Language As An Imaginative Agency: A Comparative Study Of Vākyapadīya And The Rule Of Metaphor

Abstract

The task of paper presentation in the workshop motivated me to dive into the rich Indian cosmos of philosophical discourse— and it happened to be the study of Vākyapadīya— mainly that of the partial and comprehensive translation of K Raghavan Pillaiwhich seemed similar in interests and had many things common to my earlier research work. The paper starts with the old notions of language and goes into detail to understand what it is that we call language and how is it to be a ‘linguistic being.’It ponders over the phenomenon of language as ‘if’ it is metaphorical. The metaphor at large reveals the imaginary, illusionary, arbitrary sides of language and linguistic truths that it produces. The Rule of Metaphor of Paul Ricoeur is chosen to analyze the main ideas on the subject and the same is done with the scholarly Indian treatise called Vākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari— the one coming from a modern French discourse and the second coming from the ancient Sanskrit linguistic grammar. In the end, a short but comprehensive comparison is made to understand how common and similar both authors are— having quite different traditions, conventions, and different spaces and times.