Vakyapadiya

The Vakyapadiya is a seminal work by the Indian philosopher and poet-grammarian Bhartrihari, who lived in the 7th century CE. This text is central to the shabdadvaita (word nondualism) school of Indian philosophy and explores the philosophy of language.1

Bhartrihari proposed that all knowledge is linguistic, meaning our understanding of the world is shaped by words. He introduced the concept of sphota, which refers to the indivisible, eternal essence of a word that carries meaning, distinct from the sounds themselves. Bhartrihari argued that the sentence is the primary unit of meaning, and words are abstractions derived from it. His ideas have connections to metaphysical monism and influenced later philosophical discussions on language and reality.2