BhartṛhariFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  (Redirected from Bhartrhari)Jump to: navigation, search

Bhartṛihari (Devanagari भर्तृ��हरि�; fl. ca. 5th century CE) is a Sanskrit author who is likely to have written two influential Sanskrit texts:

the Vākyapadīya, on Sanskrit grammar and linguistic philosophy, a foundational text of the Spho ṭ a theory in the Indian grammatical tradition, and

the Śatakatraya, a work of Sanskrit poetry, comprising three collections of about 100 stanzas each.

In the medieval tradition of Indian scholarship, it was assumed that both texts were written by the same person. However, early "orientalist" scholarship was sceptical, owing to an argument that dated the grammar to a date subsequent to the poetry. Recently however, scholars have argued based on additional evidence, that both works may have been contemporary, in which case it is likely that there was only one Bhartrihari who wrote both texts.[citation needed]

Both the grammar and the poetic works had an enormous influence in their respective fields. The grammar in particular, takes a holistic view of language, countering the compositionality position of the Mimamsakas and others.

The poetry constitute short verses, collected into three centuries of about a hundred poems each. Each century deals with a different rasa or aesthetic mood; on the whole his poetic work has been very highly regarded both within the tradition and by modern scholarship.

The name Bhrartrihari is also sometimes associated/confused with the legend of king Bhartrihari.

Contents

1 Date and identity 2 Vākyapadīya 3 Śatakatraya 4 Notes

5 External links

Date and identity

The account of the Chinese traveller Yi-Jing indicates that Bhartrihari's grammar was known by 670 CE, and that he may have been Buddhist, which the poet was not. Based on this, scholarly opinion had formerly attributed the grammar to a separate author of the same name from the seventh century CE[1]. However, other evidence indicates a much earlier date:

Bhartrihari was long believed to have lived in the seventh century CE, but according to the testimony of the Chinese pilgrim Yijing [...] he was known to the Buddhist philosopher Dignaga, and this has pushed his date back to the fifth century CE."[2]

A period of c. 450–500[3] "definitely not later than 425–450",[4] or, following Erich Frauwallner, 450–510[5][6] or perhaps 400 CE or even earlier.[7]

Yi-Jing's other claim, that Bhartrihari was a Buddhist, does not seem to hold; his philosophical position is widely held to be an offshoot of the Vyakaran or grammarian school, closely allied to the realism of the Naiyayikas and distinctly opposed to Buddhist positions like Dignaga, who are closer to phenomenalism. It is also opposed to other mImAMsakas like Kumarila Bhatta [8] [9] . However, some of his ideas subsequently influenced some Buddhist schools, which may have led Yi-Jing to surmise that he may have been Buddhist.

Thus, on the whole seems likely that the traditional Sanskritist view, that the poet of the Śatakatraya is the same as the grammarian Bhartṛhari, may be accepted. The leading Sanskrit scholar Ingalls (1968) submitted that "I see no reason why he should not have written poems as well as grammar and metaphysics", like Dharmakirti, Shankaracharya, and many others.[10] Yi Jing himself appeared to think they were the same person, as he wrote that (the grammarian) Bhartṛhari, author of the Vakyapadiya, was renowned for his vacillation between Buddhist monkhood and a life of pleasure, and for having written verses on the subject.[11][12]

Vākyapadīya

Main article: Vākyapadīya

Bhartrihari's views on language build on that of earlier grammarians such as Patanjali, but were quite radical. A key element of his conception of language is the notion of spho ṭ a - a term that may be based on an ancient grammarian, sphoTAyana, referred by Panini [13] , now lost.

