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ETERNITY OR OTHERWISE OF A WORD
to his contention that there exists no 'universal' corresponding to an individual letter, a contention itself aimed at proving that an individual letter is an eternal ubiquitous entity which is only made manifest when this letter is pronounced on this or that occasion. All this makes the present controversy virtually an exercise in futility. In any case, by all this Jayanta closes what he rightly regards as the most vital phase of this controversy; in what follows be takes up the remaining minor questions.
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Thus Jayanta answers the Mimämhsaka's argument that the usage 'such and such a word is pronounced so many and so many a time' makes sense only in case one and the same word is pronounced on so many occasions. The former's simple submission is that such a usage is possible also otherwise; e.g. we say about an act 'it was performed so many times', a.statement not implying that this act was numerically the same act whenever performed, the point being that similar is the statement 'that word was pronounced so many times"," Then is considered the Mimämsaka's submission that a word is recognised as the same whenever it is pronounced while recognition is a case of valid cognition. Jayanta concedes that it is a case of valid cognition when a thing like standing wall is recognised as the same whenever it is seen; but his contention is that such is not the case with a word which is actually seen to perish as soon as it is pronounced."+ The argument that an eternal word is made manifest within a moment by a fleeting air-mass just as things are revealed within a moment by a flash of lightning is rejected on the ground that the flash of lightning does not reveal a thing as perishing then and there and so is not an apt illustrative case." The Mimämsaka argues that when a word is recognised as the same on several occasions and when it is also cognised as perishing on each occasion then this cognition of destruction should be treated as cancelled by this recognition, the reason being that what perishes is not the word itself but the concerned manifesting agent; Jayanta retorts that here the recognition should be treated as cancelled by the cognition of destruction, the reason being that two pronunciations of the same word are a seat of the same 'universal' (or that they are mutually similar) and so are falsely recognised as the same. Jayanta next considers the Mimämsaka's plea that even if all words are equally eternal ubiquitous some reason
