Language and Testimony in Classical Indian Philosophy

First published Fri Aug 20, 2010

Speculations about the nature and function of language in India can be traced to its earliest period.
These speculations are multi-faceted in that one detects many different strands of thought regarding
language. Some of these speculations are about what one may call the principle of language, but others
are about specific languages or specific uses of these languages. One sees speculations regarding the
creation of language as well as the role of language in the creation of the universe. Language appears
in relation to gods as well as humans, and occupies the entire width of a spectrum from being a
divinity herself to being a means used by gods to create and control the world, and ultimately to being
a means in the hands of the human beings to achieve their own religious as well as mundane purposes.
Gradually, a whole range of questions are raised about all these various aspects of language in the
evolving religious and philosophical traditions in India, traditions which shared some common
conceptions, but thrived in full-blooded disagreements on major issues. Such disagreements relate to
the ontological nature of language, its communicative role, the nature of meaning, and more
specifically the nature of word-meaning and sentence-meaning. On the other hand, certain
manifestations of language, whether in the form of specific languages like Sanskrit or particular
scriptural texts like the Vedas, became topics of contestation between various philosophical and
religious traditions. Finally, one must mention the epistemic role and value of language, its ability or
inability to provide veridical knowledge about the world. In what follows, I intend to provide a brief
account of these diverse developments in ancient, classical and medieval India. (For an approximate
chronology of Indian philosophers, see the supplement.)

1. Pre-systematic conceptions of language in Vedic texts

2. Conception of Language among Sanskrit grammarians

3. General philosophical approaches to the status of Vedic scriptures

4. Language and Meaning

6. Different views regarding sentence-meaning

7. Some important conceptions

8. Why the differences?

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1. Pre-systematic conceptions of language in Vedic texts

The Vedic scriptural texts (1500500 bce) consist of the four ancient collections, i.e., the gveda, the
Smaveda, the Yajurveda, and the Atharvaveda. The next layer of Vedic texts, the Brhmaas,

consists of prose ritual commentaries that offer procedures, justifications, and explanations. The last
two categories of Vedic literature are the rayakas, Forest Texts, and the Upaniads, Secret
Mystical Doctrines.
The word saskta is not known as a label of a language variety during the Vedic
period. The general term used for language in the Vedic texts is vk, a word historically
related to voice. The Vedic poet-sages perceived significant differences between their own
language and the languages of the outsiders. Similarly, they perceived important differences
between their own use of language in mundane contexts and the use of language directed
toward Gods. The Gods are generically referred to by the term deva, and the language of the
hymns is said to be dev vk, divine language. This language is believed to have been
created by the Gods themselves. The language thus created by the Gods is then spoken by the
animate world in various forms. The divine language in its ultimate form is so mysterious that
three-quarters of it are said to be hidden from the humans who have access only to a quarter of
it. The Vedic poet-sages say that this divine language enters into their hearts and that they
discover it through mystical introspection. Just as the language used by the Vedic poet-sages is
the divine language, the language used by the non-Vedic people is said to be un-godly (adev)
or demonic (asury).
In the Vedic literature, one observes the development of mystical and ritual
approaches to language. Language was perceived as an essential tool for approaching the gods,
invoking them, asking their favors, and thus for the successful completion of a ritual
performance. While the Gods were the powers that finally yielded the wishes of their human
worshipers, one could legitimately look at the resulting reward as ensuing from the power of
the religious language, or the power of the performing priest. This way, the language came to
be looked upon as having mysterious creative powers, and as a divine power that needed to be
propitiated before it could be successfully used to invoke other gods. This approach to
language ultimately led to deification of language and the emergence of the Goddess of
Speech (vk dev), and a number of other gods who are called Lord of Speech
(brahmaaspati, bhaspati, vkpati).
In contrast with the valorous deeds of the divine language, the language of the nonVedic people neither yields fruit nor blossom (gveda, 10.71.5). Yielding fruit and blossom
is a phrase indicative of the creative power of speech that produces the rewards for the
worshiper. From being a created but divine entity, the speech rises to the heights of being a
divinity in her own right and eventually to becoming the substratum of the existence of the
whole universe. The deification of speech is seen in hymn 10.125 of the gveda where the
Goddess of Speech sings her own glory. In this hymn, one no longer hears of the creation of
the speech, but one begins to see the speech as a primordial divinity that creates and controls
other gods, sages, and the human beings. Here the goddess of speech demands worship in her

