Book Title: Jaina Philosophy of Language
Author(s): Sagarmal Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

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Page 118
________________ (92) : Jaina Philosophy of Language be absolutely redundant. In addition, the every individual term will represent the whole sentence independently. Because of the correlation with the former terms, any term in a sentence will be enough to reveal the meaning of the sentence. To counter this objection of Prabhācandra, it may be said in favour of the said theory that to negate the undesired terms, the pronunciation of other terms cannot be taken as useless. Jainas argue that in that case, the meaning already drawn by the correlated first term will be repeated by the other terms of the sentence, or there will be the fallacy of tautology. Here the followers of Anvitābhidhānavāda may say that what the first term principally denotes (sentence meaning), the other terms of the sentence as assistant of the first term, denote the same meaning as established by the first term, and as such there is no ground for tautology. However, the Jainas do not accept this argument It is also not reasonable to accept on the part of the advocates of anvitābhidhānavāda that the comprehension of sentence meaning is possible only by pronouncing the last term (in sentence) correlated with the meanings of the preceding terms. Prabhācandra criticises this contention by pointing out that if all the terms are mutually correlated, then what is the ground to regard only the meaning of the last related term as expressive of the sentence meaning, why not the meanings of other terms can denote the meaning of the sentence? Prabhākara Miśra in order to protect his theory of concomitant expression (Anvitābhidhānavāda) may argue that in the process of meaning, the principal terms are interlocked with the preceding terms in a sentence and the preceding terms are related with the succeeding terms. In other words, every former term has its correlation with the later term and as such, it would not be possible to get the meaning of the sentence from any one of its terms. The Jainas however, do not agree with it for according to them it is not reasonable to think that the meaning of the preceding terms are determined only by their relation with the succeeding terms for the relation is not one-sided. The succeeding terms are also mutually related with the preceding terms. Therefore, to regard that it is only the final term, which cause the comprehension of the meaning of a sentence is not logical even for the theory of Anvităbhidhānavāda. Prabhākara's reply to this argument is that there are two functions of a term: first, to state its own meaning and secondly, to give rise to a Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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