This question has been debated at length in Sanskrit philosophy, oscillating especially among three main positions. I discussed these positions with some accuracy in previous posts, but this time I would like to try a bird-eye view about what is at stake.

On the one side, Maṇḍana claimed that the only motivator for undertaking actions is the awareness of the fact that the action to be undertaken is the means to obtain a desired goal. On the other, Prabhākara’s followers claimed that we immediately obey to commands because we feel enjoined, and only later analyse what is being asked and why. The role of the mention of the listener’s desire in commands such as “If you want to lose weight, try this shake!” is not meant to say that the enjoined action is an instrument to realise the desired output. Rather, the mention of the desire is meant for the listener to understand that they are the person addressed by the prescription. It picks up the person, who immediately relates with their own desires, but does not describe the existence of an instrumental relation between enjoined action and result. The last position can be connected to Bhartṛhari’s pratibhā theory. As depicted by Maṇḍana, this is a general theory about meaning, which includes both commands and descriptive sentence. According to it, human as well as non-human animals have innate inclinations which make it possible for them to perform activities they could have never learnt but are still able to perform, such as swimming or breastfeeding in the case of a baby. The pratibhā theory can be extended to commands which one would respond to because of an innate inclination.

Maṇḍana’s theory has the clear advantage of being a reductionist theory. By following it, one does no longer need an ad hoc semantic theory for commands, which can be reduced to descriptive sentences explaining the relation between the action enjoined and the expected output. Similarly, Maṇḍana provides a single theory covering all aspects of motivation to act, both in the case of commands and in the case of autonomous undertakings of action. In all cases, one is motivated to act because one thinks that the action is the instrument to get to the expected result. What are the disadvantages of this theory? First of all, Prābhākaras have a point when they describe our first response to commands. We immediately feel enjoined even before starting to analyse the action we have been required to perform. Secondly, Maṇḍana’s theory might have problems when it comes to people who know what would be best for them, but still don’t act. Can this all be explained just in terms of desires and instruments?

As declared at the beginning, the above is my attempt to give a short overview of the debate. Comments are welcome!

At this point, Maṇḍana introduces some opponents, mainly one upholding pratibhā.

The term pratibhā is found in Bhartṛhari, whom Maṇḍana extensively quotes in chapter 11 of his Vidhiviveka. It is clear that Maṇḍana suggests the pratibhā as an alternative way of making sense of what motivates people to act. In this sense, pratibhā is a pravartaka `motivator’, something causing one to act. It is the key alternative to Maṇḍana’s own proposal that the knowledge that the enjoined action will lead to a desired result is what causes people to act. The pratibhā theory radically opposes this one.

In fact, Maṇḍana’s theory is primarily cognitive (you act with regard to X because you know something relevant about X), whereas the pratibhā theory is almost behaviourist (you act with regard to X because of the pratibhā inducing you to act).

The Prābhākara opponent within Maṇḍana will later appropriate this theory and join it with their own deontological understanding, according to which we act primarily because we are enjoined to do so, thus adding a deontological nuance which was absent in Bhartṛhari’s view of pratibhā.

But what is pratibhā before its Prābhākara reinterpretation? A key passage for the understanding of the pratibhā theory in Maṇḍana before its Prābhākara appropriation is the very sentence introducing it, at the beginning of section 11.3. There, the opponent suggests pratibhā as the thing causing one to undertake an action. An uttarapakṣin asks which kind of artha this is and the answer is at first sight surprising: It is no artha at all (na kaścit). What is it then? It is a cognitive event (prajñā) leading to action.

The point seems to be that there is no mental content, but only the urge towards acting. The pratibhā is a mental state without intentional content.

A further hint is found at the beginning of 11.5, where Maṇḍana responds to the paradox that the pratibhā cognition has no object, but it causes activity. This results, says Maṇḍana, in an undesirable consequence. In fact, if in the case of pratibhā the cognition of the connection between word and meaning plays no role, because the pratibhā has no intentional content, a person hearing a prescription should act independently of any cognition of the meaning.