own right, before her powers may be used for other purposes. The mystery of language is
comprehensible only to a special class of people, the wise Brhmaas, while the commoners have
access to and understanding of only a limited portion of this transcendental phenomenon.
The Lord of Speech divinities typically emerge as creator divinities, e.g., Brahm, Bhaspati, and
Brahmaaspati, and the word brahman which earlier refers, with differing accents, to the creative
incantation and the priest, eventually comes to assume in the Upaniads the meaning of the creative
force behind the entire universe. While the Vedic hymns were looked upon as being crafted by
particular poet-sages in the earlier period, gradually a rising perception of their mysterious power and
their preservation by the successive generations led to the emergence of a new conception of the
scriptural texts. Already in the late parts of the gveda (10.90.9), we hear that the verses (k), the
songs (sma), and the ritual formulas (yajus) arose from the primordial sacrifice offered by the gods.
They arose from the sacrificed body of the cosmic person, the ultimate ground of existence. This
tendency of increasingly looking at the scriptural texts as not being produced by any human authors
takes many forms in subsequent religious and philosophical materials, finally leading to a wide-spread
notion that the Vedas are not authored by any human beings (apaurueya), and are in fact uncreated
and eternal, beyond the cycles of creation and destruction of the world. In late Vedic texts, we hear the
notion that the real Vedas are infinite (ananta) and that the Vedas known to human poet-sages are a
mere fraction of the real infinite Vedas.
In the late Vedic traditions of the Brhmaas, we are told that there is perfection of the ritual
form (rpasamddhi) when a recited incantation echoes the ritual action that is being performed. This
shows a notion that ideally there should be a match between the contents of a ritual formula and the
ritual action in which it is recited, further suggesting a notion that language mirrors the external world
in some way. In the rayakas and Upaniads, language acquires importance in different ways. The
Upaniads, emphasizing the painful nature of cycles of rebirths, point out that the ideal goal should be
to put an end to these cycles of birth and rebirth and to find one's permanent identity with the original
ground of the universal existence, i.e., Brahman. The term brahman, originally referring to creative
ritual chants and the chanters, has now acquired this new meaning, the ultimate creative force behind
the universe. As part of the meditative practice, one is asked to focus on the sacred syllable OM,
which is the symbolic linguistic representation of Brahman. Here the language, in the form of OM,
becomes an important tool for the attainment of one's mystical union with Brahman. The Sanskrit
word akara refers to a syllable, but it also means indestructible. Thus, the word akara allowed the
meditational use of the holy syllable OM to ultimately lead to one's experiential identity with the
indestructible reality of Brahman.
The role of language and scripture in the Upaniadic mode of religious life is complicated.
Here, the use of language to invoke the Vedic gods becomes a lower form of religious practice. Can
Brahman be reached through language? Since Brahman is beyond all characterizations and all modes
of human perception, no linguistic expression can properly describe it. Hence all linguistic expressions

and all knowledge framed in language are deemed to be inadequate for the purpose of reaching
Brahman. In fact, it is silence that characterizes Brahman, and not words. Even so, the use of
OM-focused meditation is emphasized, at least in the pre-final stages of Brahman-realization.
By the time we come to the classical philosophical systems in India, one more
assumption is made by almost all Hindu systems, i.e., that all the Vedas together form a
coherent whole. The human authorship of the Vedic texts has long been rejected, and they are
now perceived either as being entirely uncreated and eternal or created by God at the
beginning of each cycle of creation. Under the assumption that they are entirely uncreated,
their innate ability to convey truthful meaning is unhampered by human limitations. Thus if all
the Vedic texts convey truth, there cannot be any internal contradictions. If an omniscient God,
who by his very nature is compassionate and beyond human limitations, created the Vedas,
one reaches the same conclusion, i.e., there cannot be any internal contradictions. The
traditional interpretation of the Vedas proceeds under these assumptions. If there are seeming
contradictions in Vedic passages, the burden of finding ways to remove those seeming
contradictions is upon the interpreter, but there can be no admission of internal contradictions
in the texts themselves.

2. Conception of Language among Sanskrit grammarians

Before the emergence of the formalized philosophical systems or the daranas, we see
a number of philosophical issues relating to language implicitly and explicitly brought out by
the early Sanskrit grammarians, namely Pini, Ktyyana and Patajali. Pini (400 bce)
composed his grammar of Sanskrit with a certain notion of Sanskrit as an atemporal language.
For him, there were regional dialects of Sanskrit, as well as variation of usage in its scriptural
(chandas) and contemporary (bh) domains. All these domains are treated as sub-domains
of a unified language, which is not restricted by any temporality.
Patajali's Mahbhya refers to the views of Vyi and Vjapyyana on the meaning
of words. Vyi argued that words like cow denote individual instances of a certain class,
while Vjapyyana argued that words like cow denote generic properties or class properties
(kti), such as cowness, that are shared by all members of certain classes. Patajali presents a
long debate on the extreme positions in this argument, and finally concludes that both the
individual instances and the class property must be included within the range of meaning. The
only difference between the two positions is about which aspect, the individual or the class
property, is denoted first, and which is understood subsequently. This early debate indicates
philosophical positions that get expanded and fully argued in the traditions of the NyyaVaieikas and the Mmsakas.
The early commentators on Pini's grammar from the late Mauryan and postMauryan periods, Ktyyana and Patajali (200100 bce), display a significant reorganization

