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The Dimensions of a Word: Bharthari's and... : 105
Again, in the condition when both are identical, if phoneme is unable to produce meaning then the sphota too cannot produce the meaning"117.
The conclusion is that only the conscious entity can have ability of manifestation of meaning. In contrast to Bhart[hari Jainism regards the sentence as an absolute collection of the terms with mutual expectancy, but it avows equal importance to both--the sentence and the terms. That is why neither a sentence is possible without the terms not the terms are capable to express their meaning without a sentence. Particular units of language get their meaning only in sentence, not independent of it, but without them there is no existence of a sentence. “Terms and sentence both enjoy a relative existence and have relative importance. [...] The Jaina philosophers have accepted the relative truth of all the theories but has not given undue emphasis on any one aspect. [...] Therefore, it is more reasonable to regard a sentence as an absolute collection of relative terms"'118.
The Concept of a Word in Amstachandrasūri's Laghutattva-sphota A very interesting concept of word, deeply rooted in the Jaina perspective, has been presented by Amộtachandrasēri (10 с. C.E.), a famous commentator of Kunakunda's works, in his highly philosophical poem A Light Bursting of the Reality (Laghutattva-sphota), a collection of twenty five independent chapters each having twenty five verses in different matters, belonging to the group of stotras, a Sanskrit literary form.
As it was mentioned before the ability to speak is a distinctive feature of conscious living beings and this consciousness - according to the Jaina point of view-operates by way of contraction and expansion", where the first one relates to darśana, focused on the self, and the second one - to jñāna, turned towards the infinity of external objects. The person, who proceeds in the way of purification and perfection, tends to reach the nirvikalpa state of his consciousness or apprehension 20, the peak of the undifferentiated knowledge121.
The whole seventeenth chapter is focused on the relationship between words together with the elements of syād-vāda and the impact of this way of verbalizing thoughts upon the image of the reality. The core idea of this very set of passages is to stress the intuition that each word is onedimensional, expressing one primary aspect (mukhya) desired by the speaker (mukhyatvam bhavati vivakcitasya)122 and the state of things can be two-dimensional. One dimension refers to positive (vidhi) aspect and the second one -- to the negative (niședha), simultaneously present in an object. First proclaims the thing as established in specific characteristics and the second as exclusion of these. Probably it is also a cause of the lack of possibility of discerning between the real and the unreal aspects of reality. Tattvārtha-sūtra expresses it in the following way: "Owing to the lack of discrimination between the real and the unreal, wrong knowledge is whimsical as that of a lunatic”123. The only way of avoiding this controversy is to add the syātqualificator (syāt, con. praes. act., as, to be), supporting the sentence with a broader perspective of different opposite possibilities, especially with the other compatible aspect or aspects subordinate (gauņa). It is significant that this duality is inside in each word but the manifestation (vyakti) is possible only by using the very qualificator. It implies the split within an inherent meaning of the word transposed into the divided, dual image of the reality (dvyātmaka)124.