But can we have purely agentive mental states? Can there be incitement to action without any content?

I am grateful to Hugo David for an inspiring talk on pratibhā back in 2018. This interpretation should, however, not be blamed on him. Similarly, I am always grateful to Elliot Stern for his edition of the Vidhiviveka and for the work we shared in the last 12 months.

Moreover, human beings also agree about the fact that words (and not complex texts only) are related to a distinct meaning. The relation between a word as meaningful unit and its meaning is fixed, as it is proved by our common experience of language. This experience cannot be denied in favour of a view focusing on the text as a whole and rejecting without compelling reasons our prima facie experience of words as meaningful units.

Given that one can thus establish that words are meaningful, what exactly do they convey? Mainstream Mīmāṃsā authors, departing from Śabara, claim, against Nyāya ones, that words convey universals (see ŚBh ad PMS 1.1.24: sāmānye padam “the word conveys the universal”). This is, again, confirmed, by our common experience, in which words figure again and again denoting the same element recurring in several particular items, namely their underlying universal aspect. For instance, the word “cow” denotes in every sentence in which it occurs the universal “cowness”, which is shared by all individual cows. However, this thesis seems at first sight to imply that words would never be able to convey a complex state of affairs on their own accord, and would therefore be almost useless. Human language would be constituted almost of extremely general statements about universals and, which is even more important for Mīmāṃsakas, no specific actions could be enjoined. In fact, each order presuppose a specification (one cannot bring the universal cowness, but only a particular cow). In order to solve this difficulty, Mīmāṃsakas claim that a complex state of affairs (viśiṣṭārtha in the Mīmāṃsā jargon) is conveyed by a sentence (see again, ŚBh ad PMS 1.1.24: viśeṣe vākyam ”the sentence conveys the specific”). This means that the sentence-meaning is more than the sheer sum of word-meanings, insofar as at the level of sentence meaning one moves from one level (that of universals) to the other (that of specific meanings). This solution, however, leads to a further question, namely: How are these two different levels reached? Do the same words lead to the one and then to the next?

The process of sentence‐signification, leading from words to the sentence‐meaning, is distinctly explained by the two main Mīmāṃsā sub-schools, Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. Both subschools agree on the basic tenets seen so far, but they differ on the path leading from the words signifying universals to the sentence signifying a particular state of affairs. According to Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors, words conclude their function in denoting their own universal meanings (they ground this view in a statement by Śabara, describing words as nivṛttavyāpārāṇi `having concluded their function’, ŚBh ad 1.1.25). Thus, it is the word-meanings, conveyed by words, which convey the sentence-meaning once connected together.

One might (as did Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors) object that in this case the sentence meaning is no longer conveyed directly by words, but rather by their meanings and that it is therefore no longer strictly speaking linguistic. Thus, the sentence-meaning would no longer be conveyed through linguistic communication as a distinct instrument of knowledge. This might be a sheer terminological problem, but for Mīmāṃsā authors it has a much deeper relevance. In fact, Mīmāṃsā authors explain that only the Vedas can convey knowledge of dharma. This means that any knowledge of dharma obtained through another source is invariably unreliable. Therefore, if the sentence-meaning were not linguistic, then even the sentence-meanings about dharma would no longer be directly conveyed by Vedic sentences, and would therefore end up being unreliable.

Bhāṭṭa authors reply that the sentence meaning is indeed a function of words, although via their meanings. Bhāṭṭas therefore distinguish a direct denotation (abhidhā) of words, through which universals are denoted, and a secondary signification (lakṣaṇā), through which complex sentence meanings are conveyed.

