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INDIAN LOGIC
to the position that the auditory organ is of the form of sky, so that for us any plausible view of the matter will do—even Bhartrmitra's view that the auditory organ is of the form of a speciality produced by air (for this speciality can well differ from man to man),'' Nor is there any difficulty in supposing that the speciality in question is produced in the word itself even if a word is one, impartite and ubiquitous; for even such a word is made manifest not everywhere but only where the needed sound is produced just as a universal which on your view too is one, impartite and ubiquitous is made manifest not everywhere but only where a relevant particular is available.32 As for the features like loudness, slowness etc. even if they do not belong to the word itself but to the sound concerned they can seem to belong to the former just as features like sturdiness, leanness, etc., even if they do not belong to a universal itself but to a relevant particular, can seem to belong to the former.Or we might even say that features like loudness, slowness etc. do not at all belong to a word but to the sound concerned, so that suppression of one another too takes place not on the part of words themselves but on the part of the sounds concerned just like suppression of a weaker light on the part of the stronger one.'?34 To this general argumentation is added a criticism of the Nyāya-Vaiseșika, Sankhya, Jaina and Budddhist views according to which all a word is something of the form of a produced entity, also a positive account of how the Mīmāmsaka views the phenomenon of a word being made manifest by a sound which is of the form of air.
The following criticism is urged against the Nyāya-Vaiseșika view : "On this view a word is produced in sky at one place through a conjunction or a disjunction and from there it spreads out in all directions in the form of a wave-like series of words till it reaches the hearer's ear where the last member of the series is produced and heard.35 All this is unwarranted gossip, and there seems to be no reason why such a series of words should ever stop from being propagated further or why it should be checked by an obstacle like a wall etc.; certainly, a wave-like formation is impossible in an intangible entity like sky. 36 Then it is argued that a word produces another word in a series-form because it is a quality just like colour (which too produces another colour); but it is not our experience that a word is a quality belonging to some substance.''37 Then the following criticism is urged
