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 3.1.48
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.1.48:
अस्वशब्दाभिधानास्तु नरसिंहादिजातयः ।
सरूपावयवेवान्या तासु श्रुतिरवस्थिता ॥ ४८ ॥asvaśabdābhidhānāstu narasiṃhādijātayaḥ |
sarūpāvayavevānyā tāsu śrutiravasthitā || 48 ||48. Universals like the fact of being a ‘man-lion’ have no words of their own to express them. They are conveyed by other words the (fictitious) parts of which are similar (to other words in the language).
Commentary
The author now points out that some universals have no words to express them.
[Read verse 48 above]
[Universals like ‘the fact of being a man-lion (narasiṃhatva) have no words to express them. The word narasiṃha has two parts, each of which is like another word in the language. The result is that each of these words brings to our mind its own universal. The word nara brings the fact of ‘being human’ to the mind and siṃha brings to the mind the fact of ‘being a lion’. But the universal ‘the fact of being a man-lion’ is something quite different from naratva and siṃhatva. It is not a mixture of the two. The word narasiṃha is really an indivisible word and to say that it has two parts which resemble two other words in the language is really a fiction. Because the two fictitious parts of the word bring to our mind two other universals, the word can cause only an error in us. The fact is that such universals have no words of their own to express them.]
The author now states that like the stem, the suffix also denotes the universal and that the two are coordinated.