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Bhartshari's paradox
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be true, its subject term must signify sometbing, and its predicate term must be true of that thing: so its subject term must signify some unsignifiable thing. Because that condition cannot be satisfied, B3 cannot be true. By a parallel line of reasoning, neither Bl nor B2 could be true, and perhaps more generally one might conclude that no instance of the unnameability thesis could be true.
In our view the very fact that Bhartrhari devoted several verses to such a careful formulation of the paradox, covering all cases ("in that way, nor in another way, nor in any way'), indicates that the unnmeability thesis or some variant of it was at least under serious consideration at that point in his discussion. But Helārāja's commentary to these verses brings out an exegetical problem on a different plane from those we have so far considered. We will call this the problem of attribution,
The exegetical problems discussed in, Section II concerned matters of explication of the content, understood in context, of several passages in the text. But one need not assure that Bhartịhari intended to assert every proposition contained in those verses. Some he may have been simply entertaining in the course of developing his position or arguing for it. Among these latter may be propositions he was voicing on behalf of others, as objections or criticisms to be answered; and so forth.
This general problem of attribution which is familiar to Bhartshari scholars, interacts with the semantic problems of elucidation in a very tangible way, inasmuch as one's inter pretation of a particular passage "in context” depends on one's understanding of Bhartshari's overall theory of language, which in turn is woven out of various propositions one attri. butes to Bhartịhari from the passages in his text. We have illustrated this interaction in the previous section in the course of examining Bharatphari's commitment to the unpameability thesis. By and large, however, the emphasis there was on matters of elucidation. In this section, matters of attribution come into prominence. The content of the verses 20 to 22 SP-37
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