language and religion in ancient India. He is known primarily as a
grammarian, but his works have great philosophical significance,
especially with regard to the connections they posit between grammar,
logic, semantics, and ontology. His thought may be characterized as
part of the shabdadvaita (word monistic) school of thought, which
asserts that cognition and language at an ultimate level are
ontologically identical concepts that refer to one supreme reality,
Brahman. Bhartrihari interprets the notion of the originary word
(shabda) as transcending the bounds of spoken and written language and
meaning. Understood as shabda tattva-the "word principle," this
complex idea explains the nature of consciousness, the awareness of
all forms of phenomenal appearances, and posits an identity obtains
between these, which is none other than Brahman. It is thus language
as a fundamentally ontological principle that accounts for how we are
able to conceptualize and communicate the awareness of objects. The
metaphysical notion of shabda Brahman posits the unity of all
existence as the foundation for all linguistically designated
individual phenomena.
1. Bhartrihari's Life and Works
Bhartrihari's works were so widely known that even the Chinese
traveler Yijing (I-Tsing) (635-713 CE) mentions the
grammarian-philosopher, mistaking him for a Buddhist. Unfortunately,
we do not know much about his personal history and his works do not
throw much light on the matter. There are some narratives referring to
his background but they are not supported by historical data. In these
somewhat dubious accounts, he is said to have been existentially torn
between two kinds of life: the path of pleasure and that of the
monastic yogi. Although he believed that he should renounce the world
of material pleasures (reflected in poetry attributed to him by
scholars), it took many attempts to finally achieve the life of
dispassion. His hedonism and philosophical acumen led him, according
to his legend, to produce works of great breadth, depth and beauty.
Bhartrihari credits some of the theories in his work Vâkyapadîya to
his teacher, who was probably one of Candrâcârya's contemporaries,
Vasurata. To be more precise, the noted scholar T.R.V. Murti proposes
the following chronology: Vasurata, followed by Bhartrihari (450-510
CE) and Dinnâga (Dignâga) (480-540 CE). Among the major works
attributed to Bhartrihari are his main philosophical treatise,
Vâkyapadîya (On Sentences and Words) kândas I, II, and III,
Mahâbhâshyatîkâ (a commentary on the Mahâbhâshya of Patanjali),
Vâkyapadîyavrtti (a commentary on the Vâkyapadîya kândas I and II),
and shabdadhâtusamîksha. Since 1884, the Vâkyapadîya, containing
approximately 635 verses, has been edited and published several times
in English translation.
The first two chapters of the Vâkyapadîya discuss the nature of
creation, the relationship of Brahman, world, language, the individual
soul (jîva), and the manifestation and comprehension of the meanings
of words and sentences. In addition, the literary works attributed by
some to Bhartrihari (not mentioned here) have made an impact on the
growing popular Hindu devotional (bhakti) movements. More importantly,
his philosophical work was recognized and addressed by schools of
Hindu scriptural exegesis (Mîmâmsâ), Vedânta (mystical Vedism) and
Buddhism.
2. Early Grammarians and Philosophical Semantics
In ancient India, grammarians saw their task as establishing the
foundations of the Vedas, but their work often resulted in the
development of their own philosophical systems. Patanjali, in his
Mahâbhâshya, explains that the study of grammar (vyâkaranam) was meant
to maintain the truth of the Vedas, to guide the use of Vedic speech
in ritual contexts, and to aid in the clear interpretations of
individual human speech. Both Pânini and Patanjali, two major Sanksrit
grammarians, were the first to provide a systematic and formal
analysis of the grammatical bases of all intended meanings. Pânini
(7th century BCE) developed the Ashtâdhyâyî (Eight-Chapters) for the
grammarians. This impressive work contains a thorough analysis of the
rules of Sanskrit language down into its nominal and verbal
components; it contains a science of language, applicable to the
Vedas, also comprised of sets of operational rules and meta -rules
that interpret the former. Among these "rules for interpretation" of
Vedic texts, we are given a "universal grammar. Pânini's approach is
not like the Mîmâmsâ, which focuses on the study of Vedic language.