In his Mahabhashya, Patanjali (2nd c. BCE) uses the term sphoTa to denote the sound of language, the universal, while the actual sound (dhvani) may be long or short, or vary in other ways. This distinction may be thought to be similar to that of the present notion of phoneme. Bhatrihari however, applies the term sphota to each element of the utterance, the letter or syllable, the word, and the sentence. In order to create the linguistic invariant, he argues that these must be treated as separate wholes (varNasphoTa, padasphoTa and

vAkyasphoTa respectively). For example, the same speech sound or varNa may have different properties in different word contexts (e.g. assimilation), so that the sound cannot be discerned until the whole word is heard.

Further, Bhartrihari argues for a sentence-holistic view of meaning - saying that the meaning of an utterance is known only after the entire sentence (vAkya-sphoTa) has been received, and it is not composed from the individual atomic elements or linguistic units which may change their interpretation based on later elements in the utterance. Further, words are understood only in the context of the sentence whose meaning as a whole is known. His argument for this was based on language acquisition, e.g. consider a child observing the exchange below:

Elder adult (uttamvr.ddha): Bring a horseYounger adult (madhyamvr.ddha): [brings the horse]

The child observing this may now learn that the unit "horse" refers to the animal. Unless the child knew the sentence meaning a priori, it would be difficult for him to infer the meaning of novel words. Thus, we grasp the sentence meaning as a whole, and reach words as parts of the sentence, and word meanings as parts of the sentence meaning through 'analyis, synthesis and abstraction' (apoddhAra)[8].

The sphoTa theory was influential, but it was opposed by many others. Later mImAMsakas like Kumarila Bhatta (650 CE) strongly rejected the vAkyasphoTa view, and argued for the denotative power of each word, arguing for the composition of meanings (_abhihitAnvaya). The Prabhakara school (c. 670) among mImAMsakas however took a less atomistic position, arguing that word meanings exist, but are determined by context (anvitAbhidhAna).

Śatakatraya

Main article: Śatakatraya

Bhartrihari's poetry is aphoristic, and comments on the social mores of the time. The collected work, of three centuries is known as shatakatraya (shataka=hundred + traya=three), consisting of three thematic compilations on shringara, vairagya and niti (loosely, love, dispassion and moral conduct). Unforttunately, the extant manuscript versions of these shatakas vary widely in the verses included, with some versions going to three hundred. However, extended work by D.D. Kosambi has managed to identify a kernel of two hundred that are common to all the versions[10].

Here is a sample that comments on social mores:

yasyāsti vittaṃ sa naraḥ kulīnaḥsa paṇḍitaḥ sa śrutavān guṇajñaḥsa eva vaktā sa ca darśanīyaḥsarve guṇaḥ kāñcanam āśrayanti (#51)

A man of wealth is held to be high-bornWise scholarly and discerningEloquent and even handsome -All virtues are accessories to gold! (tr. Barbara Stoler Miller)[14]

And here is one dealing with the theme of love:

The clear bright flame of a man's discernment diesWhen a girl clouds it with her lamp-black eyes. [Bhartrihari #77][tr. John Brough poem 167][15]

SphoṭaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  (Redirected from Vākyapadīya)Jump to: navigation, search

Sphoṭa (Devanagari स्फोट, the Sanskrit for "bursting, opening", "spurt") is an important concept in the Indian grammatical tradition of Vyakarana, relating to the problem of speech production, how the mind orders linguistic units into coherent discourse and meaning.

The theory of sphoṭa is associated with Bhartṛhari (c. 5th century), an early figure in Indic linguistic theory, mentioned in the 670s by Chinese traveller Yi-Jing. Bhartṛhari is the author of the Vākyapadīya ("[treatise] on words and sentences"). The work is divided into three books, the Brahma-kāṇḍa, (or Āgama-samuccaya "aggregation of traditions"), the Vākya-kāṇḍa, and the Pada-kāṇḍa (or Prakīrṇaka "miscellaneous").

He theorized the act of speech as being made up of three stages:

1. Conceptualization by the speaker (Paśyantī "idea")2. Performance of speaking (Madhyamā "medium)3. Comprehension by the interpreter (Vaikharī "complete utterance").

