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Chapter 11 Content of Physics - 2 : Sound, Electricity
and Magnetism
[A] Sound
The canons and commentaries contain large amount of material regarding sound - a term which includes its nature, forms like letters, words, speech, language, notes and tones of music, its attributes and propagation. It has been described by the terms – sabda, vacana, bhāṣā and dhvani in canons. These are closely related terms but often taken as equivalents. The canons indicate many terms associated with bhāṣā (language or speech ):
li) Bhāṣā-dravya Bhāṣic matfer (ii) Bhāṣā-varganā Bhāṣic variforms (iii) Bhāṣā-paryāpti Bhāṣā completion (iv) Bhāṣā-samiti Bhāșic carefulness (v) Bhāṣā-vicaya Bhāṣic meditation'
There is mention of two terms associated with sabda, Sabda-naya ( verbal stand-point ) and sabda-kāma ( wishprovoking sounds )2. The standard scientific term for 'sabda' is sound. Dhvani is another term for sound and it is clear that this is more basic as no pronunciation of words is possible without it. There has been science of sound or acoustics for literary authors and musicians since early times in India and canons also have description about it with good details.
The early canons use the term 'sabda' without any inner details about it. Of course, they mention its various effects as below :
(i) Sound may be pleasing, desirable or otherwise. (ii) Sound may effect psychologically.
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