Instead, Pânini deals with spoken and Vedic languages as if they are
of the same genre.
Pânini's Ashtâdhyâyî, its commentaries, and the Vâkyapadîya of
Bhartrihari are said to constitute the fundamental texts for the
school of Pânini's grammar, whose object of study was ultimately
Vedic. Around 150 BCE, Patanjali wrote the Mahâbhâshya, an
interpretation of some of Pânini's rules written in dialogue form, and
it is this work that is the basis for later commentaries on grammar
and philosophy. It is of interest to note here that the Dharmashâstras
or Treatises on Law, including the well-known Laws of Manu, were
composed between 322 and 183 BCE. J.N. Mohanty points out that these
treatises can be seen as attempts on the part of orthodox Brahminism
to preserve itself against the anti-Vedic philosophies. However, he
considers Pânini's grammar and Patanjali's commentary to carry greater
weight in the Indian philosophical tradition.
With the Vâkyapadîya, Bhartrihari moves grammatical analysis squarely
into the realm of philosophy, arguing that grammar can be consider a
darshana, a "view," or an official philosophical school, providing
perspective and insight into ultimate reality. The first verse
articulates the fundamental view of his newly envisaged school:
The Brahman is without beginning and end, whose essence is the
Word, who is the cause of the manifested phonemes, who appears as the
objects, from whom the creation of the world proceeds.
It is the project of the Vâkyapadîya to explain this verse, with all
of its philosophical, linguistic, and metaphysical implications. At
base, we contextualize Bhartrihari's philosophical inquiry into
language as being conditioned by the Indian culture and scriptural
tradition, in which this type of intellectual pursuit had a
soteriological purpose -the realization of absolute knowledge and the
spiritual liberation which ensues; thus, it is a distinctively
ontological reflection on language which Bhartrihari added to the
thought of earlier grammarians.
3. Brahman, Language, and the World
The Brahminic view of the cosmos put forth in the Vedas is one of
constant and cyclical creation and dissolution. At the dissolution of
each creative cycle a seed or trace (samskâra) is left behind out of
which the next cycle arises. What is significant here is that the
nature of the seed from which each cycle of creation bursts forth is
expressed as "Divine Word" (Daivi Vâk). If language is of divine
origin, it can be conceived as Being Brahman expressing and embodying
itself in the plurality of phenomena that is creation.
Bhartrihari considers Brahman, the basis of reality, to be "without
beginning and end" (anâdi nidhânam), as a concept that is not subject
to the attributes of temporal sequences of events, either externally
or in the succession of mental events that form cognitions. The word
principle, shabda Brahman, is not defined in terms of the temporal
nature of our cognitive states, because it functions as the inherent,
primordial ground of all cognitions. Thus, against the Hindu
logicians, the Nyâyas, for whom particular forms of human speech may
be expressed in conventional terms for practical purposes, language
itself is not something which arises or is created in time by God or
humans. As B.K. Matilal states, "To talk of an absolute beginning of
language is untenable. Language is continuous and co-terminus with
human existence or the existence of any sentient being."
There has been some scholarly debate regarding the meaning of the term
"eternal" or "akshara" as Bhartrihari applies it to the
word-principle. While some interpret this to refer to an all-pervading
entity, existing in opposition to the multiplicity of objects in space
and time, others see it as Bhartrihari's specialized way of referring
to phonemes, the minimal units of meaningful sound. It seems that
phonemes understood in this way explain how it is the case that Word
appears as objects. Eternity is "that which appears as objects, and
from whom the creation of the world proceeds." Phonemes are thus the
eternally possible elements that can be combined in inexhaustible ways
to manifest the plurality of nature.
