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CHAPTER II
VERBAL TESTIMONY
Before taking up for consideration the relevant texts let us have a cursory glance at the way Kumarila views the problem of verbal testimony. On this question discussion is conducted on two levels not unconnected with one another; they might be called the ontological level and the logical level and they are not unconnected with one another for the reason that Kumārila maintains certain positions as regards the ontological status of words precisely because he has to defend certain positions as regards the logical status of verbal testimony. Kumārila finds it striking that a word means the same thing whenever it is uttered, wherever it is uttered, by whomsoever it is uttered, to whomsoever it is uttered; from this he concludes that a word must be an eternal and ubiquitous entity possesed of an inherent capacity to denote the thing it does. Of course, Kumārila concedes that one must acquaint oneself with the denotative capacity of a word if one is to employ it or understand it, but his argument is that this capacity must be already present there in this word if one is to acquaint oneself with it just as the thing to be seen must be already present there if one is to see it with the help of one's eyes and the accessories like light etc. Kumārila thinks that all this remains unaccounted for if a word is regarded not as an eternal entity but as a transient entity produced by the speaker (at the time of speaking) and pershing then and there. On this latter supposition-so thinks Kumārilait cannot be said that the same word means the same thing whenever it is uttered; for how it should be impossible to say about two words uttered under different circumstances that they are the same words. Kumārila also says a lot about the conditions under which a word is uttered and heard, and his point is that what takes place under these conditions is that a word existing everywhere and always is made manifest here and now. In the times of Kumarila there also prevailed a view-called sphotavada-according to which a word is not only an eternal and ubiquitous entity but also an impartite entity-so that the letters supposed to constitute it do not really constitute it but only manifest it at the time of its being uttered and heard. The distinction of this view from Kumärila's own is extremely subtle but he has thought it necessary to refute it in no uncertain terms. On Kumārila's view, the letters of a word are its real constituent units and what makes it manifest are not these letters but the vocal activity on the part of the speaker concerned-an activity aimed at pronouncing these letters. Kumärila himself finds it somewhat difficult to explain how both a letter and a word are of the form of an eternal and ubiquitious entity; for a word seems to be only certain letters arranged in an ordered succession but an ordered succession which is eternal and which obtains between elements that are themselves
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