of Brahmanical views in the face of opposition from Jains and Buddhists. For Ktyyana and
Patajali, the Sanskrit language at large is sacred like the Vedas. The intelligent use of Sanskrit,
backed by the explicit understanding of its grammar, leads to prosperity here and in the next world, as
do the Vedas. Ktyyana and Patajali admit that vernaculars as well as Sanskrit could do the function
of communicating meaning. However, only the usage of Sanskrit produces religious merit. This is an
indirect criticism of the Jains and the Buddhists, who used vernacular languages for the propagation of
their faiths. The grammarians did not accept the religious value of the vernaculars. The vernacular
languages, along with the incorrect uses of Sanskrit, are all lumped together by the Sanskrit
grammarians under the derogatory terms apaabda and apabhraa, both of which suggest a view
that the vernaculars are degenerate or fallen forms of the divine language, i.e., Sanskrit. Ktyyana
says: While the relationship between words and meanings is established on the basis of the usage of
specific words to denote specific meanings in the community of speakers, the science of grammar only
makes a regulation concerning the religious merit produced by the linguistic usage, as is commonly
done in worldly matters and in Vedic rituals (first Vrttika on the Adhyy). Ktyyana refers to
these degenerate vernacular usages as being caused by the inability of the low-class speakers to
speak proper Sanskrit. The grammarians tell the story of demons that used improper degenerate usages
during their ritual and hence were defeated.
The relationship between Sanskrit words and their meanings is said to be established (siddha)
and taken as given by the grammarians. Patajali understands this statement of Ktyyana to mean that
the relationship between Sanskrit words and their meanings is eternal (nitya), not created (krya) by
anyone. Since this eternal relationship, according to these grammarians, exists only for Sanskrit words
and their meanings, one cannot accord the same status to the vernaculars, which are born of an
inability on the part of their speakers to speak proper Sanskrit.
While Pini uses the term prakti to refer to the derivationally original state of a word or
expression before changes effected by grammatical operations are applied, Ktyyana and Patajali
use the term vikta to refer to the derivationally transformed segment. However, change and identity
are not compatible within more rigid metaphysical frameworks, and this becomes apparent in the
following discussion. In his Vrttikas or comments on Pini's grammar, Ktyyana says that one
could have argued that an item partially transformed does not yet lose its identity (Vrttika 10 on P.
1.1.56). But such an acceptance would lead to non-eternality (anityatva) of language (Vrttika 11,
Mahbhya, I, p. 136), and that is not acceptable. Patajali asserts that words in reality are eternal
(nitya), and that means they must be absolutely free from change or transformation and fixed in their
nature. If words are truly eternal, one cannot then say that a word was transformed and is yet the same.
This points to the emerging ideological shifts in philosophical traditions, which make their headway
into the tradition of grammar, and finally lead to the development of newer conceptions within the
tradition of grammar and elsewhere.

In trying to figure out how the emerging doctrine of nityatva (permanence,

immutability) of language causes problems with the notion of transformation (vikra) and
how these problems are eventually answered by developing new concepts, we should note two
issues, i.e., temporal fixity or flexibility of individual sounds, and the compatibility of the
notion of sequence of sounds, or utterance as a process stretched in time. From within the new
paradigm of nityatva or eternality of sounds, Ktyyana concludes that the true sounds (vara)
are fixed in their nature in spite of the difference of speed of delivery (Vrttika 5 on P. 1.1.70,
Mahbhya, I, p. 181). The speed of delivery (vtti) results from the slow or fast utterance of
a speaker (vacana), though the true sounds are permanently fixed in their nature. Here,
Ktyyana broaches a doctrine that is later developed further by Patajali, and more fully by
Bharthari. It argues for a dual ontology. There are the fixed true sounds (vara), and then
there are the uttered sounds (vacana, utterance). It is Patajali who uses, for the first time as
far as we know, the term sphoa to refer to Ktyyana's true sounds which are fixed
(avasthit var) and the term dhvani (uttered sounds). Patajali adds an important
comment to Ktyyana's discussion. He says that the real sound (abda) is thus the sphoa
(the sound as it initially breaks out into the open), and the quality [length or speed] of the
sound is part of dhvani (sound as it continues) (Mahbhya, I, p. 181). The term sphoa
refers to something like exploding or coming into being in a bang. Thus it refers to the initial
production or perception of sound. On the other hand, the stretching of that sound seems to
refer to the dimension of continuation. Patajali means to say that it is the same sound, but it
may remain audible for different durations.
This raises the next problem that the grammarians must face: can a word be
understood as a sequence or a collection of sounds? Ktyyana says that one cannot have a
sequence or a collection of sounds, because the process of speech proceeds sound-by-sound,
and that sounds perish as soon as they are uttered. Thus, one cannot have two sounds coexisting at a given moment to relate to each other. Since the sounds perish as soon as they are
uttered, a sound cannot have another co-existent companion (Vrttikas 9 and 10 on P.
1.4.109). Ktyyana points out all these difficulties, but it is Patajali who offers a solution to
this philosophical dilemma. Patajali suggests that one can pull together impressions of all the
uttered sounds and then think of a sequence in this mentally constructed image of a word
(Mahbhaya, I, p. 356). Elsewhere, Patajali says that a word is perceived through the
auditory organ, discerned through one's intelligence, and brought into being through its
utterance (Mahbhaya, I, p. 18). While Patajali's solution overcomes the transitoriness of the
uttered sounds, and the resulting impossibility of a sequence, there is no denial of sequentiality
or perhaps of an imprint of sequentiality in the comprehended word, and there is indeed no
claim to its absolutely unitary or partless character. Patajali means to provide a solution to the
perception of sequentiality through his ideas of a mental storage of comprehension. But at the

