Indian Logic Part 03

Author(s): Nagin J Shah
Publisher: Sanskrit Sanskriti Granthmala

Page 92

SPHOTA THEORY...
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belongs to individual words, if it is proved that a sentence is such an instrument then denotative power belongs to a sentence.30 The former responds by arguing as follows: "One who does not know what the individual words occuring in a sentence mean also does not know what this sentence as a whole means, and this means that an individual word has got a meaning of its own; certainly, if a word has a meaning only as indiscriminately associated with the other words occurring in a sentence then it should be impossible to delimit the precise meaning of this word." Nor can it be said that the meaning of an individual word can be learnt by comparing and contrasting different sentences with each other, for if meaning is really had not by an individual word but by a sentence as a whole then no purpose should be served by such comparing and contrasting. Certainly, in that case it should be impossible to distinguish one sentence from another, for what distinguishes one sentence from another is there occurring two different sets of words in the two." So what is needed is to ascertain as to what individual word possesses what meaning, an ascertainment which should be impossible in case meaning is had not by an individual word but by a sentence as a whole." Thus even when meaning is learnt through listening to the sentences uttered by elderly people what is learnt is the meaning of an individual word, not the meaning of a sentence as a whole; certainly, sentences being infinite in number it should be impossible for one to learn their meaning one by one while as a matter of fact one conversant with the words concerned manages to grasp the meaning even of a sentence fresh from the pen of. a poet. 35 All this is understandable and cogent, but the Kumärilite closes his argument with an anomalous statement; thus he says: "So the meanings respectively yielded by the different words of a sentence get associated with one another in accordance with the felt-need, the proximity, the ability. Thus in the case of the sentence 'A hundred hords of elephants are seated on the finger-tip' the word-meanings concerned do not get associated with one another because they lack the ability; but, on the opponent's showing even these word-meanings should get associated with one another, it being his point that a sentence means things-associated-with-oneanother". It is difficult to see what the Kumärilite means when he says that in the case of the sentence 'A hundred hords etc.' the word-meanings concerned do not get associated with one another.