Prābhākara authors object in three ways: 1. They claim that lakṣaṇā is possible only once the direct denotation is impossible (for instance, in the case of “The village on the Ganges”, one comes to understand that the village is on the Ganges’ bank because the primary meaning would be impossible). But what exactly is incongruous in the word meanings once connected? 2. How do word-meanings connect to each other? If they do it because the words bestow into them the capacity to connect to each other, then it is more economical to just postulate that the words themselves convey the sentence-meaning, without the intermediate step of the sentence-meaning. 3. If word-meanings can automatically connect among themselves, then why don’t they do it unless once in a sentence (in this connection it is important to recollect that artha means both a linguistically conveyed meaning and a cognitively acquired one)? A plausible answer to 1. would point to the fact that the connection of various universals leads in fact to an impossibility since, as in the above example, one cannot bring the universal cowness. One might also suggest that lakṣaṇā in the Bhāṭṭa account acquires a technical meaning, different from the one it assumes in accounts of implicature etc. As for 2. and 3., Kumārila Bhaṭṭa answers that word-meanings do in fact connect automatically and this this does actually occur even outside of sentences. The example Kumārila mentions will be discussed by generations of authors and will remain the only one discussed in this connection: A person sees an indistinct white shape, hears a neighing and perceives the sound of hooves. These three unconnected meanings automatically connect into the complex meaning ”A white horse is running”.

By contrast, Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors, and especially Prabhākara’s main commentator, Śalikanātha, state that words first get connected and then denote the specified sentence meaning only once connected. This assures that the sentence meaning can be said to be linguistically conveyed, since there is not the intermediary step of word-meanings, a conclusion which is very important for the Mīmāṃsā epistemology, regarding linguistic communication as a distinct instrument of knowledge (see the section above). However, this explanation altogether skips the role of word-meanings. Thus, Prābhākara authors have to explain the fact that the own meanings of single words appear to do have a role to play in the process, since there is an invariable concomitance between knowing the words’ individual meanings and knowing the sentence’s one. This tension between the opposing risks of atomism and holism is dealt with differently by various authors. Prabhākara seems to present the most basic version of the theory, where word-meanings just don’t play a role in the apprehension of the sentence-meaning. Śālikanātha and his Bhāṭṭa opponent Sucarita start discussing the role the memory of the individual word-meanings plays in the process. Words would accordingly cause one to remember their own meanings, then get related to one another and then denote the complex sentence-meaning. The word-meanings would therefore be recollected, but not denoted by words.

Words get connected into a complex sentence meaning through proximity, semantic fitness and syntactic expectancy. These three criteria correspond to the requirement of being uttered one after the other with no intervening time (unlike in the case of the words ”a cow” and ”runs” pronounced on two different days), being semantically fit to connect (unlike the words ”watering” and ”with fire”) and being linkable through syntactic expectancy (as in the case of a verb and its arguments).

Do you think the Mīmāṃsā theories only make sense in their own context? Or do they look convincing even for people like us? Why (not)?

This process, called vyutpatti, is debated at length in the two subschools of Mīmāṃsā. It is first described by the Prābhākara Śālikanātha, who explains through it that the Prābhākara anvitābhidhāna theory must be right. In fact, the atomistic theory according to which one learns one by one the meaning of each single word is refuted by our common experience, in which we see that children or less experienced speakers learn how to speak by observing experienced speakers interact among each other through sentences, not words. Similarly, the holistic theory of Bhartṛhari leads to unacceptably anti-economic consequences, since one would need to postulate that each single sentence needs to be learnt separately, whereas we commonly see that speakers who master a given set of words can easily understand new sentences, if only they are composed of these same words. What remains open to debate, however, is how one moves from the experience of sentences to the understanding of the single word-meanings (see freschi01 for the different Bhāṭṭa and Prābhākara solutions).

Mīmāṃsakas subscribe to the idea that words convey word-meanings, and thus refute the Bhartṛharian holism. The relation between a word as meaningful unit and its meaning is fixed, as it is proved by our common experience of words, and it cannot be denied in favour of a view focusing on the text as a whole and rejecting without compelling reasons our prima facie experience of words as meaningful units.

