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 2.12
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.12:
भागैरनर्थकैर्युक्ता वृषभोदकयावकाः ।
अन्वयव्यतिरेकौ तु व्यवहारनिबन्धनम् ॥ १२ ॥bhāgairanarthakairyuktā vṛṣabhodakayāvakāḥ |
anvayavyatirekau tu vyavahāranibandhanam || 12 ||12. The words Vṛṣabha, Udaka and Yāvaka have meaningless parts. Analysis through the method of agreement and difference is the basis of worldly usage.
Commentary
[Everywhere the parts which we artificially make in a word are meaningless. If we make these parts and attribute meanings to them, it is only in an artificial sense. Words like Vṛṣabha, Udaka, Yāvaka contain meaningless parts in the form of Ṛṣabha, Uda and Yāva respectively. Similarly, words like pacati, pācaka have meaningless parts in the form of stem, suffix etc. But the splitting of a word into stem and suffix and attributing meanings to them at least serve the purpose of teaching the formation of words to the ignorant. But the artificial parts Ṛṣabha, Uda and Yava in Vṛṣabha, Udaka and Yāvaka do not serve any such purpose.]