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 2.269
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.269:
वाक्यस्यार्थात् पदार्थानामपोद्धारे प्रकल्पिते ।
शब्दान्तरेण सम्बन्धः क (त) स्यैकस्योपपद्यते ॥ २६९ ॥vākyasyārthāt padārthānāmapoddhāre prakalpite |
śabdāntareṇa sambandhaḥ ka (ta) syaikasyopapadyate || 269 ||269. Once the analysis of the meanings of the individual words from that of the sentence is done, the meaning of one word so obtained can be connected with another, also so obtained.
Commentary
How can the question of primary and secondary arise if the words and word-meanings are unreal and only the sentence and the sentence-meaning are real? This question is never raised in regard to the sentence-meaning.
[Read verse 269 above]
[When the sentence and its meaning are considered indivisible, there are no individual words and their meanings and so the question of primary and secondary cannot arise. And yet for practical purposes the sentence is split up into words by a process of abstraction (apoddhāra). When this is done, the distinction of primary and secondary is based on long usage or lack of it. ]
But then a word is sometimes used without being linked to another word. That means that the individual word is real.