Bhartṛhari facts for kids

Bhartrihari (pronounced Bhar-tree-HA-ree) was an important Sanskrit writer who lived around the 5th century CE. He is famous for two main works:

• The Vākyapadīya: This book is about Sanskrit grammar and how language works. It's a very important text in India for understanding words and sentences. It also talks about interesting ideas like the liar paradox (where a statement contradicts itself).
• The Śatakatraya: This is a collection of Sanskrit poetry. It has three parts, each with about 100 poems.

For a long time, people thought these two very different works were written by the same person. Modern experts were not so sure at first. But now, most scholars agree that it's very likely one person, Bhartrihari, wrote both the grammar book and the poems!

Both his grammar and his poetry had a huge impact in their fields. His grammar book, in particular, looked at language in a "holistic" way. This means he believed you understand the full meaning of a sentence only when you hear the whole thing, not just by putting individual word meanings together.

Who Was Bhartrihari?

When Did He Live?

For many years, people thought Bhartrihari lived in the 7th century CE. But a Chinese traveler named Yi-Jing wrote that Bhartrihari's grammar was already well-known by 670 CE. Yi-Jing also mentioned that Bhartrihari was known by another famous philosopher, Dignaga, who lived earlier.

This information helped experts figure out that Bhartrihari probably lived much earlier, around 450–500 CE. Some even think he might have lived as early as 400 CE!

Was He a Buddhist?

Yi-Jing also thought Bhartrihari might have been a Buddhist. However, most experts today believe Bhartrihari's ideas were more connected to the traditional Indian school of grammar. His ideas were different from those of Buddhist philosophers.

Still, some of Bhartrihari's ideas did influence later Buddhist thinkers. This might be why Yi-Jing thought he was a Buddhist.

Overall, it seems most likely that the traditional Indian view is correct: the poet who wrote the Śatakatraya is the same person as the grammarian Bhartrihari. A famous scholar named Ingalls said, "I see no reason why he should not have written poems as well as grammar and metaphysics." Many other great thinkers in India, like Dharmakirti and Shankaracharya, also wrote about different subjects.

Bhartrihari's Ideas on Language

Understanding Sphoṭa

Bhartrihari had some very interesting and new ideas about language. One of his most important ideas is called sphoṭa. This word might have come from an older grammarian named Sphoṭāyana, whose work is now lost.

Think of sphoṭa as the main idea or sound of a word or sentence, even before you say it out loud. An older grammarian, Patanjali, used sphoṭa to mean the general sound of language. He said that the actual sound you hear (dhvani) can change, but the sphoṭa is the unchanging core. This is a bit like how we think of a phoneme today (the smallest unit of sound that can change the meaning of a word).

Bhartrihari took this idea further. He said that each part of what we say – a letter (varṇa), a word (pada), and a sentence (vākya) – has its own sphoṭa. He believed that to understand language, we need to treat these as complete units. For example, the sound of a letter might change depending on the word it's in. So, you can't truly understand the sound until you hear the whole word.

Sentences as a Whole Meaning

Bhartrihari also believed that you only truly understand the meaning of something after you hear the entire sentence. He argued that the meaning isn't just made up of individual word meanings put together. Words can change their meaning based on what comes later in the sentence.

He used an example of how children learn language:

• An older person says, "Bring the horse."
• A younger person brings the horse.

A child watching this might learn that "horse" refers to the animal. Bhartrihari argued that the child understands the whole sentence meaning first. Then, they figure out the meanings of individual words by "analyzing" and "abstracting" them from the sentence.

Not everyone agreed with Bhartrihari's sphoṭa theory. Other philosophers argued that each word has its own meaning, and sentence meaning is built from these individual word meanings.

The Paradox of the Unnameable

Bhartrihari also thought about interesting logical problems, like the liar paradox ("Everything I am saying is false"). He also discussed a paradox called "Bhartrihari's paradox". This happens when you say something is "unnameable" or "unsignifiable." The moment you call it "unnameable," you've actually named it! This makes it a paradox.

Bhartrihari was interested in how these tricky paradoxes can come from normal conversations. He believed that even if something can't be "signified" (given a clear meaning), it can still be "indicated" or "understood" to exist.

Bhartrihari's Poetry

The Śatakatraya

Bhartrihari's poetry is full of wise sayings and observations about life and society. His collected poems are known as the Śatakatraya, which means "the three hundreds." This is because it has three parts, each with about 100 poems.

These three collections focus on different themes:

• Shringara: Poems about love and beauty.
• Vairagya: Poems about detachment and letting go of worldly desires.
• Niti: Poems about good conduct and morals.

Unfortunately, different copies of these poems have slightly different verses. But experts have found a core of about 200 poems that appear in almost all versions.

Here's an example of his poetry, talking about society:

And here is a poem about 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]