Given that one can thus establish that words are meaningful, what exactly do they convey?
Mainstream Mīmāṃsā authors claim, against Nyāya ones, that words convey universals, while sentences convey particulars. This is, again, confirmed, by our common experience, in which words figure again and again denoting the same element recurring in several particular items, namely their underlying universal aspect. However, this thesis implies that words would never be able to convey a complex state of affairs on their own accord, and would therefore be almost useless. By contrast, a complex state of affairs (viśiṣṭārtha in the Mīmāṃsā jargon) is conveyed by a sentence. This means that the sentence-meaning is more than the sheer sum of word-meanings. The process of sentence‐signification, leading from word‐meanings to the sentence‐meaning, is distinctly explained by the two main Mīmāṃsā schools, Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā and Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā. Both schools agree on the basic tenets seen so far, but they differ on the path leading from the words’ signification of universals to the sentence’s signification of a particular state of affairs. According to Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsā authors, words conclude their function in denoting their own universal meanings. These, in turn, get connected into a complex sentence meaning through proximity, semantic fitness and syntactic expectancy. These three criteria correspond to the requirement of being uttered one after the other with no intervening time (unlike in the case of the words “a cow” and “runs” pronounced on two different days), being semantically fit to connect (unlike the words “watering” and “with fire”) and being linkable through syntactic expectancy (as in the case of a verb and its arguments). One might (as did Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors) object that in this case the sentence meaning would no longer be conveyed directly by words, but rather by their meanings. Bhāṭṭa authors reply that even the sentence meaning is a function of words, via their meanings. They therefore distinguish a direct denotation (abhidhā) of words, through which universals are denoted, and a secondary signification (lakṣaṇā), through which complex sentence meanings are conveyed.

By contrast, Prābhākara Mīmāṃsā authors, and especially Prabhākara’s main commentator, Śalikanātha, state that words get connected and denote the specified sentence meaning only once connected. This assures that the sentence meaning can be said to be linguistically conveyed, since there is not the intermediary step of word-meanings, something very important for the Mīmāṃsā epistemology of linguistic communication as a distinct instrument of knowledge. However, Prābhākara authors have to explain the fact that the own meanings of single words appear to have a role to play in the process, since there is an invariable concomitance between knowing the words’ individual meanings and knowing the sentence’s one. This tension between the opposing risks of atomism and holism is dealt with differently by various authors, who usually call for the memory of the individual word-meanings to play a role in the process. Words would accordingly cause one to remember their own meanings, get related to one another and then denote the complex sentence-meaning.

Different Perspectives in Indian Philosophy of Language

The reflection on language and its structures was a major component of the Sanskritic intellectual horizon, intimately connected with the broader epistemological and soteriological concerns of different schools. This led to the emergence of various conflicting philosophical views on the nature of the cognition obtained from language (śābdabodha). In this respect, a pivotal issue is how padārthas (the meanings/referents of words) relate to vākyārtha (the meaning/referent of the sentence). During this one-day colloquium, the focus will especially be on the views set forth by the Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā philosophers (Bhāṭṭa and Prābhākara), the Buddhists, the Grammarians, and the theoreticians of Alaṃkāraśāstra, and on the reconstruction of the debate as it developed in the course of the first millennium CE.

Date: November 11, 2016

Time: 9:30 am – 6:00 pm

Venue: Room 213, Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge

Convenors: Vincenzo Vergiani and Shishir Saxena

9:45-10:30 am: Maria Piera Candotti, Université de Lausanne/Università di Cagliari (Visiting Scholar)

Bhartṛhari and the basic meaning unit: innovation or restauration

10:30-11:15 am: Daniele Cuneo, Universiteit Leiden

When words do not suffice: the polymorphic concept of bādha

11:15-11:30 am: Tea / Coffee Break

11:30-12:15 pm: Hugo David, École française d’Extrême-Orient

‘vākyārtha eva padārthaḥ‘: On the reappropriation of an old Mīmāṃsā principle in a Vedāntic framework

12:15-1:00 pm: Elisa Freschi, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften

From authorless words to Vedic prescriptions: The Mīmāṃsaka journey from the subject-independent nature of language to the prescriptive nature of language

