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178 OUTLINES OF INDIAN PHILOSOPHY recognized by all; but the same cannot be said of the third. Its inclusion under pramānas along with perception and inference is indeed peculiar to the Indian view and requires a word of explanation. We should first distinguish here between two aspects of sabda. When we hear a sentence uttered, there is a certain impression produced on our mind through the auditory channel. That is perception and what we apprehend then are sounds occurring in a certain order. Sabda as a pramāna does not, of course, mean this, which is rather a prameya. There is another, the expressive or semantic aspect of it, and sabda as we are now thinking of it is of this latter kind. Its utility in life as a means of acquiring knowledge cannot be exaggerated. Of the numerous facts which a person knows, it is only a small portion that he has observed or deduced for himself. For the rest, he has to depend entirely upon the testimony of others which comes to him through spoken or written words. But it may be questioned whether so much is sufficient to constitute it into an independent pramāna; and we shall see as we proceed that some Indian thinkers denied to verbal testimony the logical status implied by classing it as a separate pramāna. That is, however, to understand sabda in a sense wider than the one which belonged to it at first. In the beginning it stood only for tradition and its scope was extended in course of time so as to comprehend all verbal statements irrespective of their connection with ancient belief. We shall postpone the consideration of the pramāna in this extended sense to later chapters and shall confine our remarks now to it regarded as merely a vehicle of tradition.
The reason for including sabda in this sense under pramāņas will become clear when we remember the vastness of the material of tradition that had accumulated by the time the pramānas came to be formally enunciated. The
1 In the Prabhākara school of Mimäinsa, Sabda as a pramana continues to this day to represent only the Veda.
The words pramana and prameya are found in the Maitri Up. (vi. 14); and prāmāņika or 'one who bases his conclusions on pramănas' is used for 'philosopher' in the Greek accounts of ancient India (see Cambridge History of India, vol. i. p. 421).
