Last century, the work of the grammarian-philosopher Bhartrhari (c. 5th century AD) attracted the attention of indologists like Kielhorn and Bühler, who still had to work with the manuscript sources then accessible. Bhartrhari studies made only slow progress in the decades which followed, and as recently as in 1977, Hartmut Scharfe could write that "The study of Bhartrhari's thought is still in its infancy; critical editions and usable translations come forth only slowly." Nearly twenty years later, the grammatical and linguo-philosophical contents of Bhartrhari's work, especially of his magnum opus the Vakyapadiya, are receiving mounting scholarly attention. One of the reasons for this must be that the subject matter of the Vakyapadiya is strongly consonant with crucial themes in twentieth century Western thought, in spite of the very different background and elaboration of the issues. Scholars have compared Bhartrhari's ideas with those of Saussure, Wittgenstein, and Derrida. One theme which pervades the entire Vakyapadiya is the relation between language, thought, and reality. In several Indian traditions, a proper insight into this relation was (and still is) considered to be of importance for attaining 'liberation'. One chapter of the Vakyapadiya is devoted especially to 'relations' from different linguistic, logical, and philosophical points of view. It is this chapter and the theme of the relation between language, thought, and reality which are central to Houben's The Sambandha-Samuddesa. Some points of special interest are Bhartrhari's discussion of how 'relations' can be expressed in language (likewise an important problem to many 20th-century philosophers), and his approach to the logical problems of the Liar and related paradoxes. The book contains translations and elaborate discussions of each verse of Bhartrhari's Sambandha- Samuddesa, as well as a complete translation the first of its kind in a European language of Helaraja's erudite yet lucid commentary.