Bhartṛhari is of the śabda-advaita "speech monistic" school which identifies language and cognition. According to George Cardona, "Vākyapadīya is considered to be the major Indian work of its time on grammar, semantics and philosophy."

Contents

1 Origin of the term 2 Vākyapadīya 3 Beyond Bhartrihari 4 Editions of the Vākyapadīya 5 See also

6 References

7 External links

Origin of the term

While the sphoṭa theory proper (sphoṭavāda) originates with Bhartṛhari, the term has a longer history of use in the technical vocabulary of Sanskrit grammarians, and Bhartṛhari may have been building on the ideas of his predecessors, whose works are partly lost.

Sanskrit sphoṭa is etymologically derived from the root sphuṭ 'to burst'. It is used in its technical linguistic sense by Patañjali (2nd c. BCE), in reference to the "bursting forth" of meaning or idea on the mind as language is uttered. Patañjali's sphoṭa is the invariant quality of speech. The acoustic element (dhvani, audible part) can be long or short, loud or soft, but the sphoṭa remains unaffected by individual speaker differences. Thus, a single letter or sound ('varṇa') such as /k/, /p/ or /a/ is an abstraction, distinct from variants produced in actual enunciation.[1] Eternal qualities in language are already postulated by Yāska, in his Nirukta (1.1), where reference is made to another ancient grammarian, Audumbarāyaṇa, about whose work nothing is known, but who has been suggested as the original source of the concept.[2] The grammarian Vyāḍi, author of the lost text Saṃgraha, may have developed some ideas in sphoṭa theory; in particular, he made some distinctions relevant to dhvani are referred to by Bhartṛhari.[3]

There is no use of sphoṭa as a technical term prior to Patañjali, but Pā ṇ ini (6.1.123) refers to a grammarian named Sphoṭāyana as one of his predecessors. This has induced Pāṇini's medieval commentators (such as Haradatta) to ascribe the first development of the sphoṭavāda to Sphoṭāyana.

Vākyapadīya

Further information: Bhart ṛ hari

The account of the Chinese traveller Yi-Jing places a firm terminus ante quem of AD 670 on Bhartrhari. Scholarly opinion had formerly tended to place him in the 6th or 7th century; current consensus places him in the 5th century. By some traditional accounts, he is the same as the poet Bhartṛhari who wrote the Śatakatraya.

In the Vākyapadīya, the term sphoṭa takes on a finer nuance, but there is some dissension among scholars as to what Bhartṛhari intended to say. Sphoṭa retains its invariant attribute, but now its indivisibility is emphasized and it now operates at several levels.

Bhartṛhari develops this doctrine in a metaphysical setting, where he views sphoṭa as the language capability of man, revealing his consciousness.[4] Indeed, the ultimate reality is also expressible in language, the śabda-brahman, or the Eternal Verbum. Early indologists such as A. B. Keith felt that Bhartṛhari's sphoṭa was a mystical notion, owing

to the metaphysical underpinning of Bhartṛhari's text, Vākyapādiya where it is discussed, but it appears to be more of a psychological notion. Also, the notion of "flash or insight" or "revelation" central to the concept also lent itself to this viewpoint. However, the modern view is that it is perhaps a more psychological distinction.

Bhartṛhari expands on the notion of sphoṭa in Patañjali, and discusses three levels:

1. varṇa-sphoṭa, at the syllable level. George Cardona feels that this remains an abstraction of sound, a further refinement on Patañjali for the concept of phoneme- now it stands for units of sound.

2. pada-sphoṭa, at the word level, and3. vakya-sphoṭa, at the sentence level.

