Bhartrihari c. 450 AD – c. 510 AD

Bhartrihari was an Indian Sanskrit grammarian and philosopher of language whose Vakyapadiya is one of the founding texts of Indian linguistic philosophy. Building on the grammatical tradition of Panini, he developed the doctrine of Sphota, the indivisible meaning-bearing unit of speech, and argued that all cognition is permeated by language. His monistic metaphysics identifies the ultimate Brahman with the Word, an idea that influenced both subsequent Indian and modern Western philosophy of language. He also composed three celebrated centuries of verse on policy, love, and renunciation.

Bhartrihari, the Sanskrit grammarian and philosopher of language, is conventionally dated to around 450 to 510, on the basis of the citation of his work by the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing in the late seventh century. The biographical traditions are scant and confused; he is often identified with the Bhartrihari to whom three celebrated centuries of moral, erotic, and renunciatory verses are also attributed, but the identification is uncertain.

His major work is the Vakyapadiya, a treatise in three books and roughly two thousand verses on grammar, linguistic philosophy, and metaphysics. To this is added the Mahabhashyatika, a partly preserved sub-commentary on Patanjali's commentary on Panini, and the lost Sabdadhatusamiksa. The first book of the Vakyapadiya is the celebrated Brahmakanda, presenting language itself, Sabda-brahman, as the ultimate reality.

Bhartrihari is the principal philosophical voice of the Sanskrit grammatical tradition. His doctrines of the sentence-meaning (sphota), the indivisible unity of word and meaning at the deepest level, and the identity of supreme reality with the speech-principle anticipate later Indian philosophical reflection on language and exerted a long influence on the Pratyabhijna school of Kashmir Saivism and, more recently, on comparative philosophy of language.