Studies On Bhartrhari 3

Author(s): Johannes Bronkhorst
Publisher: Johannes Bronkhorst

Page 10

JOHANNES BRONKHORST
Nothing originates which has no universal; the universal urges the causes to manifest it. (25) The universals, entering both the eternal and the non-eternal causes, manifest them selves again and again in certain effects. (26) The universal is also effective in producing activity, it urges the activity to manifest the object in which it resides. (27)
The picture which thus evolves of universals is hardly that of an abstract entity different from the things in which it manifests itself, like the universals of the Vaiśesika philosophy. In an important way Bhartrhari's universal rather is the thing. It is not correct to think that there is a pot, and the universal potness which is different from it. Quite on the contrary, the pot in as far as it really exists is the universal; its not really existing shadow in the phenomenal world is the individual. It is therefore not possible to say that pot and potness are different, even though the former has a spatial and a temporal dimension, which the latter has not. Universals, seen in this way, can most easily be compared with Plato's ideas: they are real and unchanging, while the things that figure in our experience are their unreal reflections.
Returning now to Bhartrhari's sphota, if the real pot is the universal, the same must be true of words: the real word, i.e. the sphota, is a universal. This is exactly the opinion attributed to 'some' in VP 1.96, the stanza so easily brushed aside by Brough:15
Some consider that the sphota is the universal revealed by the various individual instances, and they consider that the individuals belonging to this (universal) are the sounds.
If we forget for a moment the attribution of this opinion to 'some', we see that we have arrived at a perfect understanding of the sphota in the context of Bhartrhari's theory. To repeat the main points: Like everything else, words too have two aspects, the real word and its phenomenal manifestations, which are not real. The phenomenal manifestation of the word is sound, the real word its universal, which is the essence of the word (sabdatattva), identical with Brahman (VP 1.1).
15
hivyakt im upayanti punah punah// nirvartyamanam yar karma jätis taträpi sādhanam/ svās. rayasyabhinispattyai sā kriyāyāh prayojikāll VP 1.96: anekavyak yabhivyangyā jātih sphora iti smrtā kaiścid vyaktaya evāsyā dhvanitvena prakalpitā //