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48 Śramana, Vol 66, No. 2, April-June 2015
study the implications of the meanings in the words and in their definiteness and to try to find out the implication of the words in meaning.
Nikṣepa is also used in the sense of Nyasa where it means implication and clarification.
Background:
The method of Nikṣepa was developed in the Agamic period itself. In the speculative period and also in the period of logical development, the method continued to flourish. While rhetorics gives the method of determining the particular meaning of a multi-sensed word, it is only the commentaries on the Jaina Agamas, which give the method of determining the intended meaning of a uni-sensed word. This method is useful not only for the treatises on logic but the analytic approach of this method has a universal utility in that it is a valuable instrument for defining the intended meaning and purpose of any systematic treatise on any subject.2
If we go through the development of the knowledge and practical behaviour including verbal expression, we find that primarily - the object in its wholeness is known through valid cognition (Pramāṇā), and subsequently the same object is cognised in parts through the Nayas (viewpoints/standpoints). All our knowledge is synthetic in the beginning, and becomes analytic at the next stage. When we know anything obviously we name it. For example, a thing of particular shape and capable of holding water is named as 'jar'. This nomenclature is responsible for the relationship of denotativé and denotatum between the word 'jar' and its referent (the objective jar). This is the initial stage of word-meaning relationship which undergoes semantic expansion in due course. Thus a drawing or a picture of a jar, though incapable of carrying water, is also called jar; likewise a mass of clay and a potsherd is also called jar. At this stage of semantic expansion it becomes imperative to ascertain the