This principle accounts for creation on a number of levels: it is the
origin of consciousness, of cognition, sensation, language use,
cognitive and experiential aspects of the world. In other words,
objects of thought and the relations between them are word-determined,
regardless of whether they are objects of perception, inference or any
other kind of knowledge. When we perceptually apprehend external
reality, we always do so in terms of names, for without names objects
are neither identifiable nor knowable.
Furthermore, when we consider phenomenal concepts, we see that they do
not exist or hold any meaning aside from the words through which they
are expressed; we might say that our concepts are "word-loaded" and
from this we can infer that the word principle causes the world.
Bhartrihari's causal claim is in keeping with the traditional
philosophical discussions on the nature of causality and inference as
he applies it to the word-principle:
Just as other thinkers, while explaining causality, saw that the
properties of cause continue in the effects….in the same way in the
scriptures also, the word in which the power of Enjoyer and Enjoyed
are submerged has been declared as the cause of the world.
4. Bhartrihari's Grammar
In the Vâkyapadîya, kânda I, Bhartrihari defines the scope of his
inquiry as the subjects of grammar. Our speech takes the form of the
basic structures of language, and grammar deals with this
communicatively spoken language. The correct understanding of speech
can take us to the limits of our conventional and spiritual
capacities, and so language analysis must operate at all the following
levels: 1. sentences and words, 2. meanings corresponding to sentences
and words, 3. the fitness or compatibility between sound and sense,
and 4. the spiritual merit obtained by using the correct language.
In the Sanskrit grammatical tradition, the "elite" are defined as
those who use the correct language; we arrive at this standard
language by abstracting from communicative language, or
"language-in-use." In his linguistic theory, Bhartrihari distinguishes
between two forms of language, the spoken, or "language-in-use" and
the analytic. The analytic or formal language emerges from a formal,
abstract analysis of communicative language. If we were to gather and
compare various sentences and words from different contexts of use, we
would logically infer the basic segments (roots, stems, suffixes) that
account for a common logical or formal basis of denotation.
This hierarchical conception of language use and language meaning can
be understood in the following way, taking off from a representation
of Matilal, with the term on the far right of each column understood
as the originator of the term in the middle, and the term in the
middle being the originator of the term on the left. In other words,
Bhartrihari's conception of utterance and understanding can be grasped
with the following schema under the rubric of:
Product Producer Derivative Element
Linguistic Components Language-in-Use Analytic Language
sound
sentences and words word stems, suffixes, etc..
sense sentence meaning and word meaning stem meaning and suffix meaning
sound and sense relations fitness compatibility causality relations
purpose spiritual merit correct knowledge
There is debate about the ontological and epistemological status of
relations between these levels of language, and Bhartrihari's
commentary on grammar includes a review of several theories and
ultimately he seems to favor the "naturalist view." In the first
chapter of the Vâkyapadîya, Bhartrihari explains the naturalist view.
Following the pâdavâdins (those who regard the word as the primary
indivisible unit) who consider word-constituents, such as roots and
suffixes, to be mere fictitious abstractions from words, so also the
vâkyavâdins (those who regard the sentence as the indivisible unit)
consider words to be imaginary abstractions from the sentence. The
naturalists, such as Pânini, believe that language has an invariant
form expressed in grammar. They therefore give epistemic primacy to
spoken language; formal language is only an "appearance" and secondary
aid to understanding. The conventionalists, on the other hand, hold
that the analytic language is primary in that it contains within it
all the structural features that may be used to create meaningful
speech.
