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...
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Verse 1.121
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 1.121:
इतिकर्तव्यता लोके सर्वा शब्दव्यपाश्रया ।
यां पूर्वाहितसंस्कारो बालोऽपि प्रतिपद्यते ॥ १२१ ॥itikartavyatā loke sarvā śabdavyapāśrayā |
yāṃ pūrvāhitasaṃskāro bālo'pi pratipadyate || 121 ||121. All knowledge of what is to be done in this world depends upon the word. Even the child, with its residual traces from the previous birth, has such knowledge.
Commentary
Even that which exists is as good as non-existent as long as it does not come within the range of verbal usage. Even a totally non-existent thing like a hare’s horn or something which appears and disappears in the sky like a celestial town1 (gandharvanagara), when brought to the mind by words, figures, like something endowed with primary reality,2 in various usages. In children in whom the germs of the word exist according to their kind, because of the existence in them of the residual traces of their use of words in their former births, there arises cognition based on vague words (anākhyeyaśabda) in the course of their various purposeful activities.
Notes
1. Vṛṣabha points out that a celestial city may suddenly appear to us in the sky and it may disappear equally suddenly. But when the word brings the idea of it to our mind, it stays.
2. Mukhyasattāyuktam iva. Mukhyasattā (primary reality), the fact of something existing outside our mind is contrasted with Upacārasattā which consists in the fact of something figuring hi our mind through the agency of words. Words move chiefly in the realm of Upacārasattā, as explained in Vāk. III, Saṃbandhasanuddeśa [Saṃbandhasamuddeśa?].