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 2.408-410
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 2.408-410:
पदरूपं तु यद्वाक्यमस्तित्वोपनिबन्धनम् ।
कामं विमर्शस्तत्रायं न वाक्यावयवे पदे ॥ ४०८ ॥
यथैवानर्थकेर्वर्णैविंशिष्टार्थोऽभिधीयते ।
पदैरनर्थकैरेवं विशिष्टार्थोऽभिधीयते ॥ ४०९ ॥
यदन्तराले ज्ञानं तु पदार्थेषूपजायते ।
प्रतिपत्तेरूपायोऽसौ प्रक्रमानवधारणात् ॥ ४१० ॥padarūpaṃ tu yadvākyamastitvopanibandhanam |
kāmaṃ vimarśastatrāyaṃ na vākyāvayave pade || 408 ||
yathaivānarthakervarṇaiviṃśiṣṭārtho'bhidhīyate |
padairanarthakairevaṃ viśiṣṭārtho'bhidhīyate || 409 ||
yadantarāle jñānaṃ tu padārtheṣūpajāyate |
pratipatterūpāyo'sau prakramānavadhāraṇāt || 410 ||408. These considerations apply to a sentence consisting of a single word with the verb asti mentally supplied and not to an individual word which is part of a sentence (and which has been obtained by analysis).
409. Just as it is stated by others (the Mīmāṃsakas) that the meaningless phonemes manifest the expressive word, in the same way, the meaningless individual words manifest the sentence having a particularised meaning.
410. The cognition of the meanings of the individual words which takes place in the middle is only a means (to the understanding of the sentencemeaning) because the sentence-meaning is not understood at the beginning.
Commentary
If context can determine the meaning of a word and if such a word is different from another having the same sequence of phonemes, the established doctrine of the indivisibility of the sentence and the sentence-meaning seems to be affected. But that doctrine stands.
[Read verse 408-409 above]
We do seem to understand word-meanings before the sentence-meaning is understood. How is that?
[Read verse 410 above]
[As illustrations of the process of understanding something in the middle, the Vṛtti takes the words bhavati and brāhmaṇakambala. In the first case before we understand the meaning of the full word we may understand something from bhava, but that is not real. In the second word we may understand something from brāhmaṇa but in the meaning of the full word it has no reality: Tadyathā bhavatīti bhavaśabdamātrasyārtham brāhmaṇakambale ca brāhmaṇaśrutimātrasyārtham.]
The nature of the sentence-meaning according to anvitā bhidhānavāda in now stated.