5. The Sphota Theory of Language
Bhartrihari's theory occupies an interesting place in the ongoing
Hindu-Buddhist debates about meaning and reference. For the Buddhists,
meaning is a function of social and linguistic convention and
reference is ultimately a projection of imaginative consciousness. For
the Brahminic Nyâyas or Logicians, words have meaning because they
refer to external objects; words can be combined in sentences just
like things exist in relation to one another in external reality. With
Advaita Vedânta, words mask the meaning of the Absolute Self (Âtman)
which is Brahman, so that, when a person predicates categories to
their identity such as in the sentence "I am tall," this predication
masks the all-inclusive nature of the eternal Self, which is beyond
categorization. Bhartrihari puts forth a theory of language which,
rather than starting by taking fundamental ontological,
epistemological or social sides in these well-established debates,
starts from the question of how meaning happens, how it emerges from
the acts of both speaker and audience, and, constructing this theory
first, what he believes to be appropriate metaphysical,
epistemological and soteriological implications are drawn from it.
For Bhartrihari, linguistic meaning cannot be conveyed or accounted
for by the physical utterance and perception of sounds, so he puts
forth the sphota theory: the theory which posits the meaning-unit,
which for him is the sentence, as a single entity. The term "sphota"
dates back to Pânini's reference to "sphotâyana" in his treatise
Ashtâdhyâyî, however it was Patanjali who explicitly discusses sphota
in his Mahâbhâshya. According to him sphota signifies spoken language,
with the audible sound (dhvani) as its special quality. In
Bhartrihari's treatment of this concept, while the audible noise may
vary depending on the speaker's mode of utterance, sphota as the
meaning unit of speech is not subject to such variations. This is so
because for Bhartrihari, meaning is conveyed by the sentence. To
explicate this theory, Bhartrihari depends on the root of sphota,
namely sphut, meaning "to burst forth…" as in the "idea that spews
forth" (in an internal mental state) when a meaningful sound, the
sentence as a whole, is uttered.
The meaning of the sentence, the speech-unit, is one entire cognitive
content (samvit). The sentence is indivisible (akhanda) and owes its
cognitive value to the meaning-whole. Thus, its meaning is not
reducible to its parts, the individual words which are distinguished
only for the purposes of convention or expression. The differentiated
word-meanings, which are also ontological categories, are the
abstracted "pieces" we produce using imaginative construction, or
vikalpa. Sphota entails a kind of mental perception which is described
as a moment of recognition, an instantaneous flash (pratibhâ), whereby
the hearer is made conscious, through hearing sounds, of the latent
meaning unit already present in his consciousness (unconscious). The
sentence employs analyzable units to express its meaning, but that
meaning emerges out of the particular concatenation of those units,
not because those units are meaningful in themselves. We analyze
language by splitting it up into words, prefixes, suffixes, etc….but
this is indicative of the fact that we "misunderstand" the fundamental
oneness of the speech-unit. Words are only abstracted meaning
possibilities in this sense, whereas the uttered sentence is the
realization of a meaning-whole irreducible to those parts in
themselves. This fundamental unity seems to apply, also, to any
language taken as a whole. Matilal explains: "it is only those who do
not know the language thoroughly who analyze it into words, in order
to get a connected meaning." As this scholar suggests, it is rather
remarkable that Bhartrihari's recognition of the theoretical
indivisibility of the sentence resonates with the contemporary
linguistic view of learning sentences as wholes (at a later stage of
development we build new sentences from learned first sentences
through analogical reasoning).
Sphota is therefore the cause of manifested language, which is meant
to convey meaning. Sphota is more specifically identified as the
underlying totality of linguistic capability, or "potency" and
secondarily as the cause of two differentiated aspects of manifested
meaning: applied meaning expressed as dhvani, the audible sound
patterns of speech and artha-language as meaning-bearing. The
grammatical/syntactical parts of the underlying sphota can only be
heard and understood through its phonetic elements. Bhartrihari
explains that the apparent difference between sphota and dhvani arises
as we utter words. Initially, the word exists in the mind of the
speaker as a unity but is manifested as a sequence of different
sounds-thus giving the appearance of differentiation. dhvanis may be
more specifically described as merely the audible possibility of
meaning, a necessary but hardly sufficient condition of meaning.
