The Universe in the Word: On Bhartrhari's Employment of Universals

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Bharthari, the 5 century grammarian-philosopher, is undoubt- edly one of the most uniquely brilliant figures in Indian intellectual history. The supreme place Bharthari gave to language in cognition and the cosmos is well known and there has been an encouraging resurgence in studies based on his great work the Vakyapadiya (VP), and to a lesser extent his Mahābhāṣya- Dipika (MBhD). This book focuses on his employment of the conceptual model of "jati", the universal, in his philosophy of language, epistemology, and ontology. While it includes an informal translation of the Jati-samuddeśa, a sub-chapter of the VP, this book is based on the occurrence of "jati" and allied terms throughout Bhartṛhari's VP and MBhD. Hopefully this will be of use to people interested in Bharthari's thought and the history of Indian epistemology more generally.

VERONICA M.T. BENJAMIN, writer and independent scholar, was born and raised in California to an American mother and Trinidadian-British father. Philosophically inclined since adolescence, she pursued her bachelor's degree in the subject at University College Utrecht where she decided to shift her focus from Western philosophy to Sanskrit and Indian philosophy. In 2011, she moved to Varanasi for an MA in Indian philosophy and religion at Banaras Hindu University, where she would stay on to complete her PhD in 2019. She currently resides in Chamba, Himachal Pradesh with her husband, spending her time writing, wandering mountains, learning the Gaddi language, and refining her understanding of the good life.

By a stroke of serendipity, I was introduced to the study of Bhartṛhari during my first semester at Banaras Hindu University in the fall of 2011, in a graduate course that had only just been added to the department of philosophy and religion's offerings. Though I didn't have a particular interest in Western philoso- phy of language at the time, something about the Vakyapadiya instantly captivated me. Bhartṛhari has an uncommon ability to combine breadth of study with an insightful depth that rarely fails to capture the essence of its object, in this case language. After three years of intensively studying the Vakyapadiya as well as several texts from Trika or Kashmir Saivism, I had initially wanted to pursue a comparative study before I realized what a fruitless task that would be for a novice like me. Hence, I decided to focus on Bhartṛhari's thought alone for my doctoral research as many of the key metaphysical and epistemological insights of Kashmiri luminaries such as Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta seemed to have clear roots in Bhartrhari.

Eventually I landed on the topic of universals, or jāti, within the ocean of Bhartṛhari's philosophy, a subject I was drawn to during my undergraduate degree in Western Philosophy as well. Maybe it is a sign of my overindulgence in generality, but the importance that the very concept of a general, stable, repeatable, identity has garnered in different cultural milieu and by many sincere philosophers over millennia tells me that I'm not the only one guilty of this indulgence. The prominence of the Jati-samud- desa in the third chapter of the Vakyapadiya was the first tip to me that the conceptualization of the universal was an integral part to Bhartṛhari's work and world-view.

At the outset I would like to express my sense of gratification on reading The Universe in the Word: On Bhartṛhari's employment of universals by Dr. Veronica M. T. Benjamin.

The Vakyapadiya (VP) of Bhartṛhari occupies a unique posi- tion in the tradition of Sanskrit grammar. It has, for the first time, dispelled the myth that the Sanskrit grammar is a mere and sheer engagement with word derivations involving complex derivative processes dictated by still more complex rules. With this robust text running over about 2000 verses divided into three main sections, Sanskrit grammar took a 'philosophical turn' and ensured for itself a place among Indian systems of Philosophy. Ram- blings through this text take a reader along diverse philosophical ideas from the highest metaphysical reality, Brahman, down to the pure grammatical notions such as gender and number.

Towards the end of the second Kända of the VP, Bhartṛhari describes two distinct characteristics of the Vyakarana Mahabhaṣya of Patanjali: 1. fathomless on account of the depth and 2. Extended far and wide on account of being massive (a). Both these features are applicable ditto to the VP itself. No wonder, therefore, that the author of the present work describes it as "the notoriously difficult text". And yet she has ventured upon the task of critically examining Bhartrhari's position of Jati "in the light of his own framework and methodology".

The work can be broadly divided into two parts: 1. Survey and Critical Examination and 2. Translation of the Jatisamuddesa, the first subsection of the third Kanda.

At the very outset Dr. Veronica has pointed out that the concept of Jati is treated on two levels; linguistic and ontological.