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 3.1.106
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.1.106:
यतो विषयरूपेण ज्ञानरूपं न गृह्यते ।
अर्थरूपविविक्तं च स्वरूपं नावधार्यते ॥ १०६ ॥yato viṣayarūpeṇa jñānarūpaṃ na gṛhyate |
artharūpaviviktaṃ ca svarūpaṃ nāvadhāryate || 106 ||106. As the form of the knowledge is not cognised as an object, its form as distinct from that of the object is not grasped.
Commentary
[Why not accept that in the knowledge ‘this is a knowledge of the jar’, just as the form of the external object figures, in the same way, the form of the knowledge itself, mixed up with the former, also figures? If that is so, it would mean that knowledge also becomes the object of knowledge. But this position is not valid. The external object figures in this knowledge, but not the knowledge itself, as the illuminator of the external object and as distinct from it. Therefore, what is regarded as the knowledge of a knowledge is really the knowledge of the external object that figures in that knowledge. A cognition having the form of another cognition figuring in it as its object does not arise. There can be no cognition which does not have an external object figuring in it. So, in the cognition ghatam ahaṃ jānāmi, it is the jar which figures on the object, not the knowledge of it.
Thus, it has been shown that the word conveys the universal which is capable of accomplishing worldly usage relating to visible and invisible things.]