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 3.14.333
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.14.333:
ननु चानभिधेयत्वे द्रव्यस्य तदपाश्रयः ।
आकृतेरुपकारोऽयं द्रव्याभावान्न कल्पते ॥ ३३३ ॥nanu cānabhidheyatve dravyasya tadapāśrayaḥ |
ākṛterupakāro'yaṃ dravyābhāvānna kalpate || 333 ||333. If the individual is not the expressed meaning of a word, how can a service, based on its existence, be rendered to the universal, the individual being non existent?
Commentary
[Here a question arises. If the universal is the meaning of words and not the individual, how can gender and number based on the individual result? The grammatical form of a word is based upon its meaning. That meaning which is not expressed by the word is as good as non-existent as far as its grammatical form is concerned.]
This doubt is answered as follows—[Read next verse]