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Verbal Testimony
concomitance in absence prove it to have it but that they do not prove the wordpart üpa to have any meaning (vv. 161-67). The opponent argues that concomitance in presence and concomitance in absence do not suffice to attribute one fixed meaning to a word (vv. 168-81). For there are cases when the same letters can be construed as two or more very different words and cases where the same word appears in two or more very different forms; for example, the word agat can be construed as the ablative-case form of the noun aga as also as a past-tense form of the verb gam (v. 175), while on the other hand the word rājan appears in the forms rājā, rājñā etc. (v. 177). The opponent's general conclusion is that the alleged parts of a sentence contribute nothing towards the meaning of this sentence just as the alleged parts of the word afvakarna contribute nothing towards the meaning of this word; (ašvakarņa) is the name of a tree which has nothing to do either with asva meaning horse nor with karna meaning ear) (v. 181). Kumärila's answer is very elaborate (vv. 182227) but its essential point is that even in the case of an ambiguous word the context should enable us to decide as to what meaning this word is to have and that similarly even in the case of a multi-formed word the context should enable us to make out as to why a particular form of it has been used. The following is Kumārila's concluding remark against the doctrine of an impartite sentence: "The meaning of a sentence is always found accompanied by the meanings of its constituent words; hence the fact that a sentence has its own specific meaning would not go to prove that it is an entity independent of its constituent words (v. 228)”. This enables him to pick up his original thread, for in the present part of his text he is out to show how the meaning of a sentence is yielded through the instrumentality of the meanings of its constituent words. On Kumārila's showing, the meaning of a word is yielded by this word but the meaning of a sentence is yielded not by the words concerned but by the word-meanings concerned. It is therefore somewhat understandable why he emphasizes that the cognition of word-meaning is a case of verbal cognition inasmuch as it is a piece of cognition produced by words but that the cognition of sentential meaning is not a case of verbal cognition ir asmuch as it is produced not by the words concerned but by the word-meanings concerned (v. 230). This however is a mere technical point. The material question is as to how on Kumārila's view sentential meaning is yielded by the word-meanings concerned. In this connection we find him using two expressions viz
(i) Sentential meaning is implied-by (gamya) the word-meanings (v. 229).
concerned
(ii) Sentential meaning is absent-in-the-absence-of (avinābhū) the word-meanings concerned (v. 231).
Strictly speaking, both these expressions mean that sentential meaning is inferred from the word-meanings concerned. Aware of this Kumärila hastens to argue
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