In verse I.93, Bhartṛhari states that the 'sphota' is the universal or linguistic type - sentence-type or word-type, as opposed to their tokens (sounds).[1] He makes a distinction between sphoṭa, which is whole and indivisible, and 'nāda', the sound, which is sequenced and therefore divisible. The sphoṭa is the causal root, the intention, behind an utterance, in which sense is similar to the notion of lemma in most psycholinguistic theories of speech production. However, sphoṭa arises also in the listener, which is different from the lemma position. Uttering the 'nāda' induces the same mental state or sphoṭa in the listener - it comes as a whole, in a flash of recognition or intuition (pratibhā, 'shining forth'). This is particularly true for vakya-sphoṭa or sentence-vibration, where the entire sentence is thought of (by the speaker), and grasped (by the listener) as a whole.

On the other hand, the modern sanskritist S.D. Joshi feels that Bhartṛhari may not have been talking about meanings at all, but a class of sounds.

Bimal K. Matilal has tried to unify these views - he feels that for Bhartṛhari the very process of thinking involves vibrations, so that thought has some sound-like properties. Thought operates by śabdanaor 'speaking', - so that the mechanisms of thought are the same as that of language. Indeed, Bhartṛhari seems to be saying that thought is not possible without language. This leads to a somewhat whorfian position on the relationship between language and thought. The sphoṭa then is the carrier of this thought, as a primordial vibration.

Sometimes the nāda-sphoṭa distinction is posited in terms of the signifier-signified mapping, but this is a misconception. In traditional Sanskrit linguistic discourse (e.g. in Katyāyana), vācaka refers to the signifier, and 'vācya' the signified. The 'vācaka-vācya' relation is eternal for Katyāyana and the Mīmā ṃ sakas , but is conventional among the Nyāya. However, in Bhartṛhari, this duality is given up in favour of a more holistic view - for him, there is no independent meaning or signified; the meaning is inherent in the word or the sphoṭa itself.

Beyond Bhartrihari

Sphoṭa theory remained widely influential in Indian philosophy of language and was the focus of much debate over several centuries. It was adopted by most scholars of Vyākara ṇ a (grammar), but both the Mīmā ṃ sā and Nyāya schools rejected it, primarily on the grounds of compositionality. Adherents of the 'sphota' doctrine were holistic or non-compositional (a-khanḍa-pakṣa), suggesting that many larger units of language are understood as a whole, whereas the Mīmāṃsakas in particular proposed compositionality (khanḍa-pakṣa). According to the former, word meanings, if any, are arrived at after analyzing the sentences in which they occur. Interestingly, this debate had many of the features animating present day debates in language over semantic holism, for example.

The Mīmāṃsakas felt that the sound-units or the letters alone make up the word. The sound-units are uttered in sequence, but each leaves behind an impression, and the meaning is grasped only when the last unit is uttered. The position was most ably stated by Kumarila Bhatta (7th c.) who argued that the 'sphoṭas' at the word and sentence level are after all composed of the smaller units, and cannot be different from their combination.[5] However, in the end it is cognized as a whole, and this leads to the misperception of the sphoṭa as a single indivisible unit. Each sound unit in the utterance is an eternal, and the actual sounds differ owing to differences in manifestation.

The Nyāya view is enunciated among others by Jayanta (9th c.), who argues against the Mīmāṃsā position by saying that the sound units as uttered are different; e.g. for the sound [g], we infer its 'g-hood' based on its similarity to other such sounds, and not because of any underlying eternal. Also, the vācaka-vācya linkage is viewed as arbitrary and conventional, and not eternal. However, he agrees with Kumarila in terms of the compositionality of an utterance.

Throughout the second millennium, a number of treatises discussed the sphoṭa doctrine. Particularly notable is Nageśabhaṭṭa's Sphotavāda (18th c.). Nageśa clearly defines sphoṭa as a carrier of meaning, and identifies eight levels, some of which are divisible.

