Book Title: Studies in Indian Philosophy
Author(s): Dalsukh Malvania, Nagin J Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

View full book text
Previous | Next

Page 309
________________ Studies in Indian Philosophy variety of things. Under 'words" may be included morphemes, words and compounds of various grammatical categories : simple and compound nouns, verbs, particles, prefixes, and so forth. Under "meanings" may be included individual substances, processes, powers, classes of these things, properties and ideas of any of the foregoing, and perhaps other things as well. To cover this kind of range in English one needs to resorts to one of the most general and flexible semantic terms like "meaning" or "singnification". 287, The third verse of our text tells us that the word-meaning relation is closely connected with the genitive case and with something (vācya-vācaka) which we render in English as "significance"5 : The relation between words and meanings is by means of the genitive : This is the signifier (vācaka) of that, that is the signified (vācya) of this'. Thus the thatness (tattvam) of the relation is signified.(SS 3) We cannot give a full account of this relation, and above all it should not be hastily identified with any modern counterpart from philosophical or commonsense semantics. We have chosen the word 'signifies' as a placeholder for a very comprehensive semantic relation whose content could be gradually unfolded by developing Bhartṛhari's full theory of language in its surrounding philosophical fromewark. The main thing for present purposes is to observe that the same Sanskrit term (vācakam) recurs in the next verse, modifying the term 'expression' (abhidhanam): © Of the relation there is no signifying expression (vācakam abhidhanam) on the basis of a property belonging to it. (SS 4a) Now we want to examine the logical bearing of this verse on the proposition: B1 The significance relation is unnameable. Jain Education International For Private & Personal Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

Loading...

Page Navigation
1 ... 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352