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 3.14.245
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.14.245:
द्रव्यस्य ग्रहणं चात्र लिङ्गसंख्याविशेषणम् ।
द्रव्याश्रितत्वं हि तयोस्ततोऽन्यस्य न सिध्यतः ॥ २४५ ॥dravyasya grahaṇaṃ cātra liṅgasaṃkhyāviśeṣaṇam |
dravyāśritatvaṃ hi tayostato'nyasya na sidhyataḥ || 245 ||245. Substance is mentioned here as qualifying gender and number. They rest on substance and not on anything else.
Commentary
If relation is the predominant meaning and it hides the substance, how has it been stated that the whole meaning of the word including substance, gender and number, is conveyed? (M. Bhā. I. p. 422, 1. 27.) This is now explained.
[Read verse 245 above]
[Even though gender and number usually qualify substance, here substance should be understood as qualifying gender and number. Gender and number here are not connected with something else like quality, They inhere in substance. Though, in this view, relation is the expressed meaning, the expression sadravyaḥ (including substance) is used in order that gender and number may also result. Relation being expressed here as identical with the meaning of the other word susceptible to gender and number, the two are equal to each other in their attributes. Both are in the nature of substance. They are not distant from each other as when bare relation is the basis of formation. The relatum which is the expressed meaning would have its own gender and number. In some complex formations, the resulting form has the property of the nimitta and not of the nimittin as one would expect. For instance, in harītakyaḥ phalāni= the fruits of the harītakī tree (the yellow Myrobalan). Here harītakyaḥ stands for the fruits and so should have the neuter gender to agree with phalāni but by P. 4. 4. 167 and 1. 2. 51 it retains the femimine gender which it had when it was the name of the tree.]