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 3.14.319
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.14.319:
सर्वत्राविष्टलिङ्गत्वं लोकलिङ्गपरिग्रहे ।
विरोधित्वात् प्रसज्येत नाश्रितं तच्च लौकिकम् ॥ ३१९ ॥sarvatrāviṣṭaliṅgatvaṃ lokaliṅgaparigrahe |
virodhitvāt prasajyeta nāśritaṃ tacca laukikam || 319 ||319. If the worldly conception of gender were adopted, everything in the world would have to be designated by a word having a fixed gender and as that would result in contradiction, it has not been adopted.
Commentary
[This characteristic of the universal, namely, that it has a fixed gender would not be possible if what is called gender were identical with sex. That is why grammarians have their own conception of gender. According to this conception, words like dārāḥ (masculine plural) and kalatram (neuter singular) can denote a wife and three words having three different genders can denote the same thing as in the case of the three words: artha, vyakti and vastu.]