वाक्यशेषः — Completing the Sentence: Ellipsis and Anuvṛtti

Vākyaśeṣa, "the remainder of the sentence", is the device by which the reader supplies a word the author has left out. Kauṭilya defines it as "that by which a sentence is completed", with a simile from his discussion of calamities — "and loss of activity for a king, as for one whose wings are cut" — in which "of a bird" is the word to be supplied. Suśruta defines it as "the unstated word by which a sentence would be completed": in a list "of the head, hands, feet, sides, back, belly and chest", "of the person" is understood without being said. Cakrapāṇi gives the fullest account: a word the teacher did not make in the sentence, for the sake of brevity, which is supplied because it is understood — asti ("there is") in a sentence of Caraka's Sūtrasthāna, māṃsa ("meat") in "with soups of jāṅgala" — and he adds the limit: only those words are supplied "which are understood even though not inserted". Kauṭilya's own definition of a sentence — "a group of words, when the sense is complete" — explains why the device is needed, and the Mīmāṃsā rule that doubtful meanings are settled "from the remainder of the passage" shows a second, wider sense of the same term. This article distinguishes vākyaśeṣa from yoga and arthāpatti, and answers three objections: that ellipsis is the fault of deficiency, that supplying words lets the reader rewrite the text, and that the tantrayukti and the Mīmāṃsā senses are unrelated. It concludes that vākyaśeṣa is the contract of brevity between a śāstra and its reader, and that its modern forms are ellipsis resolution, the reading of compressed technical notation, and the editor's bracketed supplement. Series: तन्त्रयुक्तिविमर्शः · Tantrayukti Studies, TY-2026/18. Loci: AŚ 15.1.38–40; Su. Utt. 65.19. Online version: https://sanskritmanthan.in/a/ty-18-vakyashesha