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Bhartrhari's Philosophy

 What is consciousness? Generally consciousness is taken to be illumination; either of something outside itself or of itself or both. But Bhartrahari points out that illumination of content does not allow us to discriminate that content. Mere illumination is blind, deaf and dumb. Real illumination involves discursivity; the ability to discriminate a content of consciousness from everything else and in every movement of consciousness we always note there is some discriminatory capacity. Even when we are walking and our mind is elsewhere we are not explicitly conscious of the ground we are walking on but even then there is some discrimination occurring because in a way I know what kind of ground I am walking on and I can note any significant change in it that may occur suddenly. So there is no state of consciousness without discursivity and hence illumination of consciousness is intertwined with Vak (speech).

However Vak if understood as audible sound then the proposition is manifestly false. However in Bhartrahari’s view Vak has different dimensions with subtler levels to grosser levels in ascending order. He distinguishes four such levels - Para, Madhyama, Pashyanti, Vaikhari. In Bhartrahari’s view Shabda Brahman is the only reality which appears under the influence of nescience appears as the world of objects and the word (meaning) but the latter is the essence of the former. Does Brahman transform himself in the world (parinama) or merely appears to do so (vivarana)? Bhartrahari himself does not explicitly choose an option but future commentators generally take the latter option.

Vaiseshika School believes that there is a structural isomorphism between thought, word and reality. Hence what is real is really the meaning of a word (padartha). The word signifies the individual qualified by a certain property. Bhartrahari is opposed to this point of view. He distinguishes between the word universal and the object universal and says that the former is superimposed on the latter - so whatever can be said to be known of an object can only be through a word. The word signifies a universal and is applied to an individual metaphorically or in an implied manner. Hence the primary import of the word is the word universal which mediates between the word and the individual and not via any reference to an individual in the external or word-independent world. Hence words can allow us to form notions which do not obtain in reality like hare’s horn or son of a barren woman. If reference to an external reality is taken as the primary import of a word then such negative existential statements will be difficult to explain as - The tree does not exist. If in taking the name of a tree its existence is implied then the statement would be a contradiction.

For Bhartrhari the world is a unity in difference. But what are the grounds for positing this unity? Take the case of speech - the speaker is in possession of a meaning and conveys it in a sequence of alphabets, words and sentences and the hearer gathers the meaning likewise. But how can one grasp the meaning of a sentence? When one word is uttered it passes away in matter of seconds since it is a spatio-temporal ephemeral entity and by the time we reach the last word the other words along with their meanings are gone. Bhartrahari points out that meaning is always undivided and sequence-less and is only apparently diversified as the adjuncts are different. The sound (dhvani) merely manifests the speech-potential (Sphota) which bursts through those limiting adjuncts. And when the hearer hears a sentence he has a certain potentiality we can call Pratibha which is able to retain the undivided meaning and grasp it as a unity in diversity of limiting adjuncts. In both cases it is the speech potential manifesting itself in diverse ways. The sound has the capability to manifest the undivided sphota and make it appear as in a sequence and Pratibha is the ability to catch hold of this meaning in the sequence of sounds and alphabets. But without this speech-potentiality neither would be possible; for it is what unites these abilities to utter and understand meaning together.

In this manner Bhartrahari re-conceives the relation between thought and word, word and object - uniting these notion through his Sphota theory and showing that these are nothing over and above the apparent diversification or limited manifestation of Vak or Shabda-Brahman.

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