पदरथ — Meaning in Context: Disambiguating Technical Words

Padārtha, "word-meaning", is the device by which a reader fixes what a word means in the place where it stands. Kauṭilya defines it tersely as "the meaning bounded by the word" and illustrates it with a technical gloss: a mūlahara, literally a "root-taker", is one who unjustly consumes the property inherited from father and grandfather. Suśruta gives the fullest statement: the meaning may belong to one word, two or many; meanings are unlimited; where two or three senses are possible, the one established by the connection of what comes before and after is to be taken — and he shows it with the word veda, whose two roots and many referents are resolved by context into āyurveda. Cakrapāṇi adds that a word-pair or word-group can have one meaning, as āyuṣo vedaḥ means "the treatise that makes life known". This article quotes the definitions, relates them to the philosophical debate over what a word denotes — individual, form or universal — and to Vātsyāyana's answer that which of these is principal depends on use, and argues through three objections: that padārtha is merely the dictionary, that phrases have sentence-meanings rather than word-meanings, and that Kauṭilya's example belongs to etymology or coined terms. The modern counterparts are word-sense disambiguation, the context principle in semantics, and the controlled definition of terms in research. Series: तन्त्रयुक्तिविमर्शः · Tantrayukti Studies, TY-2026/05. Loci: AŚ 15.1.10–12; Su. Utt. 65.10. Online version: https://sanskritmanthan.in/a/ty-05-padartha