Bhartṛhari was not only a clever and well-informed philosopher but also a conservative Brahmin who maintained his own tradition's superiority against the philosophies developed in his time. He exploited a problem that occupied all his philosophical contemporaries to promote his own ideas, in which the Veda played a central role. Bhartṛhari and his thought are situated in their intellectual context. As it turns out, he dealt with issues that others had dealt with before him in India and suggested solutions to (...) existing problems. Indeed, it becomes clear that he was both a philosopher who dealt with current problems and challenges and a traditionalist who used the philosophical debate of his time to try to gain respectability for his own Vedic tradition. (shrink)