Sanskrit grammar as philosophy: Bhartṛhari on word and meaning

Bhartṛhari (around the fifth century) wrote the Vākyapadīya, "On Sentences and Words", a work of grammar that became a full philosophy of language.

Some key ideas:

• Sphoṭa: meaning isn't built up from individual sounds; there's an indivisible linguistic unit, manifested by the sounds, through which meaning bursts forth.
• The sentence is primary: words are abstractions from sentences, not the other way round.
• Śabdabrahman: at the highest level, reality itself is of the nature of the Word.
• And famously, there is no cognition in the world that isn't permeated by language.

This last claim is remarkably close to some twentieth-century Western views about language and thought. Is Bhartṛhari a linguistic idealist? Or is "permeated by language" a weaker claim about how we cognise, not about what exists?