About Book:
The book focuses on the comparative understanding of the formation of meaning in a textual structure with special reference to Indian as well as Western traditions of knowledge, where finally, arriving at a resolution, the affinity between the two is emphasised. In this book, Bhartrhari, whose Vakyapadiya is conceded to be the foundational text for the evolution of the philosophy of grammar/meaning as a branch of study, is considered with the founding father of structuralism, Ferdinand de Saussure, and the successive theorists: Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Lacan, the two key exponents of poststructuralism. Bhartrhari holds a very significant place in the panini school of Indian grammatical tradition as he invests the central notions of the school with the feature of universal applicability by propounding his philosophical propositions. The book extensively discusses how the structuralist and poststructuralist notions prefigured in bhartrharian postulations propounded in the Vakyapadiya. this book scrutinises many seminal texts and concepts of both traditions to explicate the contemporary relevance of Bhartrharian ideas in the field of language studies. Further, the book provides ample evidence and analysis supporting the claim that Bhartrhari long ago introduced a 'proto-structuralism' that informed the core of Saussure's work in the Cours de Linguistique general.
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