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Anekānta and the Problem of Meaning*
S.M. SHAHA
The Doctrine of Anekānta : The doctrine of Anekānta is the heart of Jaina ontology, epistemology and logic. It claims the indeterminateness of reality, its knowledge and its verbal expression. If reality is infinitely manifold, logically there must be infinite ways of intellectually cognizing it and verbally expressing its infinite aspects. This presupposition enables one to harmonize various apparently contradictory descriptions of reality. This doctrine of Anekānta also serves as a beacon in studying the epistemological problem of the meaning of 'Meaning'.
Four types of meaning In India, various schools of philosophy including those of the Sanskrit grammarian and rhetoricians have devoted much thought to the linguistic prolem of meaning and have evolved different theories to explain the semantic aspect of language. As to the meaning, it is supposed that a word or a sentence may convey the primary or metaphorical or suggested meaning. In addition to these three types, some Mimāmsakas, Naiyāyikas and rhetoricians postulate Tätparya or the sentence-meaning as the fourth type. Some consider it to be independent of the first three, while others associate it with any one of them. Out of these four types of meaning, the suggested and purposive meanings are severally indeterminate, relative and, hence, anekāntic in nature. But, in case of the primary and secondary meanings the
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Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. LXVII, 1986.