1:00-2:00 pm: Lunch

2:00-2:45 pm: Kei Kataoka, Kyushu University

How to paraphrase a sentence? Bādari vs Jaimini

2:45-3:30 pm: Tiziana Pontillo, Università di Cagliari

The general samartha-constraint of word-formation rules in the Pāṇinian tradition

3:30-4:15 pm: Akane Saito, Kyushu University

Phonemes as the Conveyors of Sentence Meaning for Kumārila, Śālikanātha, Vācaspati, and Jayanta

4:15-4:30 pm: Tea / Coffee Break

4:30-5:15 pm: Shishir Saxena, University of Cambridge

Kumārila on why śabda cannot be classified as anumāna on the basis of āptavādāvisaṃvāda, as argued in the Śabdapariccheda & Vākyādhikaraṇa of the Ślokavārttika

5:15-6:00 pm: Vincenzo Vergiani, University of Cambridge

Of the unitary nature of complex sentences: Bhartṛhari’s remarks in the second kāṇḍa of the Vākyapadīya

Before you answer, let us try to focus on women before we think at the many other men who might have been influential.
I, for one, cannot stop admiring Madeleine Biardeau‘ s work.

I do not know well enough her work on the Mahābhārata (which was characterised by the attempt to try to make sense of the various upākhyānas as part of a single text). You can read about its methodology (with a focus on her understanding of orality and her resistance to any “scientific” approach to critical editions) in Colas 2012 (Journal Asiatique 300.1). Charles Malamoud’s obituary also focusses on Biardeau’s work on the epics.

What I have really read, used and appreciated, is, however, M. Biardeau’s philosophical work. Her Théorie de la connaissance et philosophie de la parole dans le brahmanisme classique (1964) is still a classic about Indian philosophy of language, which joins philosophical depth and careful acumen in the translations from Sanskrit of Mīmāṃsā, Vyākaraṇa and other texts. Similarly, her translations of Vācaspati’s Tattvabindu, of Maṇḍana’s Sphoṭasiddhi and of Bhartṛhari have not become the standard translations, preventing further attempts, (chiefly) because of not having been written in English but in French. ALthough I might disagree with some of her choices (most notably: her translation of varṇa with “lettre”, letter, which I think is inaccurate and partly misleading), I admire her way of combining accuracy and breadth. She translated whole works, like G. Jhā and several scholars of the past, while at the same time making sense of each sentence.

Did you ever read M. Biardeau’s essays, books and translations? Which one do you like or dislike more? If you don’t know her, which other women influenced you more?

The next discussion (departing from kā 27) regards the possibility of connecting words into a sentence meaning insofar as the one affects the other. The typical example is that of śuklaḥ gauḥ `the white ox’. Isn’t it the case that śukla is the viśeṣaṇa ‘qualifier’ of gauḥ, the viśeṣya ‘qualifiand’?

The problem seems akin to the one discussed also in the Vākyapadīya (see the discussion of Helārāja ad VP 3.14.97 in Ogawa in Saṁskṛta-Sādhutā) and, more importantly, in the Mahābhāṣya ad 2.1.1, where the topic under discussion is the relation between rājan and puruṣa in the sequence rājñaḥ puruṣaḥ (=rājapuruṣa) ‘the king’s servant’. Notwithstanding this difference, Patañjali, like Kumārila, employs the terms bheda ‘difference’ and saṃsarga ‘connection’ and speaks of terms that are vyavacchinna ‘determined’.

This semester, I will be teaching about linguistics and philosophy of language* in classical India. The topic is too vaste, so I will need to make some drastic choices. The following are the elements of the narrative I will be following:

The philosophical arena in classical** India has three main protagonists, which are constantly responding to each other, namely Pūrva Mīmāṃsā, Nyāya and the Buddhist Epistemological School. In the case of linguistics, two further schools enter the debate. On the one hand, Nyāya and even more so Mīmāṃsā have to answer to the challenges of the Vyākaraṇa (‘Grammar’) school which first focused on linguistic analyses of morphemes, but after Bhartṛhari (5th c.?) offered comprehensive accounts of the way language conveys knowledge. On the other hand, the school of Poetics (alaṅkāraśāstra) reused elements of the Mīmāṃsā and of the Nyāya theories and elaborated them further (see two recent articles by Hugo David and Andrew Ollett).

