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 2.90
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.90:
गवये नरसिंहे वाप्येकज्ञानावृते यथा ।
भागं जात्यन्तरस्यैव सदृशं प्रतिपद्यते ॥ ९० ॥gavaye narasiṃhe vāpyekajñānāvṛte yathā |
bhāgaṃ jātyantarasyaiva sadṛśaṃ pratipadyate || 90 ||90. It is like the perception in a gavaya or in a man-lion, grasped by a single cognition of a part that is similar to a universal external to it.
Commentary
[In a gavaya, there is no universal called gotva, in a manlion (narasiṃha), there is no universal called naratva or siṃhatva. Whatever universal there is in these two objects is totally different from these two universals. But the average man thinks that the universals gotva, naratva and siṃhatva, similar to those existing in a cow, a man and a lion, exist in a gavaya and narasiṃha. They do not, but mind creates the fiction. In the same way, the mind creates the fiction of word-meaning within the indivisible sentence-meaning.]