same time, this mental storage and the ability to view this mental image allows one to overcome the
difficulty of non-simultaneity and construct a word or a linguistic unit as a collection of perceived
sounds or words, as the case may be. Ktyyana and Patajali specifically admit the notion of
samudya (collection) of sounds to represent a word and a collection of words to represent a phrase
or a sentence (Vrttika 7 on P. 2.2.29). Thus, while the ontology of physical sounds does not permit
their co-existence, their mental images do allow it, and once they can be perceived as components of a
collection, one also recognizes the imprint of the sequence in which they were perceived. Neither
Ktyyana nor Patajali explicitly claim any higher ontological status to these word-images. However,
the very acceptance of such word-images opens up numerous explanatory possibilities.
Although Ktyyana and Patajali argue that the notion of change or transformation of parts of
words was contradictory to the doctrine of nityatva (permanence) of language, they were not averse
to the notion of substitution. The notion of substitution was understood as a substitution, not of a part
of a word by another part, but of a whole word by another word, and this especially as a conceptual
rather than an ontological replacement. Thus, in going from bhavati to bhavatu, Pini prescribes
the change of i of ti to u (cf. P.3.4.86: er u). Thus, i changes to u, leading to the change
of ti to tu, and this consequently leads to the change of bhavati to bhavatu. For Ktyyana and
Patajali, the above atomistic and transformational understanding of Pini's procedure goes contrary
to the doctrine of nityatva (permanence) of words. Therefore, they suggest that it is actually the
substitution of the whole word bhavati by another whole word bhavatu, each of these two words
being eternal in its own right. Additionally they assert that this is merely a notional change and not an
ontological change, i.e., a certain item is found to occur, where one expected something else to occur.
There is no change of an item x into an item y, nor does one remove the item x and place y in its place
(Vrttikas 12 and 14 on P. 1.1.56). This discussion seems to imply a sort of unitary character to the
words, whether notional or otherwise, and this eventually leads to a movement toward a kind of
akhaa-pada-vda (the doctrine of partless words) in the Vkyapadya of Bharthari. While one
must admit that the seeds for such a conception may be traced in these discussions in the Mahbhya,
Patajali is actually not arguing so much against words having parts, as against the notion of change or
transformation (Mahbhya on P. 1.2.20, I, p. 75).
Ktyyana and Patajali clearly view words as collections of sounds. Besides using the term
samudya for such a collection, they also use the word varasaghta (collection of sounds).
They argue that words are built by putting together sounds, and that, while the words are meaningful,
the component sounds are not meaningful in themselves. The notion of a word as a collection
(saghta) applies not only in the sense that it is a collection of sounds, but also in the sense that
complex formations are collections of smaller morphological components.
This leads us to consider the philosophical developments in the thought of Bharthari (400 ce), and
especially his departures from the conceptions seen in Ktyyana and Patajali. Apart from his
significant contribution toward an in depth philosophical understanding of issues of the structure and

function of language, and issues of phonology, semantics and syntax, Bharthari is well known for his
claim that language constitutes the ultimate principle of reality (abdabrahman). Both the signifier
words and the signified entities in the world are perceived to be a transformation (parima) of the
ultimate unified principle of language.
For Ktyyana and Patajali, the level of padas (inflected words) is the basic level
of language for grammar. These words are freely combined by the users to form sentences or
phrases. The words are not derived by Ktyyana and Patajali by abstracting them from
sentences by using the method of anvaya-vyatireka (concurrent occurrence and concurrent
absence) (Vrttika 9 on P. 1.2.45). On the other hand, they claim that a grammarian first
derives stems and affixes by applying the procedure of abstraction to words, and then in turn
puts these stems and affixes through the grammatical process of derivation (saskra) to build
the words. Here, Ktyyana and Patajali do make a distinction between the levels of actual
usage (vacana) and technical grammatical analysis and derivation. While full-fledged words
(pada) occur at the level of usage, their abstracted morphological components do not occur by
themselves at that level. However, they do not seem to suggest that the stems, roots, and
affixes are purely imagined (kalpita).
Bharthari has substantially moved beyond Ktyyana and Patajali. For him, the
linguistically given entity is a sentence. Everything below the level of sentence is derived
through a method of abstraction referred to by the term anvaya-vyatireka or apoddhra.
Additionally, for Bharthari, elements abstracted through this procedure have no reality of any
kind. They are kalpita (imagined) (Vkyapadya, III, 14, 7576). Such abstracted items have
instructional value for those who do not yet have any intuitive insight into the true nature of
speech (Vkyapadya, II. 238). The true speech unit, the sentence, is an undivided singularity
and so is its meaning which is comprehended in an instantaneous cognitive flash (pratibh),
rather than through a deliberative and/or sequential process. Consider the following verse of
the Vkyapadya (II.10):
Just as stems, affixes etc. are abstracted from a given word, so the abstraction of words from a
sentence is justified.

Here, the clause introduced by just as refers to the older more widely prevalent view seen in the
Mahbhya. With the word so, Bharthari is proposing an analogical extension of the procedure of
abstraction (apoddhra) to the level of a sentence.
Without mentioning Patajali or Ktyyana by name, Bharthari seems to critique
their view that the meaning of a sentence, consisting of the interrelations between the
meanings of individual words, is essentially not derived from the constituent words
themselves, but from the whole sentence as a collection of words. The constituent words
convey their meaning first, but their interrelations are not communicated by the words

themselves, but by the whole sentence as a unit. This view of Ktyyana and Patajali is criticized by
Bharthari (Vkyapadya II.1516, 4142). It is clear that Bharthari's ideas do not agree with the
views expressed by Ktyyana and Patajali, and that the views of these two earlier grammarians are
much closer, though not identical, with the views later maintained by the Nyya-Vaieikas and
Mmsakas. For Bharthari, the sentence as a single partless unit conveys its entire unitary meaning
in a flash, and this unitary meaning as well as the unitary sentence are subsequently analyzed by
grammarians into their assumed or imagined constituents.
Finally, we should note that Bharthari's views on the unitary character of a sentence and its
meaning were found to be generally unacceptable by the schools of Mms and Nyya-Vaieika, as
well as by the later grammarian-philosophers like Kauabhaa and Ngeabhaa. Their discussion of
the comprehension of sentence-meaning is not couched in terms of Bharthari's instantaneous flash of
intuition (pratibh), but in terms of the conditions of kk (mutual expectancy), yogyat
(compatibility), and satti (contiguity of words). In this sense, the later grammarian-philosophers
are somewhat closer to the spirit of Ktyyana and Patajali.

