Bhartṛhari
Bhartṛhari (Devanagari: भर्तृहरि; also romanised as Bhartrihari; fl. c. 5th century CE) was a Hindu linguistic philosopher[1] to whom are normally ascribed two influential Sanskrit texts:
- the Bhartrhari's paradox, and
- the Sanskrit poetry, comprising three collections of about 100 stanzas each; it may or may not be by the same author who composed the two mentioned grammatical works.
In the medieval tradition of Indian scholarship, it was assumed that both texts were written by the same person.[citation needed] Modern philologists were sceptical of this claim, owing to an argument that dated the grammar to a date subsequent to the poetry.[citation needed] Since the 1990s, however, scholars have agreed that both works may indeed have been contemporary, in which case it is plausible that there was only one Bhartrihari who wrote both texts.[citation needed]
Both the grammar and the poetic works had an enormous influence in their respective fields. The grammar in particular, takes a
According to Aithihyamala, he is also credited with some other texts like Harikītika and Amaru Shataka.
The poetry constitute short verses, collected into three centuries of about a hundred poems each. Each century deals with a different rasa or aesthetic mood; on the whole his poetic work has been very highly regarded both within the tradition and by modern scholarship.
The name Bhartrihari is also sometimes associated with Bhartrihari traya Shataka, the legendary king of Ujjaini in the 1st century.
Date and identity
The account of the Chinese traveller Yi-Jing indicates that Bhartrihari's grammar was known by 670 CE, and that he may have been Buddhist, which the poet was not. Based on this, scholarly opinion had formerly attributed the grammar to a separate author of the same name from the 7th century CE.[2] However, other evidence indicates a much earlier date:
Bhartrihari was long believed to have lived in the seventh century CE, but according to the testimony of the Chinese pilgrim Yijing [...] he was known to the Buddhist philosopher
Dignaga, and this has pushed his date back to the fifth century CE.— [3]
A period of c. 450–500[4] "definitely not later than 425–450",[5] or, following Erich Frauwallner, 450–510[6][7] or perhaps 400 CE or even earlier.[8]
Yi-Jing's other claim, that Bhartrihari was a Buddhist, does not seem to hold; his philosophical position is widely held to be an offshoot of the
However, some of his ideas subsequently influenced some Buddhist schools, which may have led Yi-Jing to surmise that he may have been Buddhist.Thus, on the whole it seems likely that the traditional Sanskritist view, that the poet of the Śatakatraya is the same as the grammarian Bhartṛhari, may be accepted.
The leading Sanskrit scholar
Vākyapadīya
Bhartrihari's views on language build on that of earlier grammarians such as Patanjali, but were quite radical. A key element of his conception of language is the notion of sphoṭa – a term that may be based on an ancient grammarian, Sphoṭāyana, referred by Pāṇini,[14] now lost.
In his
Further, Bhartrihari argues for a sentence-holistic view of meaning, saying that the meaning of an utterance is known only after the entire sentence (vākyasphoṭa) has been received, and it is not composed from the individual atomic elements or linguistic units which may change their interpretation based on later elements in the utterance. Further, words are understood only in the context of the sentence whose meaning as a whole is known. His argument for this was based on language acquisition, e.g. consider a child observing the exchange below:
- elder adult (uttama-vṛddha "full-grown"): says "bring the horse"
- younger adult (madhyama-vṛddha "half-grown"): reacts by bringing the horse
The child observing this may now learn that the unit "horse" refers to the animal. Unless the child knew the sentence meaning a priori, it would be difficult for him to infer the meaning of novel words. Thus, we grasp the sentence meaning as a whole, and reach words as parts of the sentence, and word meanings as parts of the sentence meaning through "analysis, synthesis and abstraction" (apoddhāra).[9]
The sphoṭa theory was influential, but it was opposed by many others. Later
In a section of the chapter on Relation Bhartrhari discusses the liar paradox and identifies a hidden parameter which turns an unproblematic situation in daily life into a stubborn paradox. In addition, Bhartrhari discusses here a paradox that has been called "
The Mahābhāṣya-dīpikā (also Mahābhāṣya-ṭīkā) is an early subcommentary on Patanjali's
Śatakatraya
Bhartrihari's poetry is
Unfortunately, the extant manuscript versions of these shatakas vary widely in the verses included.
Here is a sample that comments on social mores:
yasyāsti vittaṃ sa naraḥ kulīnaḥ |
A man of wealth is held to be high-born |
—#51 | —Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller |
And here is one dealing with the theme of love:
- The clear bright flame of a man's discernment dies
- When a girl clouds it with her lamp-black eyes. [Bhartrihari #77, tr. John Brough; poem 167][18]
Bhartrhari's paradox
Bhartrhari's paradox is the title of a 1981 paper by Hans and
In the chapter dealing with logical and linguistic relations, the Sambandha-samuddeśa, Bhartrhari discusses several statements of a paradoxical nature, including sarvam mithyā bravīmi "everything I am saying is false" which belongs to the liar paradox family, as well as the paradox arising from the statement that something is unnameable or unsignifiable (in Sanskrit: avācya): this becomes nameable or signifiable precisely by calling it unnameable or unsignifiable. When applied to integers, the latter is known today as Berry paradox.
