DOI: 10.36344/ccijhss.2019.v05i07.007

Pages: 224-231

Emancipation has long been a topic in theistic and non-theistic religions around the globe while the presence of diverse interpretations of and ways towards it tells us the amount of interest people had in liberating themselves. The Indian philosophy is no exception in proposing and debating paths to emancipation for over a few millenia. A proponent of the non-dualistic philosophy or Advaita Vedanta, Bhartṛhari (fl. 500 – 700 CE) in his dense work entitled Vākyapadīya expounds a novel way to emancipation through the proper recognition of the language in use that creates the phenomenal world. His thoughts as a grammarian and a philosopher largely influenced both formation and transformation of at least a large part of what we know today as the Indian philosophy of language. The discourse perspective clearly observed in the Vākyapadīya that the language in use represent the most unpolluted form of language, which is comparable to the characteristics of the supreme reality, enabled Bhartṛhari to propose a normative guide to emancipation with the support of yogic practices that were already current during his time. The objective of this study is to examine succinctly how Bhartṛhari delineates his guide to emancipation through the proper understanding of descriptive grammar, which he recognizes as the true form of the language we use.