3. General philosophical approaches to the status of Vedic scriptures

Early Vedic notions about the authorship of the Vedic hymns are different from philosophical
views. Vedic hymns use words like kru (craftsman) to describe the poet, and the act of producing a
hymn is described as (gveda 10.71.2): Like cleansing barley with a sieve, the wise poets created the
speech with their mind. The poets of the Vedic hymns are also called mantrakt (makers of
hymns). Further, each hymn of the Veda is associated with a specific poet-priest and often with a
family of poet-priests. But, already in the gveda, there are signs of the beginning of an impersonal
conception of the origin of the Vedas. For instance, the famous Purua-hymn of the gveda describes
the hymns of the gveda, the formulae of Yajus and the songs of Sman as originating from the
primordial sacrifice of the cosmic being (gveda 10.90.9). This trend to ascribe impersonal origin to
the Vedas gets further accentuated in the Brhmaas and the Upaniads.
Later Hindu notions about the Vedic scriptures and their authority are in part reflections of
Hindu responses to the criticisms of the Vedas launched by the Buddhists and the Jains. The early
Buddhist critique of the Vedas targets the authors of the Vedic hymns. Vedic sages like Vasiha,
Vivmitra, and Bhgu are described as the ancient authors of the mantras (por mantna kattro),
but they are criticized as being ignorant of the true path to the union with Brahm (Tevijjasutta;
Dghanikya; Suttapiaka). So the Vedas are depicted as being words of ignorant human beings who
do not even recognize their own ignorance. How can one trust such authors or their words? The
Buddhist and the Jain traditions also rejected the notion of God, and hence any claim that the Vedas
were words of God, and hence authoritative, was not acceptable to them. On the other hand, the Jain
and the Buddhist traditions claimed that their leading spiritual teachers like Mahvra and Buddha

were omniscient (sarvaja) and were compassionate toward humanity at large, and hence their
words were claimed to be authoritative.
Beginning around 200 bce, Hindu ritualists (Mmsakas) and logicians (Naiyyikas
and Vaieikas) began to defend their religious faith in the Vedas and in the Brahmanical
religion with specific arguments. Some of these arguments have precursors in the discussions
of the early Sanskrit grammarians, Ktyyana and Patajali. The Mmsakas accepted the
arguments of the Buddhists and the Jains that one need not accept the notion of a creatorcontroller God. However, the Mmsakas attempted to defend the Vedas against the criticism
that the ancient human sages who authored the hymns of the Vedas were ignorant, while the
figures like the Buddha and Mahvra were omniscient. They contested the notion of an
omniscient person (sarvaja), and argued that no humans could be omniscient and free from
ignorance, passion, and deceit. Therefore, the Buddha and Mahvra could not be free from
these faults either, and hence their words cannot be trusted. On the other hand, the Vedas were
claimed to be eternal and intrinsically meaningful words, uncreated by any human being
(apaurueya). Since they were not created by human beings, they were free from the
limitations and faults of human beings. Yet the Vedas were meaningful, because the
relationship between words and meanings was claimed to be innate. The Vedas were
ultimately seen as ordaining the performance of sacrifices. The Mmsakas developed a
theory of sentence-meaning which claimed that the meaning of a sentence centers around
some specific action denoted by a verb-root and an injunction expressed by the verbal
terminations. Thus, language, especially the scriptural language, primarily orders us to engage
in appropriate actions.
In this connection, we may note that Mms and other systems of Hindu philosophy
developed a notion of linguistic expression as one of the sources of authoritative knowledge
(abdaprama), when other more basic sources of knowledge like sense perception
(pratyaka) and inference (anumna) are not available. Particularly, in connection with
religious duty (dharma), and heaven (svarga) as the promised reward, only the Veda is
available as the source of authoritative knowledge. For Mms, the Veda as a source of
knowledge is not tainted by negative qualities like ignorance and malice that could affect a
normal human speaker.
To understand the Mms doctrine of the eternality of the Vedas, we need to note
that eternality implies the absence of both a beginning and an end. In Indian philosophy, two
kinds of persistence are distinguished, namely the ever unchanging persistence (kasthanityat), like that of a rock, and the continuous and yet incessantly changing existence of a
stream like that of a river (pravha-nityat). The persistence claimed for the Vedas by the
Mmsakas would appear to be of the kastha (unchanging persistence) kind, while its
continuous study from time immemorial would be of the pravha-nitya (fluid persistence)

