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 3.14.562
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.14.562:
एकस्य कार्यनिर्ज्ञानात् सिद्धस्य विषयान्तरे ।
तद्धर्मत्वविवक्षायां बुद्ध्या भेदः प्रकल्प्यते ॥ ५६२ ॥ekasya kāryanirjñānāt siddhasya viṣayāntare |
taddharmatvavivakṣāyāṃ buddhyā bhedaḥ prakalpyate || 562 ||562. When an action, to be done in a case, is thought of as having the same feature as one done previously and, therefore, well-known, a difference is mentally postulated.
Commentary
[In ciccheda kṛtahastavat = ‘you cut off, like a practised hand’, the suffix vati can be explained by the previous sūtras. What it means is this:—Just as you cut off neatly in a previous fight because of practice, in the same way, on another occasion also, you would act in a similar manner. Here, though the agent is the same, he is thought of as two as he acts at two different times. The previous one, already known, becomes the standard and the later one, not yet known, becomes the object of comparison. In this explanation, the vati comes by P. 5.1.115. In the same way, in rājavat pāṇḍoḥ pretakāryāṇi kāraya = ‘get the funerals of Pāṇḍu done as in the case of previous kings’, what was done before and, therefore, well-known becomes the standard of comparison for what is yet to be done and, therefore, not done.]