Bhartṛhari
A figure from the books
#Bhartrihari
Bhartṛhari · c. 450–510 CE
In the books · 2 chapters
Who this is
Grammar and the philosophy of language — the Vākyapadīya; and, under the same name, the Śatakatraya, three hundred verses on worldly wisdom, love and renunciation.
“Fifteen hundred years before Western philosophy's "linguistic turn," an Indian grammarian argued that thought is language and that the sentence, not the word, is where meaning lives — and the poems that share his name spend three hundred verses failing, honestly, magnificently, to renounce the world.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Meaning does not arrive brick by brick, word by word — it bursts on the mind whole, out of the whole sentence; and since no thought happens without language, language is not a tool for describing reality. It is the stuff reality is made of.”
From the books
- The Great IndiansBhartṛhari is Chapter 63 of Vol 2, The Classical Age.
- The Great PhilosophersBhartṛhari is Chapter 61 of Vol 2, Late Antiquity & the Early Medieval World.
Read the chapters
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