kind. Further, the meanings which the words signify are natural to the words, not the result of
convention. Mms does not think that the association of a particular meaning with a word is due to
conventions among people who introduce and give meanings to the words. Further, words signify only
universals. The universals are eternal. Words do not signify particular entities of any kind which come
into being and disappear, but the corresponding universals which are eternal and of which the transient
individuals are mere instances. Further, not only are the meanings eternal, the words are also eternal.
All words are eternal. If one utters the word chair ten times, is one uttering the same word ten times?
The Mmsakas say that, if the word is not the same, then it cannot have the same meaning. The
word and the meaning both being eternal, the relation between them also is necessarily so. An
important argument with which the eternality of the Vedas is secured is that of the eternality of the
sounds of a language.
The Mms conceives of an unbroken and beginningless Vedic tradition. No man or God
can be considered to be the very first teacher of the Veda or the first receiver of it, because the world is
beginningless. It is conceivable that, just as at present, there have always been teachers teaching and
students studying the Veda. For the Mmsakas, the Vedas are not words of God. In this view, they
seem to accept the Buddhist and the Jain critique of the notion of God. There is no need to assume
God. Not only is there no need to assume that God was the author of the Vedas, there is no need to
assume a God at all. God is not required as a Creator, for the universe was never created. Nor is God
required as the Dispenser of Justice, for karman brings its own fruits. And one does not need God as
the author of the Vedas, since they are eternal and uncreated to begin with. The is, Vedic sages, did
not compose the Vedas. They merely saw them, and, therefore, the scriptures are free from the taint of
mortality implicit in a human origin. The Mms notion of the authority of the authorless Veda also
depends upon their epistemic theory, that claims that all received cognitions are intrinsically valid
(svata prama), unless and until they are falsified by subsequent cognitions of higher order.
The traditions of the Naiyyikas and the Vaieikas strongly disagreed with the views of the
Mmsakas and they developed their own distinctive conceptions of language, meaning, and
scriptural authority. They agreed with the Mmsakas that the Vedas were a source of authoritative
knowledge (abda-prama), and yet they offered a different set of reasons. According to them, only
the words of a trustworthy speaker (pta) are a source of authoritative knowledge. They joined the
Mmsakas in arguing that no humans, including Buddha and Mahvra, are free from ignorance,
passion, etc., and no humans are omniscient, and therefore the words of no human being could be
accepted as infallible. However, they did not agree with the Mmsakas in their rejection of the
notion of God. In the metaphysics of the Nyya-Vaieika tradition, the notion of God plays a central
role. In defending the notion of God (as in the Nyyakusumjali of Udayana), they claimed that God
was the only being in the universe that was omniscient and free from the faults of ignorance and
malice. He was a compassionate being. Therefore, only the words of God could be infallible, and
therefore be trusted. For the Naiyyikas and Vaieikas, the Vedas were words of God, and not the

words of human sages about God. The human sages only received the words of God in their
meditative trances, but they had no authorship role.
On a different level, this argument came to mean that God only spoke in Sanskrit, and
hence Sanskrit alone was the language of God, and that it was the best means to approach
God. God willfully established a connection between each Sanskrit word and its meaning,
saying let this word refer to this thing. Such a connection was not established by God for
vernacular languages, which were only fallen forms of Sanskrit, and hence the vernaculars
could not become vehicles for religious and spiritual communication. The Naiyyikas argued
that vernacular words did not even have legitimate meanings of their own. They claimed that
the vernacular words reminded the listener of the corresponding Sanskrit words that
communicated the meaning.

4. Language and Meaning

The term artha in Sanskrit is used to denote the notion of meaning. However, the
meaning of this term ranges from a real object in the external world referred to by the word to
a mere concept of an object which may or may not correspond to anything in the external
world. The differences regarding what meaning is are argued out by the philosophical schools
of Nyya, Vaieika, Mms, various schools of Buddhism, Sanskrit grammar, and poetics.
Among these schools, the schools of Nyya, Vaieika, and Mms have realist ontologies.
Mms focuses mainly on interpreting the Vedic scriptures. Buddhist thinkers generally
pointed to language as depicting a false picture of reality. Sanskrit grammarians were more
interested in language and communication than in ontology, while Sanskrit poetics focused on
the poetic dimensions of meaning.
The modern distinction of sense versus reference is somewhat blurred in the
Sanskrit discussions of the notion of meaning. The question Indian philosophers seem to raise
is what does a word communicate? They were also interested in detecting if there was some
sort of sequence in which different aspects of layers of meaning were communicated.
Generally, the notion of meaning is further stratified into three or four types. First there is the
primary meaning, something that is directly and immediately communicated by a word. If the
primary meaning is inappropriate in a given context, then one moves to a secondary meaning,
an extension of the primary meaning. Beyond this is the suggested meaning, which may or
may not be the same as the meaning intended by the speaker.
The various Indian theories of meaning are closely related to the overall stances taken
by the different schools. Among the factors which influence the notion of meaning are the
ontological and epistemological views of a school, its views regarding the role of God and
scripture, its specific focus on a certain type of discourse, and its ultimate purpose in
theorizing.