Bhartrhari's interest lies not in strengthening this and other paradoxes by abstracting them from pragmatic context, but rather in exploring how a stubborn paradox may arise from unproblematic situations in daily communication.
An unproblematic situation of communication is turned into a paradox — we have either contradiction (virodha) or infinite regress (anavasthā) — when abstraction is made from the signification and its extension in time, by accepting a simultaneous, opposite function (apara vyāpāra) undoing the previous one.[19]
For Bhartrhari it is important to analyse and solve the unsignifiability paradox because he holds that what cannot be signified may nevertheless be indicated (vyapadiśyate) and it may be understood (pratīyate) to exist.
Works
Works attributed to Bhartr-hari include:[20]
- Trikāṇḍī ("three books"), sometimes known under the inaccurate title Vakyapadiya
- The author wrote the commentaries (vṛttis) on the first two books, and probably died before he could do it for the third book. The title Trikāṇḍī was probably not chosen by the author, who originally conceived them as "relatively independent" works, but later thought of unifying them.[21]
- Tripadi, also known as Mahabhashya-tika or Mahabhashya-dipika
- The earliest commentators on the text call it Tripadi, and the title Mahabhashya-dipika is known only from one manuscript.[22]
- The author probably intended to write a commentary on the entire text, but died after completing the work on the three padas of Maha-bhashya. The title Tripadi was probably coined by someone other than the author.[23]
- The currently surviving version of the work covers only the first seven ahnikas of the first pada of Mahabhashya. It is known from a fragmentary manuscript.[24]
- Shabda-dhatu-samiksha, now lost
- This work is attributed to Bharthari by the Kashmiri Shaivite authors Soma-nanda and Utpalacharya (9th-10th centuries). According to Utpalacharya, in this work, Bharthari described the concept of pashyanti, which he also discusses in the Trikandi.[25]
- Possibly, a commentary on Mimamsa Sutras
Tradition also attributes several other works to "Bharthari", although the authenticity of such attributions is doubtful.[26] For example, tradition identifies Bharthari the grammarian with the poet who composed Subhashita-tri-shati, a work said to contain 300 stanzas. However, the number of stanzas in the surviving text is much more than 300, which complicates the identification of its actual author.[25]
See also
Regarding Bhartrhari's paradox, see:
- B. K. Matilal, 1990, The Word and the World: India's Contribution to the Study of Language. Delhi: Oxford University Press. p. 129-130.
- Hemanta Kumar Ganguli, "Theory of Logical Construction and Solution of some Logical Paradoxes" , appendix to Philosophy of Logical Construction: An Examination of Logical Atomism and Logical Positivism in the light of the Philosophies of Bhartrhari, Dharmakirti and Prajnakaragupta, Calcutta, 1963.
- Jan E.M. Houben, The Sambandha-samuddeśa (chapter on relation) and Bhartrhari's philosophy of language, Gonda Indological Series, 2. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995, pp. 213–219.
References
- ISBN 978-1-119-57259-6.
- ISBN 978-81-208-0651-1
- ISBN 978-0-415-16916-5
- ISBN 978-0-8057-6243-3
- ISBN 978-81-208-1198-0
- ISBN 978-81-260-0308-2
- ISBN 978-81-208-0426-5
- ISBN 978-81-208-1494-3. Detailed discussion, see also notes on p. 366.
- ^ a b Bimal Krishna Matilal (1990). The Word and the World: India's contribution to the study of language. Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-2450-6Bhartrihari may have been "within the fold of Vedānta".
- ^ ISBN 978-0-674-78865-7
- ^ Miller, Foreword and Introduction
- ISBN 978-81-208-0449-4
- ^ Panini 6.1.123. The 10-century Haradatta assumed that Sphoṭāyana was the author of the sphoṭa theory.
- ^ a b Herzberger, Hans and Radhika Herzberger (1981). "Bhartrhari's Paradox" Journal of Indian Philosophy 9: 1-17 (slightly revised version of "Bhartrhari's Paradox" in Studies in Indian Philosophy. A memorial volume in honour of pandit Sukhlalji Sanghvi. (L.D. Series 84.) Gen. ed. Dalsukh Malvania et al. Ahmedabad, 1981).
- ^ Extensively used by later grammarians such as Kaiyaṭa, the text is only fragmentarily preserved. An edition based on an incomplete manuscript was published by Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune (1985-1991), in six fascicules (fascicule 6 in two parts).
- ISBN 9780231029995.
- ^ John Brough (trans.) (1977). Poems from the Sanskrit. Penguin. poem 12
- ^ Jan E.M. Houben, "Paradoxe et perspectivisme dans la philosophie de langage de Bhartrhari: langage, pensée et réalité", Bulletin d'Études Indiennes 19 (2001):173-199.
- ^ Ashok Aklujkar 1994, p. 33.
- ^ Ashok Aklujkar 1994, p. 25-26.
- ^ Harold G. Coward 1990, pp. 121–122.
- ^ Ashok Aklujkar 1994, p. 26.
- ^ Ashok Aklujkar 1994, p. 34.
- ^ a b Harold G. Coward 1990, p. 122.
- ^ Harold G. Coward 1990, p. 121.
Bibliography
- ISBN 9788120811980.
- Harold G. Coward; ISBN 9788120804265.