I am editing a portion of the Seśvaramīmāṃsā on a linguistic controversy about what is the vehicle of meaning. As often the case in Indian philosophy, an upholder of the sphoṭa theory speaks and says that the sphoṭa is the vehicle of the meaning, as hinted at by our own intuition that we understand a meaning śabdāt, i.e., from a unitary linguistic unit, not from various phonemes. The opponent replies saying that no independent sphoṭa exists independently and above the single phonemes, like no unitary assembly (pariṣad) exists independently of the single people composing it. The Sphoṭavādin replies that phonemes are unable to convey the meaning either one by one or collectively (because they never exist as a collective entity, given that they disappear right after having been pronounced.
Tag Archives: Jayanta
Maṇḍana on the Śyena
We already discussed (here, on November the 30th 2017) Jayanta’s position on the Śyena sacrifice. In this post we will observe that Jayanta was in fact inspired by Maṇḍana and, perhaps, by Maṇḍana’s commentator Vācaspati (it is still unsure whether Vācaspati was inspired by Jayanta or the other way around).
According to Maṇḍana, there are two kinds of Vedic prescriptions, the ones regarding the person (puruṣārtha) and the ones regarding the sacrifice (kratvartha).
In the case of puruṣārtha actions, the Vedic prescriptions do not motivate people to undertake them, since one would undertake them anyway because thery lead to happiness (prīti).
Rather, the Vedic prescriptions motivate people to undertake these actions with a certain set of auxiliaries. Similarly, in the case of the Śyena, the prescription about it does not promote it, since it is in itself puruṣārtha. The Śyena remains an anartha. (Vidhiviveka, p. 279, Goswami edition)
(ef and Sudipta Munsi)
From word meanings to sentence meaning: A workshop in Cambridge
From Word Meanings to 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
What is a commentary? UPDATED
And how the Nyāyamañjarī and the Seśvaramīmāṃsā do (not) fit the definition
What makes a text a “commentary”? The question is naif enough to allow for a complicated answer. First of all, let me note the obvious: There is not a single word for “commentary” in Sanskrit, where one needs to distinguish between bhāṣyas, vārttikas, ṭippanīs, etc., often bearing poetical names, evoking Moons, mirrors and the like.
Basic bibliography for Bhaṭṭa Jayanta
Suppose you want to undertake the study of Indian Philosophy and you want to read primary sources? Where should you start? I argued (in my contribution to Open Pages in South Asian Studies) that Bhaṭṭa Jayanta is a great starting point,
- Because he is a philosopher
- Because he deals with texts of other schools and thus aims at being understandable
- Because he is a talented writer
Can one understand a sentence without believing its content to be the case?
Well, yes… isn’t it?
The problem is less easy than it may look like and amounts to the problem of non-committal understanding. Is it the normal attitude while listening to a speaker or just an exception or an a posteriori withdrawal of belief once one notices that the speaker is in any way non reliable?
pada-vākya-pramāṇa… Since when?
If you have read post-Classical śāstra, you will have certainly encountered the formulation above, describing the three foundational disciplines as focusing on
words (pada), i.e., grammatical analysis in Vyākaraṇa
sentences (vākya), i.e., textual linguistics in Mīmāṃsā
means of knowledge (pramāṇa), i.e., epistemology in Nyāya
Principle of non contradiction in Mīmāṃsā (and other Sanskrit schools) UPDATED
Again as part of my collaboration with (Western) logicians (about which you can read this post and the further ones linked from it), I was confronted with the question of whether Classical (Aristotelian) Logic applies to Mīmāṃsā. For the ones of you who have stopped studying logic long ago, this amounts to ask whether Mīmāṃsā authors would agree that at each given time, either A or “non-A” is true (and, as a consequence, that there is no middle way between these two alternatives, or tertium non datur).
Kumārila on sentence meaning
Who are the opponents in Kumārila’s Ślokavārttika (henceforth ŚV), chapter on sentence-meaning? And did the ŚV set the standard for all further discussions on the topic?
Is Vyāḍi meant when Jayanta refers to “exclusion”?
Is Jayanta referring to Vyāḍi when he lists various positions at the beginning of his discussion about the sentence-meaning, in his Nyāyamñjarī, book 5?