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Vakyapadiya (study of the concept of Sentence)

by Sarath P. Nath | 2018 | 36,088 words

This page relates ‘The Concept of Sentence� of the study on Vakyapadiya by Bhartrhari and his treatment of the Concept of Sentence in Language. Bhartrhari was a great grammarian and philosopher who explored the depth and breadth of Sanskrit grammar. These pages analyse the concepts and discussions on sentence and sentence-meaning presented in the Vakyapadiya, against the different systems of knowledge prevalent in ancient India (such as Mimamsa, Nyaya and Vyakarana).

As discussed, language is perceived as the method of communicating one's thoughts. An idea or a thought can never be in bits and pieces, but is a unitary whole. Thus, it is communicated also as a unitary whole, but not in terms of its parts. Since words cannot communicate the speaker's thought fully, sentence is to be considered as the unit of language, which can communicate the whole idea. Different thinkers accept either a letter or a word or a sentence as the unit of language. But all of them emphasise the role of sentence in communicating the ideas conceived by the speaker. Therefore the study of sentence and sentence-meaning became the most important concept for linguists, grammarians and philosophers. Though we cannot find any explicit discussions on this topic in the ancient literature, some glimpses can be seen in Vedic texts. As stated, a simple definition of sentence is cited in ṛh𱹲. Later, ⾱첹 and īṃs첹 have expounded the syntactico-semantic analysis of sentence. They have produced several independent treatises on the systematic analysis of sentence. In Sanskrit grammar, the emphasis has been given to or the formative aspect of words, while the treatises on the syntacticosemantic analysis of sentence are a few and far between. ⲹ貹īⲹ of 󲹰ṛh, ūṣaṇa of Kauṇḍabhaṭṭa, ܳñūṣ� of 岵ś etc. have completely devoted their attention into this topic. Among them, ⲹ貹īⲹ possesses a prime position in the realm of the philosophy of language.

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