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 3.7.66
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.7.66:
विशेषदर्शनं यत्र क्रिया तत्र व्यवस्थिता ।
क्रियाव्यवस्था त्वन्येषां शब्दैरेव प्रकाश्यते ॥ ६६ ॥viśeṣadarśanaṃ yatra kriyā tatra vyavasthitā |
kriyāvyavasthā tvanyeṣāṃ śabdaireva prakāśyate || 66 ||66. According (to some) action resides where its effect is seen. According to others, where it resides is revealed by the words themselves.
Commentary
The author now draws a line of demarcation between these two kinds of roots.
[Read verse 66 above]
[Some say that whether a root is ‘kartṛsthabhāvaka’ or ‘karmasthabhāvaka’ depends on the effect of where the action is found. They make no distinction between bhāva and kriyā. But the idea that action rests on where its effect is found does not work. According to that, the root ‘√pac’ would be ‘karmasthabhāvaka’, because the effect of the action of cooking is found in the thing cooked. But the action is not without effect on the person who cooks. Therefore, it would be better to rely on another principle and that is the way words present the matter. In ghaṭam paśyati, the words present the ghaṭa as unaffected by the action of seeing, but in kāṣṭhaṃ bhinatti, they present the object, namely, the wood as affected by the action of cutting. Therefore, the root dṛś is kartṛsthabhāvaka and the root √bhid is karmasthabhāvaka.]
It is now pointed out that the vārttika on P. 1.4.51 which makes words expressive of time, action, distance to be covered and country objects of intransitive verbs is unnecessary.