Verse 3.13.12

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.13.12:

न चालमनुमानाय शब्दोऽदर्शनपूर्वकः ।
सिद्धे हि दर्शने किं स्यादनुमानप्रयोजनम् ॥ १२ ॥

na cālamanumānāya śabdo'darśanapūrvakaḥ |
siddhe hi darśane kiṃ syādanumānaprayojanam || 12 ||

12. The feminine gender of a word, not preceded by the observation of sex signs in the object, cannot lead to the inference of the sex. If it has already been observed, inference (from the word) would serve no purpose.

Commentary

[It would not do to say that we infer the female sex of khaṭvā by seeing its effect namely, the feminine gender of the word. The gender of the word can only be an indication of what has already been established by other evidence. The gender of the word cannot be the cause of the sex of an object, because gender itself is the effect of sex. To infer the sex of an object not otherwise proved, from the gender of its word would result in the defect called anyonyāśraya = ‘mutual dependence’.

All this only shows that sex does not correspond to gender.

Grammarians have, therefore, to understand gender differently, as the author of the Mahābhāṣya has done, by saying =

Saṃstyānaprasavau liṅgamāstheyau (M. Bhā. II. p. 197, 1. 27.)

The feminine gender is saṃstyāna which Helārāja explains as follows:—

saṃstyānaṃ saṃhananaṃ pratilayastirobhāvo'pacayo rūpādīnāṃ sattvādimayānāṃ guṇānāṃ strī.

Similarly, the masculine gender is:

prasavaḥ pravṛttir āvirbhāvo guṇānāṃ śāstre pumān.

Lastly, the neuter gender is:

ubhayadharmasāmānyarūpā tu sthitir napuṃsakam arthād uktam bhavati. (Helārāja on Lin. 12.)

The definitions are based on the following notions. All things are combinations of the five qualities śabda, rasa, rūpa, sparśa and gandha which again are made up of sattva, rajas and tamas, Everything has, therefore, the properties of these qualities and their properties are: prakāśaḥ, prasavaḥ, āvirbhāvaḥ for sattva, pravṛttiḥ, kriyā for rajas and varaṇam, tirobhāva, sthitiḥ for tamas. These three properties arc the three genders. All the time qualities rūpa etc. are constantly changing. But these changes are not perceptible to all. We see only their final result. Patanjali himself has declared that nothing remains as it is even for a moment. Everything is constantly changing like boiling water. Everything is constantly appearing and disappearing (āvirbhāva and tirobhāva) and these are the main characteristics of the two main genders.]