In modern times, scholars of Bhartṛhari have included Ferdinand de Saussure, who did his doctoral work on the genitive in Sanskrit, and lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European languages at the Paris and at the University of Geneva for nearly three decades. It is thought that he might have been influenced by some ideas of Bhartṛhari, particularly the sphoṭa debate. In particular, his description of the sign, as composed of the signifier and the signified, where these entities are not separable - the whole mapping from sound to denotation constitutes the sign, seems to have some colourings of sphoṭa in it. Many other prominent European scholars around 1900, including linguists such as Leonard Bloomfield and Roman Jakobson may have been influenced by Bhartṛhari.[6]

ConceptFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia  (Redirected from Conceptualization)Jump to: navigation, search

For other uses, see Concept (disambiguation).

The word concept is defined variously by different sources. Philosophers and others generally agree that concepts are formed from experience and other pre-existing mental content by abstraction and other operations in the brain.

Contents

1 Notable definitions 2 Issues in concept theory

o 2.1 A priori concepts o 2.2 Origin o 2.3 Embodied content o 2.4 Ontology

3 Etymology 4 See also 5 References 6 Publications

7 External links

Notable definitions

John Locke's description of a general idea corresponds to a description of a concept. According to Locke, a general idea is created by abstracting, drawing away, or removing the uncommon characteristic or characteristics from several particular ideas. The remaining common characteristic is that which is similar to all of the different individuals. For example, the abstract general idea or concept that is designated by the word "red" is that characteristic which is common to apples, cherries, and blood. The abstract general idea or concept that is signified by the word "dog" is the collection of those characteristics which are common to Airedales, Collies, and Chihuahuas.[citation needed]

John Stuart Mill argued that general conceptions are formed through abstraction. A general conception is the common element among the many images of members of a class. "...[W]hen we form a set of phenomena into a class, that is, when we compare them with one another to ascertain in what they agree, some general conception is implied in this mental operation" (A System of Logic, Book IV, Ch. II). Mill did not believe that concepts exist in the mind before the act of abstraction. "It is not a law of our intellect, that, in comparing things with each other and taking note of their agreement, we merely recognize as realized in the outward world something that we already had in our minds. The conception originally found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. It was obtained (in metaphysical phrase) by abstraction from individual things" (Ibid.).

Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that concepts are "mere abstractions from what is known through intuitive perception, and they have arisen from our arbitrarily thinking

away or dropping of some qualities and our retention of others." (Parerga and Paralipomena, Vol. I, "Sketch of a History of the Ideal and the Real"). In his On the Will in Nature, "Physiology and Pathology," Schopenhauer said that a concept is "drawn off from previous images ... by putting off their differences. This concept is then no longer intuitively perceptible, but is denoted and fixed merely by words." Nietzsche, who was heavily influenced by Schopenhauer, wrote: "Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept 'leaf' is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions..."[1]

By contrast to the above philosophers, Immanuel Kant held that the account of the concept as an abstraction of experience is only partly correct. He called those concepts that result from abstraction "a posteriori concepts" (meaning concepts that arise out of experience). An empirical or an a posteriori concept is a general representation (Vorstellung) or non-specific thought of that which is common to several specific perceived objects (Logic, I, 1., §1, Note 1).

A concept is a common feature or characteristic. Kant investigated the way that empirical a posteriori concepts are created.

The logical acts of the understanding by which concepts are generated as to their form are:

1. comparison, i.e., the likening of mental images to one another in relation to the unity of consciousness;

2. reflection, i.e., the going back over different mental images, how they can be comprehended in one consciousness; and finally

3. abstraction or the segregation of everything else by which the mental images differ ...

In order to make our mental images into concepts, one must thus be able to compare, reflect, and abstract, for these three logical operations of the understanding are essential and general conditions of generating any concept whatever. For example, I see a fir, a willow, and a linden. In firstly comparing these objects, I notice that they are different from one another in respect of trunk, branches, leaves, and the like; further, however, I reflect only on what they have in common, the trunk, the branches, the leaves themselves, and abstract from their size, shape, and so forth; thus I gain a concept of a tree.

