Nyaya And Jaina Epistemology

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

Page 99

NYĀYA AND JAINA EPISTEMOLOGY
objective content when it is said that 'the hill is fiery', the context of our assertion is the “hill as fiery”. So according to this, the import of a sentence is the predication of an attribute regarding subject. It expresses the relation between two reals : a substantive and an adjective. The proposition does not bring one in relation with the other but finds them related. Nyāya, therefore, refutes the view of idealists that a proposition is the reference of an ideal content to reality nor does the proposition expresses relation between two ideas As realists, Nyāya philosophers put forward the objective view that a proposition exspresses a real relation between two reals.
To sum up, according to Nyāya, the referend of the word constitute all three—universal, individual and imagetogether or either of the three; the one being prominent depending upon contexts. The word cow means the image of a cow which is the object cow, a particular, which is that by virtue of universal cowhood in which it participates.
As regards the meaning problem, Nyāya maintains that relation between word and its meaning is conventional. Words have power to denote particular objects due to convention of God which is known from usage of elders.
As a realism, Nyāya is consistent in maintaining the view regarding import of words and sentence when it holds that sentence refers to external objects and not to ideas though purposiveness or intention of the speaker is the main aim of each and every sentence. There is an additional power—tātparya–because of which words convey a related meaning born through words contained in a sentence. In addition to primary meaning denoted by the primary power of words which can only refer to isolated word-meaning, there is another power, tātparya, which conveys the synactic