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 2.327
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.327:
शब्दव्यवहिता बुद्धिरप्रयुक्तपदाश्रया ।
अनुमानात् तदर्थस्य प्रत्यये हेतुरुच्यते ॥ ३२७ ॥śabdavyavahitā buddhiraprayuktapadāśrayā |
anumānāt tadarthasya pratyaye heturucyate || 327 ||327. It is a certain completeness of idea, separated by and depending upon the words that are not used, which through inference, appears to be the cause of our understanding the meaning (of the words not used).
Commentary
[When we hear the bare noun vṛkṣaḥ tree we understand a complete meaning from it such as: ‘the tree stands’ or ‘the tree is seen’. It means that we supply the word tiṣṭhati or dṛśyate mentally. This is śrutārthāpatti. The point of the Mīmāṃsaka is that a single word cannot convey a complete meaning. We supply some word or other mentally to complete the sentence and the sentence-meaning. In other words, the understanding of the complete meaning is separated from that of the incomplete meaning of the word actually used by the unused word coming to the mind...... asminneva śabde viśiṣṭarūpe yā buddhir utpadyate tayā vyavahitaṃ buddhyantaram buddhau prāptasannidhānaṃ tadarthapratipattinimittaṇi bhavati.]
The objection is answered as follows.—