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 3.7.112
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.7.112:
यथैवाकाषनास्तित्वमसन्नूर्तिनिरूपितम् ।
तथैव मूर्तिनास्तित्वमसदाकाशनिश्रयम् ॥ ११२ ॥yathaivākāṣanāstitvamasannūrtinirūpitam |
tathaiva mūrtināstitvamasadākāśaniśrayam || 112 ||112. Just as the (unreal) absence of ākāśa is imagined on the basis of the presence of limited objects, in the same way, the absence of limited bodies is also imagined on the basis of the presence of ākāśa.
Commentary
It is now shown that destruction is only a fiction.
[Read verse 112 above]
[What is called destruction is really a fiction. Ākāśa is all-pervasive. There is no place where it is not. And yet one creates the fiction that where the limited objects are there is no ākāśa. Similarly, there is no such thing as the total destruction of even limited objects like a jar. And yet when they are not visible one understands that there is ākāśa where the objects were. When the objects are manifested, one looks upon them as being born. Thus both being born and being destroyed are fictions. Things are neither born nor destroyed. What is called ākāśa is not the absence of things. If there is no absence of things, there cannot be birth either, because things are always there.]
Even if birth is real, the expression ‘it is born’ can be explained.