— Logic, §6

Kant's description of the making of a concept has been paraphrased as "...to conceive is essentially to think in abstraction what is common to a plurality of possible instances..." (H.J. Paton, Kant's Metaphysics of Experience, I, 250). In his discussion of Kant, Christopher Janaway wrote: "...generic concepts are formed by abstraction from more than one species."[2]

Issues in concept theory

A priori conceptsMain article: Category (Kant)

Kant declared that human minds possess pure or a priori concepts. Instead of being abstracted from individual perceptions, like empirical concepts, they originate in the mind itself. He called these concepts categories, in the sense of the word that means predicate, attribute, characteristic, or quality. But these pure categories are predicates of things in general, not of a particular thing. According to Kant, there are 12 categories that constitute the understanding of phenomenal objects. Each category is that one predicate which is common to multiple empirical concepts. In order to explain how an a priori concept can relate to individual phenomena, in a manner analogous to an a posteriori concept, Kant employed the technical concept of the schema.

Origin

Carl Jung argues that concepts may be attributed to space other than within the inside boundaries of any body or mass or material formation of living creatures.[citation needed]

Embodied content

In cognitive linguistics, abstract concepts are transformations of concrete concepts derived from embodied experience. The mechanism of transformation is structural mapping, in which properties of two or more source domains are selectively mapped onto a blended space (Fauconnier & Turner, 1995; see conceptual blending). A common class of blends are metaphors. This theory contrasts with the rationalist view that concepts are perceptions (or recollections, in Plato's term) of an independently existing world of ideas, in that it denies the existence of any such realm. It also contrasts with the empiricist view that concepts are abstract generalizations of individual experiences, because the contingent and bodily experience is preserved in a concept, and not abstracted away. While the perspective is compatible with Jamesian pragmatism (above), the notion of the transformation of embodied concepts through structural mapping makes a distinct contribution to the problem of concept formation.[citation needed]

Ontology

Plato was the starkest proponent of the realist thesis of universal concepts. By his view, concepts (and ideas in general) are innate ideas that were instantiations of a transcendental world of pure forms that lay behind the veil of the physical world. In this way, universals were explained as transcendent objects. Needless to say this form of realism was tied deeply with Plato's ontological projects. This remark on Plato is not of merely historical interest. For example, the view that numbers are Platonic objects was revived by Kurt Gödel as a result of certain puzzles that he took to arise from the phenomenological accounts.[3]

Gottlob Frege, founder of the analytic tradition in philosophy, famously argued for the analysis of language in terms of sense and reference. For him, the sense of an expression in language describes a certain state of affairs in the world, namely, the way that some object is presented. Since many commentators view the notion of sense as identical to the notion of concept, and Frege regards senses as the linguistic representations of states of affairs in the world, it seems to follow that we may understand concepts as the manner in which we grasp the world. Accordingly, concepts (as senses) have an ontological status (Morgolis:7).

According to Carl Benjamin Boyer, in the introduction to his The History of the Calculus and its Conceptual Development, concepts in calculus do not refer to perceptions. As long as the concepts are useful and mutually compatible, they are accepted on their own. For example, the concepts of the derivative and the integral are not considered to refer to spatial or temporal perceptions of the external world of experience. Neither are they related in any way to mysterious limits in which quantities are on the verge of nascence or evanescence, that is, coming into or going out of existence. The abstract concepts are now considered to be totally autonomous, even though they originated from the process of abstracting or taking away qualities from perceptions until only the common, essential attributes remained.

Etymology

The term "concept" is traced back to 1554–60 (Latin conceptum - "something conceived"),[4] but what is today termed "the classical theory of concepts" is the theory of Aristotle on the definition of terms.[citation needed] The meaning of "concept" is explored in mainstream information science,[5][6] cognitive science, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. In computer and information science contexts, especially, the term 'concept' is often used in unclear or inconsistent ways.[7]