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 3.8.51
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.8.51:
मृगो धावति पश्येति साध्यसाधनरूपता ।
तथा विषयभेदेन सरणस्योपपद्यते ॥ ५१ ॥mṛgo dhāvati paśyeti sādhyasādhanarūpatā |
tathā viṣayabhedena saraṇasyopapadyate || 51 ||51. In the sentence: ‘See! the deer runs’ it is quite appropriate that the act of running should be both sādhya and sādhana in regard to two different t hings (viṣayabhedena).
Commentary
[In the sentence: paśya mṛgo dhāvati, the verbal suffix expresses the notion of agent and in regard to that, the act of running is sādhya but in regard to the act of seeing, it is an object (Karma), that is, it is siddha. It is not the deer which is the object of the action of seeing but the act of running is the object. As sādhya, the act of running cannot be karma. But as siddha, it can become the accessory of another action. When the stem and the suffix express two different ideas, they must be somehow coordinated. The root everywhere expresses an idea which is sādhya, a process, something to be brought about. Kṛtya-suffixes, like verbal suffixes, naturally express processes. The only difference between them and verbs is that in their case, the accessories are expressed by a different word. Therefore, a word ending in a kṛtya-suffix can be associated with a word ending in a suffix expressive of repetition of actions. We can say: dviḥ śayitavyam bhavatā= ‘you have to lie down twice’, trir bhuktam bhavatā = ‘you have eaten three times’, dvir bhuktvā gataḥ = ‘he went away after eating twice’ and so on.]