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 2.72
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.72:
विज्ञातार्थं पदं यच्च तदर्थे प्रतिपादिते ।
पिकादि यदविज्ञातं तत्किमित्यनुयुज्यते ॥ ७२ ॥vijñātārthaṃ padaṃ yacca tadarthe pratipādite |
pikādi yadavijñātaṃ tatkimityanuyujyate || 72 ||72. When the meaning of the known words (in a sentence) has been understood, why does one enquire about the meaning of an unknown word like pika?
Commentary
It is now stated that, if the individual word does not exist, one cannot explain why people sometimes enquire about the meaning of a particular word.
[Read verse 72 above]
Puṇyarāja and the Vṛtti explain this kārikā in the same way, except that the latter gives two examples instead of one. It is well-known that listeners sometimes fail to understand the meaning of just one word in a sentence and enquire about it.
In vanāt pika ānīyatām, the word pika may be obscure to somebody, who would therefore enquire about its meaning. In the sentence vārāṅgī jarjarā vṛṣalāya dīyatām=let the torn vārāṅgī=‘turmeric-coloured dress’ be given to the śūdra, somebody may not understand the meaning of Vārāṅgī and may just enquire about that. This shows that the enquirer has the consciousness that the individual word has a meaning. Nobody makes a similar enquiry about the meanings of v or Kin the words Vṛṣabha and kāṇḍīra after having understood the meaning of the remaining portions of the two words, ṛṣabha and āṇḍīra, showing that people have no consciousness that phonemes have a meaning.]