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 2.39:

अर्थं कथञ्चित् पुरुषः कश्चित् संप्रतिपद्यते ।
संसृष्टा वा विभक्ता वा भेदा वाक्यनिबन्धनाः ॥ ३९ ॥

arthaṃ kathañcit puruṣaḥ kaścit saṃpratipadyate |
saṃsṛṣṭā vā vibhaktā vā bhedā vākyanibandhanāḥ || 39 ||

39. One understands the facts in some way or another. Whether united or separated, the divisions are based on the sentence.

Commentary

[One can understand the facts of the Sanskrit language either through Pāṇini’s grammar or through some other. All of them have to analyse the sentence and sentence-meaning to do their work. The latter are, therefore, the real entities and not what is obtained by analysis.

The Vṛtti gives examples of the different ways in which the same word is derived, by different grammarians. The word śrotriya is one of them. According to some, it is a word expressive of the meaning of the whole sentence chando'dhīte = ‘he studies the Vedas’. Others say that the word chandas becomes śrotra to which the suffix ghan is added in the sense of tad adhīte (P. 4.2.59.) or in the sense of action done by the ears. Similarly grammarians differ in their derivation of words like uṣṭragoyugae [uṣṭragoyuga] and aśvaṣaḍgavae [aśvaṣaḍgavae]. The Vṛtti also gives two explanations of the second half of the verse. The difference is chiefly in regard to the meaning of the words saṃsṛṣṭāḥ and vibhaktāḥ. In the first explanation, the former means ‘united’, that is, one word and its meaning united with another to form a compound. The second word means ‘separated’, that is, each word standing separately in the sentence. Whether a word combines with another to form a samāsa or not, its meaning is determined by the sentence as a whole. In the second explanation, the two words mean ‘included’ and ‘excluded’ respectively.]

It is now stated that the sentence-meaning can sometimes be understood even from a single phoneme.

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