In the Western literature on the notion of meaning in the Indian tradition, various terms such
as sense, reference, denotation, connotation, designatum, and intension have been
frequently used to render the Sanskrit term artha. However, these terms carry specific nuances of their
own, and no single term adequately conveys the idea of artha. Artha basically refers to the object
signified by a word. In numerous contexts, the term stands for an object in the sense of an element of
external reality. For instance, Patajali says that when a word is pronounced, an artha object is
understood. For example: bring in a bull, eat yogurt, etc. It is the artha that is brought in and it is
also the artha that is eaten.
The schools of Nyya and Vaieika set up an ontology containing substances, qualities,
actions, relations, generic and particular properties, etc. With this realistic ontology in mind, they
argue that if the relation between a word and its artha (meaning) were a natural ontological relation,
there should be real experiences of burning and cutting in one's mouth after hearing words like agni
(fire) and asi (sword). Therefore, this relationship must be a conventional relationship
(saketa), the convention being established by God as part of his initial acts of creation. The
relationship between a word and the object it refers to is thought to be the desire of God that such and
such a word should refer to such and such an object. It is through this established conventional
relationship that a word reminds the listener of its meaning. The school of Mms represents the
tradition of the exegesis of the Vedic texts. However, in the course of discussing and perfecting
principles of interpretation, this system developed a full-scale theory of ontology and an important
theory of meaning. For the Mmsakas, the primary tenet is that the Vedic scriptural texts are eternal
and uncreated, and that they are meaningful. For this orthodox system, which remarkably defends the
scripture but dispenses with the notion of God, the relationship between a word and its meaning is an
innate eternal relationship. For both Nyya-Vaieikas and Mmsakas, language refers to external
states of the world and not just to conceptual constructions.
The tradition of grammarians, beginning with Bharthari, seems to have followed a middle
path between the realistic theories of reference (bhyrthavda) developed by Nyya-Vaieika and
Mms on the one hand, and the notional/conceptual meaning (vikalpa) of the Buddhists on the
other. For the grammarians, the meaning of a word is closely related to the level of understanding.
Whether or not things are real, we do have concepts. These concepts form the content of a person's
cognitions derived from language. Without necessarily denying or affirming the external reality of
objects in the world, grammarians claimed that the meaning of a word is only a projection of intellect
(bauddhrtha, buddhipratibhsa). The examples offered by Sanskrit grammarians such as
aaga (horn of a rabbit) and vandhysuta (son of a barren woman) remain meaningful
within this theory. Sanskrit grammarians are thus not concerned with ontological or truth functional
values of linguistic expressions. For them the truth of an expression and its meaningfulness are not to
be equated.

By the middle of the second millennium of the Christian era, certain uniformity came
about in the technical terminology used by different schools. The prominent schools in this
period are the new school of Nyya initiated by Gagea, the schools of Mms, Vednta,
and Sanskrit grammar. While all these schools are engaged in pitched battles against each
other, they seem to accept the terminological lead of the neo-logicians, the Navya-Naiyyikas.
Following the discussion of the term artha by the neo-logician Gaddharabhaa, we can state
the general framework of a semantic theory. Other schools accept this general terminology,
with some variations.
It may be said that the term artha (meaning) stands for the object or content of a verbal
cognition or a cognition that results from hearing a word (bda-bodha-viaya). Such a verbal
cognition results from the cognition of a word (bda-jna) on the basis of an awareness of the
signification function pertaining to that word (pada-niha-vtti-jna). Depending upon the kind
of signification function (vtti) involved in the emergence of the verbal cognition, the meaning
belongs to a distinct type. In general terms:

1. When a verbal cognition results from the primary signification function (akti / abhidhvtti /
mukhyavtti) of a word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called primary
meaning (akyrtha / vcyrtha / abhidheya).
2. When a verbal cognition results from the secondary signification function (lakavtti /
guavtti) of a word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called secondary meaning
(lakyrtha).
3. When a verbal cognition results from the suggestive signification function (vyajanvtti) of a
word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called suggested meaning (vyagyrtha /
dhvanitrtha).
4. When a verbal cognition results from the intentional signification function (ttparyavtti) of a
word, the object or content of that verbal cognition is called intended meaning (ttparyrtha).

Not all the different schools of Indian philosophy accept all of these different kinds of
signification functions for words, and they hold substantially different views on the nature of
words, meanings, and the relations between words and meanings. However, the above
terminology holds true, in general, for most of the medieval schools. Let us note some of the
important differences. Mms claims that the sole primary meaning of the word bull is the
generic property or the class property (jti) such as bull-ness, while the individual object which
possesses this generic property, i.e., a particular bull, is only secondarily and subsequently
understood from the word bull. The school called Kevalavyaktivda argues that a particular
individual bull is the sole primary meaning of the word bull, while the generic property bullness is merely a secondary meaning. Nyya argues that the primary meaning of a word is an

individual object qualified by a generic property (jti-viia-vyakti), both being perceived

simultaneously.
Sanskrit grammarians distinguish between various different kinds of meanings (artha). The term
artha stands for an external object (vastumtra), as well as for the object that is intended to be
signified by a word (abhidheya). The latter, i.e., meaning in a linguistic sense, could be meaning in a
technical context (strya), such as the meaning of an affix or a stem, or it may be meaning as
understood by people in actual communication (laukika). Then there is a further difference. Meaning
may be something directly intended to be signified by an expression (abhidheya), or it could be
something which is inevitably signified (nntaryaka) when something else is really the intended
meaning. Everything that is understood from a word on the basis of some kind of signification
function (vtti) is covered by the term artha. Different systems of Indian philosophy differ from each
other on whether a given cognition is derived from a word on the basis of a signification function
(vtti), through inference (anumna), or presumption (arthpatti). If a particular item of information is
deemed to have been derived through inference or presumption, it is not included in the notion of
word-meaning.
The scope of the term artha is actually not limited in Sanskrit texts to what is usually understood
as the domain of semantics in the western literature. It covers elements such as gender (liga) and
number (sakhy). It also covers the semantic-syntactic roles (kraka) such as agent-ness (karttva)
and object-ness (karmatva). Tenses such as the present, past, and future, and the moods such as the
imperative and optative are also traditionally included in the arthas signified by a verb root, or an
affix. Another aspect of the concept of artha is revealed in the theory of dyotyrtha (co-signified)
meaning. According to this theory, to put it in simple terms, particles such as ca (and) do not have
any lexical or primary meaning. They are said to help other words used in construction with them to
signify some special aspects of their meaning. For instance, in the phrase John and Tom, the
meaning of grouping is said to be not directly signified by the word and. The theory of dyotyrtha
argues that grouping is a specific meaning of the two words John and Tom, but that these two
words are unable to signify this meaning if used by themselves. The word and used along with these
two words is said to work as a catalyst that enables them to signify this special meaning. The problem
of use and mention of words is also handled by Sanskrit grammarians by treating the phonological
form of the word itself to be a part of the meaning it signifies. This is a unique way of handling this
problem.

