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 3.14.52
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.14.52:
विशेषणविशेष्यत्वं कैश्चिदेकस्तथाश्रयः ।
उपाये तत्त्वदर्शित्वादिष्यते वृत्तिवाक्ययोः ॥ ५२ ॥viśeṣaṇaviśeṣyatvaṃ kaiścidekastathāśrayaḥ |
upāye tattvadarśitvādiṣyate vṛttivākyayoḥ || 52 ||52. Others, by identifying the means (with the end, that is, what is to be explained) think that in both the compound and the sentence, there is the relation of qualifier and the qualified and that they have a common basis.
Commentary
[The compound is really indivisible. As it is difficult to grammatically explain the indivisible, it is analysed into sentences resembling those used in the world. The ignorant think that compounds and such analytic sentences have the same meaning. For instance, in the sentence nīlam utpalam = ‘a blue lotus’, there is the relation of apposition (sāmānādhikaraṇya) between nila and utpala. They are also related as viśeṣaṇa and viśeṣya. Therefore they argue that the same holds good for the compound nīlotpalam. The same thing can be said about the sentence rājñaḥ puruṣaḥ and the compound rājapuruṣaḥ. In both, there is a relation different from apposition between the two words and they also stand as viśeṣaṇa and viśeṣya to each other. In other words, according to these scholars, there is vyapekṣā = ‘interdependence of meaning’ in both the sentence and the compound. They hold that words are effects (kārya) and so, even in a compound, the relation between words is vyapekṣā, because the compound is taught as an alternative to the sentence. It must therefore, have the same meaning. It is true that in a compound the elision of the case-ending is taught but that does not mean that its sense is absent. The stem itself can express it according to the view that the stem can denote five things, namely, jāti, dravya, saṃkhyā, liṅga and kāraka. Thus the sentence and the compound arc synonymous. There is no such thing as ekārthībhāva = “integration of meaning”, that would bring about a difference in a compound. Everywhere, vyapekṣā is the relation.]
The above view is now refuted.