Jaina Philosophy of Language

Author(s): Sagarmal Jain
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 87

Jaina Philosophy of Word : (61) theories of philosophy of language, firstly, to accept the transfer of meaning (arthäntaraṇa) they admit that the relation of word and its denotation is not of absolutely invariable. Secondly, they also accept this fact that the denotation of the word is decided by its use. On this ground, they conclude that the relation of word and its denotation is non-eternal as well as changeable and not eternal or unchangeable.
Sphoṭavāda and its criticism26
Plaintiff's statement
Sphotavāda is an important contribution of grammarians to the field of philosophy of language. According to grammarians, sphota means "Sphutati arthoyasmāt sa sphotaḥ'i.e. the eternal and imperceptible element of sounds and words and the real vehicle of the idea which bursts out or flashes on the mind when a sound or word is uttered is sphota. In other words on hearing the words or sentence, when the entire picture-unit of its meaning is presented before us, it is called sphota. Thus, sphota is a meaning bearing unit of the language. It is an element to clear the meaning or denotation of a sentence or word. According to grammarians, the denotation of word or sentence is not determined by letter-sound or phoneme but on completion of those phonemes, it automatically appears. The advocates of sphota discuss this point with reference to a timehonoured illustration of simple word 'gauḥ'. In this word, each one of the three sounds 'g' 'au' and 'h' reveals the same word, and it will be wrong to suppose that the word which finds its expression through the medium of three sounds, different in nature from one another, is different on each occasion. The Patanjali in his Mahābhāṣya says that as soon as the last letter is pronounced, the integral unit of object comes out and that is sphota. He maintains that the sound is transient, it disappears after it is generated and thus, it is unable to convey the meaning because as soon as it denotes the object, it vanishes. Thus sphota is permanent and unchanging and it is manifested by ephemeral sound uttered by the speaker and heard by the listener. In other words sphota is that which manifests the meaning and which is different from the letter-sound or the phoneme.
There are two aspects of word: viz. (i) Sound, and (ii) Sphoța (a meaning-bearing unit of language). Sound appears in succession, from the sound of every letter (phoneme) their emerges a kind of dispositional