Nyaya And Jaina Epistemology

Author(s): Kokila H Shah
Publisher: Sharadaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre

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NYĀYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
contextual factors that determine the meaning of an utterance.
Almost all Indian philosophers believe in importance of knowing speaker's intention though they differ as regards the degree of emphasis put on it. Naiyāyikās are not wrong when they say that the meaning of an utterance is what the speaker intends the listener to understand. Even Jainas admit it in some sense. The purposive character of speech cannot be denied. But it is equally true that for language to be an objective instrument of communication, it must be independent of subjective element.
According to Nyāya a sentence is a concatenation of the individual words. Words give their own meaning but the problem is to find out how the relation between the wordmeanings comes. this is because the whole is always something more than parts. Even the gestalt psychologists who hold this view could not satisfactorily explain from where the additional element comes in. Nyāya explains this problem by referring to the function of tātparya the intention of the speaker. For Naiyāyikās the primary meaning is imported into the words by the intension of the speaker. “This function of the sentence to convey the sentence-meaning on the basis of speaker's intention is called tātparyavịtti by some early Naiyāyikās and samsargamaryāda by the later Naiyāyikās”. 36
Comprehension of the Meaning of a Sentence
Every word has its own definite meaning but sentence which is a collection of words has a meaning like the constituent words. The question is the relation between the meaning of a sentence and the meanings of its constituent words. Two different explanations are given to explain the unified meaning of a sentence.