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 3.13.6
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.13.6:
परतन्त्रस्य यल् लिङ्गमपोद्धारे विवक्षिते ।
तत्रासौ शब्दसंस्कारः शब्दैरेव व्यपाश्रितः ॥ ६ ॥paratantrasya yal liṅgamapoddhāre vivakṣite |
tatrāsau śabdasaṃskāraḥ śabdaireva vyapāśritaḥ || 6 ||6. When the sentence dissolving the compound is intended to be made, the gender of the subordinate word is only the attribute of the word and belongs only to the word.
Commentary
[A noun expresses a thing (sattva) and when it enters into a compound as the secondary word and it is intended to analyse the compound, the secondary word is put in some gender or other. But that gender must not be taken seriously. It is there only because a noun must have some gender or other. In the compound kukkuṭāṇḍam kukkuṭasya aṇḍam, should one understand kukkuṭasya as the result of the masculinisation (puṃvadbhāva) of kukkuṭyāḥ = ‘of the hen’ or was it masculine from the beginning? Kātyāyana on P. 6. 3. 42 teaches masculinisation. But the M. Bhā is of the view that there is no need for it because it was never feminine. It is not the intention of the word to say that the egg is from a hen, the female. Its only intention is to exclude other birds as the source of the egg and for that the masculine form is just as effective. The secondary word which comes first in the compound does not convey the notion of femininity but only that of a particular class of bird. From the context and from the nature of things, one would, of course, understand that the egg is from the hen.]