Page 147 - Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language

flow of sounds of the Vedic Samhita into the word- for-word representation of the Padapatha.
Bhartrhari's view that the relation between words and meanings is based upon samaya (convention), has caused confusion (as have Saussure's and Carnap's quite dissimilar contentions), but it has recently been shown that Bhartrhari's term denotes 'established usage' where 'established' implies a tradition of elders (Houben 1992). The question as to whether the first establishment was arbitrary does not arise, since San- skrit is held to be eternal.
Most publications on the Vakyapadiya confine themselves either to philology or to the metaphysics of its early parts. The semantico-philosophical specu- lations, especially of the third part, still await a tho- rough investigation from a linguistic point of view.
3.3 LaterDoctrines
From the insights of the MTmamsaand the gradually improving logical analysis of the Nyaya, semantic the- ories of great richness and depth developed and were adapted by most of the later philosophical schools. They were also put into practice by the literary critics of Indian poetics and aesthetics (Alamkarasastrd). The latter tradition had been inspired by one of the classics of Sanskrit literature, Bharata's Natyasastra (seventh century AD?), which dealt primarily with dramaturgy, dance, and music. This tradition was developed especially in Kashmir, the home not only of Bhartrhari but also of Kashmir Saivism and Tantrism. A good idea of the insights and subtleties of the result- ing scholarship can be obtained by immersingoneself in the recent translation of Anandavardhana's Dhvan- yaloka ('Light on (the Doctrine of) Suggestion'), with its commentary Locana ('the Eye') by the critic, phil- osopher, and Saiva mystic Abhinavagupta (Ingalls, et al. 1989). This article can do no more than list the elements of such treatises and the traditions they rep- resent.
Indian theorists were familiar with many problems of word meaning, but the idea of sentence meaning occupied the central place in Indian semantics. The early grammarians had evolved the doctrine that a sentence is 'what possesses a finite verb,' a step beyond the naive idea that it was simply 'a collection of words.' The MTmamsa developed the theory of akanksa or 'mutual (syntactic) expectancy' as an additional criterion required for full sentencehood. They argued that a sentence is neither a collection of words such as cow horse man elephant, nor one that possesses a finite verb such as cow irrigates man ele- phant. He irrigates with water, however, is a sentence because there is a mutual syntactic connection, akanksa, between all its constituent words.
Such an akQnksa also exists between the words of he irrigates it with fire, and yet this is not a sentence. One says that such a sentence is 'syntactically' but not 'semantically' well formed. According to the Indian
theorists, another criterion must be fulfilled: a sen- tence must possess yogyata (semantic compatibility). This is present in he irrigates it with water and absent from he irrigates it with fire, and also from such expressions as:
There goes the barren woman's son with a chaplet of sky- flowers on his head. He has bathed himself in the waters of a mirage and is holding a bow of rabbit's horn.
(Bhattacharya 1962:141)
As a further condition, asatti or samnidhi (contiguity) is required; it eliminates the case of words that are separated by other words or uttered at long intervals (we would regard this requirement as pertaining to performance, not competence). The final requirement is tatparya (speaker's intention), a controversial and much debated concept that reminds us of some of the work of Paul Grice. There are Buddhist parallels (for example abhiprayika; see Ruegg 1985, 1988). The underlying idea of tatparya is that the denotative power of words is fixed, but when constructing and uttering a sentence, the intended meaning that is con- veyed may depend on the 'speaker's intention' (vak- trabhipraya).
The intended meaning need not be individual; it can be part of the culture. This is reflected by a similar concept, vyanjana (suggestion), that was developed by the literary critics of the AlamkSra school. When a poet refers to ganga (the river Ganges), this carries the suggestion of coolness and purity. Not necessarily, however, for that suggestion is absent in the bare statement 'there are many fish in the Ganges' (quoted by Ingalls, et al. 1989:579).
The metaphorical use of language was invoked in philosophical contexts, for example, by the followers of the Advaita Vedanta. In 'great statements' such as the Upanisadic tat tvam asi, traditionally (but erroneously: see Breloer 1986) interpreted as 'thou art that,' the reference to the Absolute is not through the primary meaning of the word, but through its secondary meaning (laksana). Secondary meaning may exclude primary meaning (jahallaksana), include it (ojahallaksana), or both include and exclude it (jah- alajahallaksana). An example has already been cited of the first: dvirepha ('with two r's') which denotes 'bee,' but bees do not possess r's. An example of the second is kuntahpravisanti, literally, 'the lances enter,' which refers to the men who carry lances but also to the lances themselves. An example of the third is the tvam ('thou') of the Upanisadic statement tat tvam asi: this does not refer to the person in the dialogue, namely, Svetaketu son of Uddalaka, but denotes his universal self, stripped of all individual attributes such as limited intelligence.
According to the later logicians, when a sentence, thus characterized as a string of words with akanksa, yogyata, and asatti, is uttered, it generates in the hearer a cognition of its meaning (sabdabodhd). This
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