Somānanda’s Critique of Bhartṛhari’s Doctrine of the Levels of Speech

Somānanda, a famous Kashmiri philosopher of the 10th century CE and the founder of the Pratyabhijñā tradition, criticized Bhartṛhari’s view that the paśyantī speech was identical to Brahman. Later Pratyabhijñā philosophers adopted Bhartṛhari’s doctrine of the three levels of speech and added a fourth level — the Supreme Speech (parā vāc). Modern scholars of Pratyabhijñā usually believe that Bhartṛhari was aware of the fourth level of speech and that Somānanda criticized him because he did not know his works properly. The article describes the doctrine of speech levels in Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya and in the commentaries, as well as the evolution of this doctrine in the works of Kashmiri philosophers. No traces of the fourth level of speech can be found in Bhartṛhari’s work. It can be suggested that Somānanda in his critique highlighted the ambiguous ontological status of speech in Bhartṛhari’s linguistic philosophy.