As for the main contents of the debate, a core concern is the identification of three elements, namely the identity of the signifier (vācaka), of the signified (vācya) and of their relation (sambandha). As for the first, does the vācaka consist of the phonemes? If so, of them collectively or one by one? Of their phonic form or of their essential characters? If not, does it consist of the words? Of the sentences? Or of something being manifested by words, but not identical with them, like the Grammarians’ sphoṭa?
As for the vācya, discussants argued for its identification with individuals or with universals, with a mental idea or with the exclusion of anything else.
Last, as for the sambandha, the Mīmāṃsakas believe it to be intrinsic and not available to human beings. Naiyāyikas, by contrast, consider it to be conventional. Experts of poetics will combine at different times Mīmāṃsā elements (such as the theory of bhāvanā, see again the two articles mentioned above) with the Naiyāyikas’ openness to the creativity of single authors. Grammarians, in turn, agree with Mīmāṃsā on the intrinsic relation between signifier and signified, but identify the former with the sphoṭa, thus violating the Mīmāṃsā’s commitment to what Westerners call the Ockham’s razor (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem).

* I am forced to use two terms due to the lack of correspondence between Western and Indian categories.
** The situation was different before the first centuries AD and changed after the first millennium.

Long-time readers might remember that this is one of my pet topics (see this book). Probably due to the complex technicalities involved, apart from Jim Benson, not many people have been working on this topic, but in the last few days I had the pleasure to get in touch with Sharon Ben-Dor (who worked on paribhāṣās, more on his articles in a future topic) and then to receive the following invitation:

Doing things another way: Bhartṛhari on “substitutes” (pratinidhi)
Time: Friday, 17. October 2014, Beginn: 15:00 c.t.
Place: Institut für Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, Seminarraum 1, Apostelgasse 23, 1030 Wien
Speakers: Vincenzo Vergiani and Hugo David (Cambridge)

Topic
Specialists of Vedic ritual call “substitutes” (pratinidhi) those ritual elements (sacrificial substances, etc.) introduced in the liturgical procedure in case the prescribed items are not available at the moment of the sacrifice (e.g. barley can, in certain circumstan­ces, become a substitute for rice). This category, first theorized in Jaimini’s Mīmāṃsā­sūtras (6.3.11-41), plays an important role in the Brahmanical conception of the ritual, answering many practical issues and securing the adaptability of essentially “Vedic” rites to a variety of material contexts. At the same time, it constitutes a major challenge for linguistic and philosophical analysis: how far can an action accomplished by different means still be referred to as the “same” action? In this lecture, we will analyse the treatment of this topic by the 5th-century grammarian Bhartṛhari who develops, in various parts of his Vākyapadīya, a full-fledged theory of (ritual) substitution, without any clear equivalent in contemporary Mīmāṃsaka literature. Besides giving an outline of this theory, we will try to understand the reasons that incited Bhartṛhari to engage with a problem pertaining mostly to the science of ritual, and the consequences it had for his conception of language as expressive of a specified, though unitary action.

Speakers
Dr. Vincenzo Vergiani is Senior Lecturer in Sanskrit at the University of Cambridge (UK) and director of the project “Sanskrit Manuscripts in the University Library, Cambridge”. His main areas of research are the Sanskrit grammatical traditions and the history of linguistic ideas in pre-modern South Asia.
Dr. Hugo David is a Newton International Fellow at the University of Cambridge (UK). His main focus of interest is the history of Brahmanical systems of philosophy and exegesis. His doctoral thesis, submitted in 2012 at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (Paris), dealt with theories of language in classical Advaita-Vedānta.

You can find further infos here: http://www.ikga.oeaw.ac.at/Events/vergiani+david