Amrita Collected Papers by A M Ghatage

SR No.: 006968
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Kasturbhai Lalbhai Smarak Nidhi Ahmedabad
Total Pages: 530
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 10 MB

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Amrita
senses of a word. What is difficult to decide is when to consider the items as homonymous and when polysemous and hence showing various meanings. This has been already broadly discussed above while dealing with the general principles of a historical dictionary. Here we may indicate a kind of a practical procedure to do it. All the meanings which are associated with a given phonemic shape should be put together and then classified. A word like nidāna will show the following meanings, irrespective of the considerations of homonymy, 1. a rope to tie the cow's legs; 2. a rope to tie the calf; 3. cause; 4. primary cause; 5. reason; 6. occasion; 7. basic texts; 8. occasion for an event; 9. occasion for the use of a mantra; 10. its application; 11. one of the causes in the chain of causation; 12. a kind of wicked meditation; 13. a kind of evil resolution; 14. the diagnosis of a disease; 15. name of a book of diagnosis; 16. kind of Buddhist sacred work; 17. end; 18. cessation; 19. closure; 20. purification. All these constitute its contextual meanings based on its use in a specific situation. Before proceeding further, one has to take up the question of setting up homonyms i.e. the number of basically different items of the same shape nidāna. A formal criterion would be to look into the derivations of the word from roots and to see whether they are different, Thus nidāna can be derived from
i. ni + dā to bind
ii. ni + do iii. ni + dai
to cut to purify.
As some of the meanings do show affiliation with the meanings of the roots used, it is possible to set up three homonyms here. Thus purification belongs to item (iii), end, closure and cessation belong to item (ii) and the remaining belong to the first item. Hence three homonyms are necessarily required and should be so indicated. Of the remaining 16 meanings an attempt has to be made to see whether they can be connected with each other and regarded as development from each other or are nuances of the same meaning. If we succeed in this, we set up only one item for them all, but if it cannot be done with the available evidence, we will have to set up additional homonyms to account for them. Additional evidence like difference in gender, number, pada, vikarana etc. may be then looked into to confirm the analysis.
3. The numbering of the meanings can be done in many ways. We can simply number them serially from 1 onwards and, as stated in the Shorter OED, the sequence should be strictly according to the time of the first