Slokavartika a Study

SR No.: 001133
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: K K Dixit, Nagin J Shah, Dalsukh Malvania
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad
Publication Year: 1983
Total Pages: 132
Language: English
Classification: Book_English, Philosophy, Nyay, Tattvartha Sutra, & Tattvarth
File Size: 11 MB

Page 20

Verbal Testimony
since it is admittedly not made up of letters, is no word at all; (a sphoja is not made. up of the letters concerned because these letters are only supposed to make it manifest). And Kuparila has endeavoured so much to demonstrate how the constiuent letters of a word cognized successively make possible a unitory cognition of this word precisely because the doctrine of sphota crucially hinges upon the denial of this possibility. Kumārila's simple argument is that the difficulties he faces in this connection would not fail to be felt even by the advocate of sphota, for the latter too will have to demonstrate how certain letters cognized successively make possible the manifestation of one single sphota (vv. 91-93). Here Kumarila considers several hypotheses which should account for the possibility in question (vv. 97-121)but he persists in his charge against the advocate of sphota that by giving the name 'word' to something. which is not made up of letters he is not only positing an uncalled for concept (vv. 94-96) but is also going against all popular usage, for plain people would always readily concede that a word is what is made up of letters (vv. 126).
Section XII (Akṛtivāda)
In this section Kumārila discusses the problem of the ontological status of a universal, and the occasion for it arises as follows (vv. 1-4). According to Kumārila a word is an eternal entily eternally related to the entity it means; this in turn requires that the entity meant by a word must itself be something eternal. On the other hand, it is admitted on all hands that a word stands for that feature which is shared in common by all the objects to which this word applies. Combining these two trains of thought Kumarila comes out with the view that the entity meant by a word is of the form of a universal which is an eternal entity residing in each and every object to which this word applies. Then he offers a positive account of the nature of universal and defends it against possible objections. He begains by making a general declaration to the effect that things are found to possess features that are common to several of them as also those that are peculiar to each and that neither set is a case of illusory appearence (vv.5-11). This consideration is supposed to bestow at least prima facie plausibility on Kumārila's thesis on a universal. But he considers it necessary to answer the objection that several particular objects might possess the capacity to produce a cognition of identity in respect of themselves without their being the seat of a common universal (v. 12). On Kumārila's showing such a capacity must be (i) one in the case of all these particulars, (ii) different from these particulars, (iii) a cognized something, and then in his eyes it becomes just another name for the universal posited by him (vv. 13-18). He also considers the objection that several particular objects might be called by the same name without their being the seat of a common universal just as all the universals are called by the same name *universal' without a new universal residing in them at all (v. 19). Kumārila's reply to this objection is interesting and many-pronged (vv. 20-23) but its net purport is that the universals are called by the same name not on account of this being the