ekārthaprasiddhaye |
sākāṅkṣāvayavastatra vākyārthā'pi na vidyate || 76 ||76. There would be no sentence-meaning (in the case of a big sentence) consisting of a collection of minor sentences requiring one another and used for conveying one single meaning.
Commentary
It is now shown that if a sentence is indivisible, intermediary sentences would become meaningless.
[Read verse 76 above]
[If individual words do not exist and are meaningless, intermediary sentences would be in the same position. Also, a meaningful sentence can become a part of a bigger sentence and so become meaningless which is a contradiction.
The Vṛtti explains the same idea with an example: gaur duhyatām, upādhyāyaḥ payasā bhuṅktvā māmadhyāpayiṣyati— ‘let the cow be milked, the teacher will eat (his rice) with milk and then teach me’. Here a big sentence, having an intermediary sentence as its part, is expressive of an action which is qualified by another action having its own accessory. If the parts (in the form of intermediary sentences) requiring one another are not connected with the one main meaning, then the main sentence would also be meaningless. Besides there is no fixity in limits of intermediary sentences. Sometimes, gāmabhyāja=‘drive the cow on’ is the sentence, sometimes it is: Devadatta! gām abhyāja = ‘O! Devadatta! drive the cow on’. Sometimes it is: Devadatta gām abhyāja śuklām=‘O! Devadatta, drive the white cow on!’ That being so, one would have to accept the contradictory position that the same thing is sometimes meaningful and sometimes not. The first sentence is meaningful, while the same words are meaningless in the next, being only a part thereof.]
It is now pointed out that, if the individual word and its meaning are denied any existence, certain principles followed in the world and in the śāstra would become inexplicable. These principles form the subject matter of the Mīmāṃsā-sūtras of Jaimini.