We might think of this unit of linguistic potency, the sphota, as the
cognitive/propositional whole content of meaning that can be
transposed into different languages, while the actual word-sounds
comprise the contents of the "speech-act". But what holds the act to
its ability to convey intended meanings? The words sounded by a
plurality of speakers comprise the physical manifestation of vâk or
vaikharî-vâk and it is upon this form of vâk that physical objects as
objective forms are modeled. The unity that underlies these objective
referents and meanings, however, is known as the intuited
vâk-pashyati-vâk, which makes possible the unmediated understanding of
a complete linguistic expression. This intuitive level of
understanding, constitutive of the sphota, is teleological in its
nature and structure in that it contains all potential possibilities
of meaning-bearing dhvanis and their order of manifestation.
But, what guarantees that the hearer of speech properly comprehends
what is uttered? In the second book of the Vâkyapadîya, Bhartrihari
states:
Sentence meaning is produced by word meanings but is not
constituted by them. Its form is that Intuition, that innate "know
how" awareness (pratibhâ) possessed by all beings. It is a cognitive
state evident to the hearer…not describable or definable, but all
practical activities depend on it directly or through recollection of
it.
Pratibhâ intuition can be characterized as shabda, the very same
speech principle externalized in the utterances of speakers, as it
operates within the hearer, causing her to instantaneously comprehend
the meaning of the utterance. However, linguistic convention, shared
by speaker and hearer, cannot account for the flash of comprehension.
If that were the case, we would not have instances where communication
breaks down in spite of the shared language between speaker and
hearer. The comprehension of meaning lies in the sphota that is
already present in the hearer's awareness. As she hears the succession
of audible phonemes, the latent and undifferentiated language potency
within her is brought to "fruition" in the form of grasping the
speaker's meaning. Thus, while the audible words are necessary for
such verbal comprehension to occur in the hearer, they are not
sufficient. It is her own ability to understand meaning referred to by
these words, by virtue of sharing the same sphota with the speaker,
which completes the act of cognition.
It is at this point that the philosophy of language has for
Bhartrihari religious implications of both ontological and
interpretive scope. Just as various sentences might sound different in
the mouths of different speakers and yet convey the same meanings,
various Vedas may seem different in form and style, but there is a
unity carried by the underlying sphota, which ensures that it is the
same truth, or dharma that is expressed throughout the texts. Bearing
in mind that Brahman is the ultimate referent of all speech forms,
this higher reality is manifested in the sacred texts-whose efficacy
(ritual, soteriological, epistemological) depends upon our ability to
correctly apprehend its meaning. The sphota concept makes such
interpretation possible. Again, the sphota expresses a meaning-whole
behind individual letters and words. The implication for the truth of
Vedic discourse is clear, for that truth is already present in the
speaker (the Veda) and is potentially present in the consciousness of
the hearers (the practitioners).
According to Bhartrihari's theory, we can justify this particular
philosophical method as revelatory by using the concept of
shabdapramâna. The implications of this method are explained in the
following section; here, we examine the source of our cognitions. But
in order for one to give their assent to a worldview that renders to
language the cosmic and salvific roles Bhartrihari does, a theory that
posits that language is the medium of ultimate knowledge, one must be
convinced that language in general has the capacity to yield ordinary
knowledge. Given the way Bhartrihari conceptualizes language, as not
primarily referent directed, but instead as referent-constructing, we
need to look at how the grammarian thematizes the knowledge-conferring
power of language within his own peculiarly unique framework.
6. Phenomenology of Language and the Concept of Shabda-Brahman
Sphota may be characterized as the intersubjective, universal
"store-house" of meaning, the ground of all linguistic activity and
communication. Sphota is the unifying principle that connects the
word, the grammatical form of the word, and the meaning. Furthermore,
just as words and sentences represent "pieces" of the meaning
extracted from the whole, the objects and states of affairs these
pieces represent actually refer to a "whole of objects meant" or an
entire reality.
