Karma Mimansa

Author(s): Berriedale Keith
Publisher: Berriedale Keith

Page 46

THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE
37
which no person, save through the Veda, could have any knowledge. The Nyaya argument in favour of convention, derived from the case of proper names, is met by the admission that in the case of such names convention is active, but that common names stand on a different footing In the former case, we know that the persons or things so called have a beginning in time, and that some person niust have applied the names to them; in the case of common names we have no warrant for finding a beginning in time for either the things or the words. There has been no beginning of the world or of men, and they must have from the first talked of the things of the world, just as in actual life it is from observing the conversation of his elders, or by their instruction, that a youth learns the meanings of words. What is still more conclusive evidence is that, unless we recognised, as we do, that words possess of their own nature meanings, we could never form the conception of conventional meanings, which is a later development.
The eternity of the word is established formally and at length by Jaimini in a systematic refutation (1, 1,6-23)of the objections directed against the doctrine by the Nyāya school in particular, The Nyāya? holds that the eternity of the word is precluded by the fact that it is perceptible only after effort; that it is evanescent; that in common parlance men talk of producing a sound, just as they speak of producing any ordinary article; that the same word is pronounced by many people and in many places; that words have changes in form, such as dadhy atra for dadhi; and that, when uttered by many people, the volume of sound 15 increased. The reply of Jaimini insists that the apparent production of sound, regarded by the Nyāya as a creation, is only a manifestation of a pre-existing entity, a fact in harmony with the disappearance of words on the cessation of the manifestation, while products proper remain in being The analogy of the sun refutes the argument from simultaneity of perception by many persons; the change to
1 The Sutra (II, 2, 23-59) deals with the topic, but in such a way as to show in all likelihood posteriority to the Mināmsā Sutra.