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Slokavārtika--a study
a Vedic sentence has to be true in the far more important sence that what it says is the case; glossing over this vital difference as regards the meaning of the word 'true' Kumārila argues that a word is true in respect of its meaning because nobody ever gave this word this meaning and a Vedic sentence is true because nobody ever composed it. Kumārila's position becomes still more vulnerable when it is remembered that each single word has a history of its being given the meaning it now expresses. Similarly fallacious is Kumārila's second inference. The cognition yielded by an ordinary sentence is valid only in the Kumārilian sense that it is valid unless proved invalid; but the cognition yielded by a Vedic sentence has to be valid in the sense that it is never going to be proved invalid. This is a gross discrepancy of contents but a formal discrepancy too lurks here. For the word "authorless' occurring in the probans is anomalous inasmuch as the character of being authorless is lacking in the illustration cited. Be that as it may, Kumàcila does not dilate upon the two inferences in question but only makes them the occasion for an opponent raising the objection that no relation can conceivably obtain between a word and its alleged meaning and that even if such a relation does obtain it must be a made affair (v. 5). The opponent's point is that the only relation conceivable between a word and the thing meant by it is the relatain of conjunction but that such a relation is apparently absent here just as it is absent between the mountains Himalaya and Vindhya (vv. 6-7). Kumärila retorts that the relation of father-and-son is a relation and yet no relation of conjunction while there does obtain between the mountains Himālaya and Vindhya the relation called 'co-residence on the same earth.' (v.10) His positive point is that the relation between a word and the thing meant by, it is that relation of denoter and denoted (v. 11). By way of elaborating his point Kumārila tells us that in the act called denotation the word acts in its capacity as agent or instrument while the thing meant acts in its capacity as object which is all that is understood when the word and the thing meant by it are said to stand in the relation of denoter and denoted (vv. 12-15). Kumārila concede that once this relation is cognised one can offer inference to the effect that whoever utters such and such a word means such and such a thing, but he insists that the original cognition of this relation is not a case of inference but a type sui generis (vv. 16-20). Kumārila also describes how the relation in question is first learnt (vv. 20-25). Thus in some cases an expert tells the novice 'such and such a thing is meant by such and such a word'; in other cases, the novice first watches the experts acting in the wake of words having been uttered and then applying the method of concomitance in presence and concomitance in absence he comes to understand that such and such a thing is meant by such and such a word. Here the opponent objects that if this is how a word comes to acquire meaning for a novice then this word connot be said to possess an inherent capacity to yield this meaning (v. 33). Kumārila's reply to the objection is considerably elaborate (vv. 34-44). Thus he points out that even if a thing possesses the capacity to yield a certain result this capacity is realized and result yielded usually in the
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