In classical Indian thought, objects are thought to be constituted of
substance (dravya), but in Bhartrihari and especially in his first
major commentator Helârâja, substance can be distinguished into two
kinds, the substance of all things, which is Brahman, and the other
individual, empirical substances. The empirical notion of substance
here may be derived from the grammatical operation of ekashesha,
explained by Pânini as using individual word-tokens to refer to
individual objects-substances. Thus, names or singular terms are said
by the earliest grammarians to refer to one substance at a time,
therefore substance is defined through the relation of reference, and
the nature of each substance is so specific that we cannot posit any
general properties possessed by all of them. For example, each time we
say the word 'cow' we refer to a different cow, and each cow is
actually a different wholly individual entity.
Bhartrihari defines "actual" or empirical substance as that which we
refer to by using indexicals and quantifiers, which refer to anything
in our ontological reality: 'this' 'that' 'something' or 'anything.'
The term 'this' points out an existence given to perception, while
'that' refers to something whose existence can be validated by some
other means of knowledge but which is not available to perception.
Bhartrihari also acknowledges the pragmatic and common sense view of
"substance" as "a relative concept being dependent on our concept of
quality (guna). A substance is that which is said to be distinguished
and a quality is that which distinguishes the substance.
But Bhartrihari's contribution to this debate changes the very notion
of substance into a much more inclusive and general concept, since
anything we refer to using a name or substantive term, even generic
properties and verbs, become substances in that they are distinguished
by words, as Matilal illustrates: "Thus, cooking would refer to the
fact of cooking and 'walking' to the fact of walking as long as the
speaker intends to distinguish the act of cooking from the act of
walking." "In the third book of the Vâkyapadîya, he defines the
concept of 'quality'/guna as dependent upon, as arising from
substance. He rejects the Vaisheshika view that substances and
qualities belong to entirely different categories (padârtha-s), and
espouses the revolutionary view that the latter arises from the
former. For him, qualities, existing in relation to substances serve
to further differentiate those substances by "delimiting their scope."
But how does he account for such a radical revisioning?
Bhartrihari's contribution of his particular theory of the
"imaginative construction" of perceptions and language once again
emerges within the context of debates with competing theories of
knowledge. The Buddhist idealistic claim also argued that the world of
experience or phenomena is at base a product of the human imaginative
faculty. The Buddhists claim that our cognitive experiences construct
our reality; these are modes of consciousness containing cognitive
contents and in the final analysis, do not yield any knowledge about
reality as it may be outside of themselves. It is consciousness that
posits the (apparent) externality of objects, not the "objects
themselves." This form of phenomenal-idealism is developed as a
counterclaim to the Hindu realist position, which affirms the
existence of external reality. For the Buddhist, objects are only the
external contents of the human imagination. Interestingly enough,
Bhartrihari's sphota theory of language and cognition is sometimes
understood as an extension of the Buddhist position; according to the
grammarian, cognition is entirely language-dependent in that the
structure of our cognitive states is determined by grammar. But
Bhartrihari's theory posits knowledge as a matter of specifically
linguistic construction. The concept of vikalpa for him implies the
following: the structure of language shapes how we categorize the
objects of our experience and our descriptions of reality as a whole.
Even at the most immediate levels of awareness), we must conceptualize
and therefore interpret the contents of sense perception. Thus, at the
level of pure sensation, the sensory core is already saturated, as it
were, with the "deep structure" of language. In this respect,
Bhartrihari's position differs from the Buddhist position rather
dramatically. The Buddhists clearly distinguish between pure
perception (nirvikalpa-pratyaksha), which is pre-conceptual,
unverbalizable and correspondent to reality, and constructed
perception (savikalpa-pratyakasha) that is conceptual and may
therefore be considered a verbalized interpretation of the real. For
the Buddhist, the pure sensory core is the real locus of perception.
