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.

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.14:

ब्राह्मणार्थो यथा नास्ति कश्चिद् ब्राह्मणाकम्बले ।
देवदत्तादयो वाक्ये तथाव स्युरनर्थकाः ॥ १४ ॥

brāhmaṇārtho yathā nāsti kaścid brāhmaṇākambale |
devadattādayo vākye tathāva syuranarthakāḥ || 14 ||

14. Just as, in the compound, brāhmaṇakambala, the term brāhmaṇa has no meaning, in the same way, in a sentence, words like Devadatta are without a meaning.

Commentary

[In the compound word brāhmaṇakambala, the element brāhmaṇa has no meaning. Similarly, in the sentence: Devadatta gām abhyāja daṇḍena, the words Devadatta etc. have no separate meaning. Individual words are, therefore, meaningless. The truth is that the sentence is an indivisible self-sufficient unit, quite different from the individual words. Similarly, the sentence-meaning is an indivisible, self-sufficient unit. When the compound brāhmaṇakambala is uttered in isolation or after some words or sentences, even though the word brāhmaṇa is heard and some meaning understood from it, it is known to have no meaning. Similarly, even when the word is not uttered in isolation or after other words and sentences, parts of sentences which resemble individual words do not really exist and have, therefore, no meaning.]

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