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He argued that language is not how we describe reality but how reality exists. The word and the world are one.
The founder of Buddhist logic, who rebuilt the theory of knowledge around two sources alone: bare perception and inference.
Connection
Bhartrhari the philosophy of language absorbed Dignaga — Dignaga drew directly on Bhartrhari's analysis of how words mean, taking over the view that a word signifies by excluding what it is not. It is one of the clearest cases of a Buddhist logician borrowing from a grammarian.
Ideas
Words
“There is no cognition in the world in which the word does not figure; all knowledge is intertwined with the word.”
“Brahman is without beginning or end, the imperishable essence of the Word, which unfolds as the world.”
“There are but two means of knowledge, perception and inference, for the object known is twofold: the particular and the universal.”
Key Moments
c. 480 CE
Composing the Vakyapadiya
c. 500 CE
The monk who kept returning
c. 480 CE
Born in South India
c. 500 CE
The Founding of Buddhist Logic
c. 510 CE
Exclusion Theory of Meaning
c. 520 CE
Teaching at Nalanda
Works
Vakyapadiya
Compendium of Valid Cognition