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COMMON SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE....
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Therefore, words mean combination of universal and particular.
Though one is heterodox and the other is orthodox, both Jainas and Nyāya regard sabda as an independent source of knowledge irreducible to any other. Again, Śabda as the understanding meaning of a sentence gives us more knowledge about the objects of the word than perception and inference. In verbal knowledge there is construction of the meanings of sentences according to certain conditions, so there is no fixed relation between a sentence and its meaning. The meaning depends upon some specific conditions. But both agree in maintaining that there is some kind of relationship between a word and its meaning.
In west, also, some modern thinkers like Russell recognize testimony as a separate source of knowledge. A sentence represents the significant combination of words which signifiy objects and the knowledge which we obtain from the meaning of a sentence is peculiar kind of knowledge different from ordinary kinds of knowledge.
It is clear that though both Nyāya and Jaina views are different in certain repsects are opposed to idealistic interpretation of meaning problem that words do not signify referends. The Jainas are one with Naiyāyikās in opposing the Mimāṁsā and the Buddhist doctrine of words. They agree that the word and its object are not essentially related, and that the word is not unrelated to its object. Nyāya and Jaina realists emphatically reject Buddhist doctrine of Apoha and refuse to admit that a word is incapable of expressing real nature of the object and thus not directly related to the object signified by it. Yet, Jaina logicians do not accept the Nyāya view that God, the world-creator, has fixed the meaning of words. Jainas are opposed to divine origin of the
