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 3.14.10
Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.14.10:
सामान्यानामसम्बन्धात् तौ विशेषेव्यवस्थितौ ।
रूपाभेदाद् विशेषं तमभिव्यङ्क्तुं न शक्नुतः ॥ १० ॥sāmānyānāmasambandhāt tau viśeṣevyavasthitau |
rūpābhedād viśeṣaṃ tamabhivyaṅktuṃ na śaknutaḥ || 10 ||10. As the generic meanings are mutually unconnected, the two words really denote the particular. But they cannot bring the particular to the mind (of the hearer) because of their common form.
Commentary
[As long as the meanings of the two words require something else for their completion, they may be said to be of a generic nature. It is of the nature of substance. As they do not serve each other, there is no relation between them. But as the words together form one sentence, they become connected and then they denote the particular: the word kṛṣṇa denotes ‘black’ sesame and the word tila denotes sesame having black colour. In the mind of the speaker, the meanings of the two words were already connected. As for the hearer, when he hears the two words, he also connects them together and understands that kṛṣṇa means the colour black as co-existing with the universal tilatva = sesame-ness and that tila means the universal tilatva as co-existing with the quality blackness. The two meanings specify each other. They convey to the mind of the hearer a connection which already existed in the mind of the speaker.]