6. Different views regarding sentence-meaning

Most schools of Indian philosophy have an atomistic view of meaning and the meaningbearing linguistic unit. This means that a sentence is put together by combining words and words are
put together by combining morphemic elements like stems, roots, and affixes. The same applies to
meaning. The word-meaning may be viewed as a fusion of the meanings of stems, roots, and affixes,

and the meaning of a sentence may be viewed as a fusion of the meanings of its constituent
words. Beyond this generality, different schools have specific proposals. The tradition of
Prbhkara Mms proposes that the words of a sentence already convey contextualized
inter-connected meanings (anvitbhidhna) and that the sentence-meaning is not different
from a simple addition of these inherently inter-connected word-meanings. On the other hand,
the Naiyyikas and the Bha Mmsakas propose that words of a sentence taken by
themselves

convey only uncontextualized unconnected meanings,

and that

these

uncontextualized word-meanings are subsequently brought into a contextualized association

with each other (abhihitnvaya). Therefore, the sentence-meaning is different from wordmeanings, and is communicated through the concatenation (sasarga) of words, rather than
by the words themselves. This is also the view of the early grammarians like Ktyyana and
Patajali.
For the later grammarian-philosopher Bharthari, however, there are no divisions in
speech acts and in communicated meanings. He says that only a person ignorant of the real
nature of language believes the divisions of sentences into words, stems, roots, and affixes to
be real. Such divisions are useful fictions and have an explanatory value in grammatical
theory, but have no reality in communication. In reality, there is no sequence in the cognitions
of these different components. The sentence-meaning becomes an object or content of a single
instance of a flash of cognition (pratibh).

7. Some important conceptions

The terms akyatvacchedaka and pravttinimitta signify a property which determines
the inclusion of a particular instance within the class of possible entities referred to by a word.
It is a property whose possession by an entity is the necessary and sufficient condition for a
given word being used to refer to that entity. Thus, the property of potness may be viewed as
the akyatvacchedaka controlling the use of the word pot.
The concept of laka (secondary signification function) is invoked in a situation
where the primary meaning of an utterance does not appear to make sense in view of the
intention behind the utterance, and hence one looks for a secondary meaning. However, the
secondary meaning is always something that is related to the primary meaning in some way.
For example, the expression gagy ghoa literally refers to a cowherd-colony on the
Ganges. Here, it is argued that one obviously cannot have a cowherd-colony sitting on top of
the river Ganges. This would clearly go against the intention of the speaker. Thus, there is both
a difficulty of justifying the linkage of word-meanings (anvaynupapatti) and a difficulty of
justifying the literal or primary meaning in relation to the intention of the speaker
(ttparynupapatti). These interpretive difficulties nudge one away from the primary meaning

of the expression to a secondary meaning, which is related to that primary meaning. Thus, we
understand the expression as referring to a cowherd-colony on the bank of the river Ganges.
It is the next level of meaning or vyajan (suggestive signification function) which is
analyzed and elaborated more specifically by authors like nandavardhana in the tradition of Sanskrit
poetics. Consider the following instance of poetic suggestion. With her husband out on a long travel, a
lovelorn young wife instructs a visiting young man: My dear guest, I sleep here and my night-blind
mother-in-law sleeps over there. Please make sure you do not stumble at night. The suggested
meaning is an invitation to the young man to come and share her bed. Thus, the poetic language goes
well beyond the levels of lexical and metaphorical meanings, and heightens the aesthetic pleasure
through such suggestions.

8. Why the differences?

The nuances of these different theories are closely related to the markedly different interests of
the schools within which they developed. Sanskrit poetics was interested in the poetic dimensions of
meaning. Grammarians were interested in language and cognition, but had little interest in ontological
categories per se, except as conceptual structures revealed by the usage of words. For them words and
meanings had to be explained irrespective of one's metaphysical views. Nyya-Vaieikas were
primarily into logic, epistemology, and ontology, and argued that a valid sentence was a true picture of
a state of reality. The foremost goal of Mms was to interpret and defend the Vedic scriptures.
Thus, meaning for Mms had to be eternal, uncreated, and unrelated to the intention of a person,
because its word par excellence, the Vedic scripture, was eternal, uncreated, and beyond the
authorship of a divine or human person. The scriptural word was there to instruct people on how to
perform proper ritual and moral duties, but there was no intention behind it. The Buddhists, on the
other hand, aimed at weaning people away from all attachment to the world, and hence at showing the
emptiness of everything, including language. They were more interested in demonstrating how
language fails to portray reality, than in explaining how it works. The theories of meaning were thus a
significant part of the total agenda of each school and need to be understood in their specific context.

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