Verse 3.13.5

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.13.5:

हस्तिन्यां वडवायां च स्त्रीति बुद्धेः समन्वयः ।
अतस्तां जातिमिच्छन्ति द्रव्यादिसमवायिनीम् ॥ ५ ॥

hastinyāṃ vaḍavāyāṃ ca strīti buddheḥ samanvayaḥ |
atastāṃ jātimicchanti dravyādisamavāyinīm || 5 ||

5. In regard to a female elephant and a mare, we have the cognition that it is feminine. So they look upon it as a universal inhering in a substance etc.

Commentary

[Even in objects belonging to totally different classes such as a female elephant and a mare, we have the same cognition of femininity. So we conclude that universals like femininity can co-exist in the same object with other universals like elephant-ness etc. For grammarians, the object is what the words convey and from words, different objects belonging to different classes are cognised as having sex-gender (liṅga). Therefore, one concludes that the universal of gender exists in objects belonging to all categories such as substance, quality, action, generality and so on. An object, conveyed by a word having a fixed gender, is understood as having the universal of that gender. Conveyed by another word having another gender the same object is understood as having the universal of that other gender. Mere ‘Being’ is understood as being masculine from the word bhāva, as feminine from the word sattā and as neuter from the word sāmānya. Even a universal like gotva (cow-ness) is presented by the words bhāva, jāti and sāmānya as qualified by three different genders. So everywhere the universal of gender is regulated by the power of words. When words express things as a substance, they always do so as qualified by gender which is an attribute of it. Even a particular sex-gender can be presented by words as having the other sex-genders as we can see in the expressions: strītvam, strītā, strībhāvaḥ.]