Bhartrihari, as an ontological monist, does not distinguish between a
pure perception and a constructed perception such that the former is
concept-free and ineffable and the latter concept-loaded and
autonomously constructed, because he thinks that perception is
inherently verbal. Not only are sense data and linguistic units
non-different, but they are expressive of the unitary principle of
Brahman-which is differentiated into the plurality of linguistic
objects that make up the world.
Bhartrihari's notion of vikalpa is also directed against the early
Nyaiyayikas, who, while agreeing on the correspondence between word
and thing, uphold the distinction between language and its
object-referents. These Hindu Logicians held that the perceptual
apprehension of the object could be distinguished from naming the
object. For the Nyâyas, who are ontological pluralists and
materialists, words refer to distinct generic properties of and
relations between objects. Perception is a two-step process involving
the initial apprehension of the object and then the subsequent
apperception/awareness that results in mental and syntactic/linguistic
representations of the first moment of awareness. Here, linguistic
categories originate in the different substances and attributes that
exist in the world. Bhartrihari counters them by arguing that the act
of perception, rather than acquiring linguistic clothing after the
bare particular has already been presented to consciousness, can only
be aware of the object before it as a 'this' or 'that', that is, as an
awareness of something only as a particular and as such, identifiable.
That is to say, significantly enough, that for Bhartrihari, the word
makes the thing an individual, and as one moves further and further
along the refined categories of what is conventionally known as
denotation, the word makes the thing what it is. For Bhartrihari, the
difference the Logicians posit between the ontological and the
linguistic would make meanings of all kinds, mundane ones and
religious ones, contingent on the circumstances and speaker. But if
perception is innately verbal, no perilous bridge need be suspended
over some supposed abyss between vision and truth, both in our mundane
lives and for the rishis who pronounced the Vedas. The word then makes
the thing, and Brahman makes the world, and so it is entirely proper
to speak of words as the creator of all things (shabda-Brahman).
7. Bhartrihari and Western Philosophy
Although previous Bhartrihari scholarship has progressed rather slowly
due to numerous difficulties, within the last decade or so his work
has garnered attention from Western scholars. Bhartrihari's
explorations into the relations between language, thought and reality
reflect contemporary philosophical concerns with meaning, language
use, and communication, particularly in the work of Chomsky,
Wittgenstein, Grice, and Austin. His theory of language recognizes
that meaning is conveyed in formalist terms where meaning is organized
along syntactical rules. But it makes the leap, not made by modern
Western philosophers, that such a view of language does not merely
serve our mundane communicative purposes and see to the achievement of
practical goals, but leads to paramount metaphysical knowledge, a
knowledge carrying with it a palpable salvific value.
8. References and Further Reading
* Bhartrihari. The Vâkyapadîya, Critical texts of Cantos I and II
with English Translation. Trans. K. Pillai. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1971.
* Coward, Harold G. The Sphota Theory of Language: A Philosophical
Analysis . Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980.
* Coward, Harold G., and K. Kunjunni Raja, eds. The Philosophy of
the Grammarians (Volume V of Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, ed.
Karl Potter). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
* Herzberger, Radhika. Bhartrihari and the Buddhists. Dordrecht:
D. Reidel/Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986.
* Houben, Jan E.M. The Sambanda Samuddesha and Bhartrihari's
Philosophy of Language. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995.
* Iyer, Soubramania, K.A. Bhartrihari. A Study of Vâkyapadîya in
the Light of Ancient Commentaries. Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate
Research Institute, 1997.
* Matilal, B.K. Mind, Language, and World. Ed. J. Ganeri. Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2002. (See "What Bhartrihari Would Have Said
About Quine.")
* Matilal, B.K. The Word and the World: India's Contribution to
the Study of Language. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992.
* Matilal, B. K. Perception: An Essay on Classical Indian Theories
of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. (See chapter 12.)
* Matilal, B.K. Epistemology, Logic, and Grammar in Indian
Philosophical Analysis. The Hague: Mouton, 1971.
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