Speculations about the nature and function of language in India can betraced to its earliest period. These speculations are multi-faceted inthat one detects many different strands of thought regarding language.Some of these speculations are about what one may call the principleof language, but others are about specific languages or specific usesof these languages. One sees speculations regarding the creation oflanguage as well as the role of language in the creation of theuniverse. Language appears in relation to gods as well as humans, andoccupies the entire width of a spectrum from being a divinity herselfto being a means used by gods to create and control the world, andultimately to being a means in the hands of the human beings toachieve their own religious as well as mundane purposes. Gradually, awhole range of questions are raised about all these various aspects oflanguage in the evolving religious and philosophical traditions inIndia, traditions which shared some common conceptions, but thrived infull-blooded disagreements on major issues. Such disagreements relateto the ontological nature of language, its communicative role, thenature of meaning, and more specifically the nature of word-meaningand sentence-meaning. On the other hand, certain manifestations oflanguage, whether in the form of specific languages like Sanskrit orparticular scriptural texts like the Vedas, became topics ofcontestation between various philosophical and religious traditions.Finally, one must mention the epistemic role and value of language,its ability or inability to provide veridical knowledge about theworld. In what follows, I intend to provide a brief account of thesediverse developments in ancient, classical and medieval India. (For anapproximate chronology of Indian philosophers, see thesupplement.)

• 1. Pre-systematic conceptions of language in Vedic texts
• 2. Conception of Language among Sanskrit grammarians
• 3. General philosophical approaches to the status of Vedic scriptures
• 4. Language and Meaning
• 6. Different views regarding sentence-meaning
• 7. Some important conceptions
• 8. Why the differences?
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. Pre-systematic conceptions of language in Vedic texts

The Vedic scriptural texts (1500–500bce)consist of the four ancient collections, i.e.,theṚgveda, theSāmaveda, theYajurveda, and theAtharvaveda. The next layer ofVedic texts, theBrāhmaṇas, consists of proseritual commentaries that offer procedures, justifications, andexplanations. The last two categories of Vedic literature are theĀraṇyakas, “Forest Texts”, and theUpaniṣads, “Secret Mystical Doctrines”.

The wordsaṃskṛta is not known as a label of alanguage variety during the Vedic period. The general term used forlanguage in the Vedic texts isvāk, a word historicallyrelated to “voice”. The Vedic poet-sages perceivedsignificant differences between their own language and the languagesof the outsiders. Similarly, they perceived important differencesbetween their own use of language in mundane contexts and the use oflanguage directed toward Gods. The Gods are generically referred to bythe termdeva, and the language of the hymns is said to bedevīvāk, “divine language.”This language is believed to have been created by the Gods themselves.The language thus created by the Gods is then spoken by the animateworld in various forms. The divine language in its ultimate form is somysterious that three-quarters of it are said to be hidden from thehumans who have access only to a quarter of it. The Vedic poet-sagessay that this divine language enters into their hearts and that theydiscover it through mystical introspection. Just as the language usedby the Vedic poet-sages is the divine language, the language used bythe non-Vedic people is said to be un-godly (adevī) ordemonic (asuryā).

In the Vedic literature, one observes the development of mystical andritual approaches to language. Language was perceived as an essentialtool for approaching the gods, invoking them, asking their favors, andthus for the successful completion of a ritual performance. While theGods were the powers that finally yielded the wishes of their humanworshipers, one could legitimately look at the resulting reward asensuing from the power of the religious language, or the power of theperforming priest. This way, the language came to be looked upon ashaving mysterious creative powers, and as a divine power that neededto be propitiated before it could be successfully used to invoke othergods. This approach to language ultimately led to deification oflanguage and the emergence of the Goddess of Speech (vākdevī), and a number of other gods who are called“Lord of Speech” (brahmaṇaspati,bṛhaspati,vākpati).

In contrast with the valorous deeds of the divine language, thelanguage of the non-Vedic people neither yields fruit nor blossom(Ṛgveda, 10.71.5). “Yielding fruit andblossom” is a phrase indicative of the creative power of speechthat produces the rewards for the worshiper. From being a created butdivine entity, the speech rises to the heights of being a divinity inher own right and eventually to becoming the substratum of theexistence of the whole universe. The deification of speech is seen inhymn 10.125 of theṚgveda where the Goddess of Speechsings her own glory. In this hymn, one no longer hears of the creationof the speech, but one begins to see the speech as a primordialdivinity that creates and controls other gods, sages, and the humanbeings. Here the goddess of speech demands worship in her own right,before her powers may be used for other purposes. The mystery oflanguage is comprehensible only to a special class of people, the wiseBrāhmaṇas, while the commoners have access to andunderstanding of only a limited portion of this transcendentalphenomenon.

The “Lord of Speech” divinities typically emerge ascreator divinities, e.g.,Brahmā,Bṛhaspati, andBrahmaṇaspati, and thewordbrahman which earlier refers, with differing accents, tothe creative incantation and the priest, eventually comes to assume intheUpaniṣads the meaning of the creative force behindthe entire universe. While the Vedic hymns were looked upon as beingcrafted by particular poet-sages in the earlier period, gradually arising perception of their mysterious power and their preservation bythe successive generations led to the emergence of a new conception ofthe scriptural texts. Already in the late parts of theṚgveda (10.90.9), we hear that the verses(ṛk), the songs (sāma), and the ritualformulas (yajus) arose from the primordial sacrifice offeredby the gods. They arose from the sacrificed body of the cosmic person,the ultimate ground of existence. This tendency of increasinglylooking at the scriptural texts as not being produced by any humanauthors takes many forms in subsequent religious and philosophicalmaterials, finally leading to a wide-spread notion that the Vedas arenot authored by any human beings (apauruṣeya), and arein fact uncreated and eternal, beyond the cycles of creation anddestruction of the world. In late Vedic texts, we hear the notion thatthe real Vedas are infinite (ananta) and that the Vedas knownto human poet-sages are a mere fraction of the real infiniteVedas.

In the late Vedic traditions of theBrāhmaṇas, weare told that there is perfection of the ritual form(rūpasamṛddhi) when a recited incantation echoesthe ritual action that is being performed. This shows a notion thatideally there should be a match between the contents of a ritualformula and the ritual action in which it is recited, furthersuggesting a notion that language mirrors the external world in someway. In theĀraṇyakas andUpaniṣads, language acquires importance in differentways. TheUpaniṣads, emphasizing the painful nature ofcycles of rebirths, point out that the ideal goal should be to put anend to these cycles of birth and rebirth and to find one’s permanentidentity with the original ground of the universal existence, i.e.,Brahman. The termbrahman, originally referring tocreative ritual chants and the chanters, has now acquired this newmeaning, the ultimate creative force behind the universe. As part ofthe meditative practice, one is asked to focus on the sacred syllableOM, which is the symbolic linguistic representation of Brahman. Herethe language, in the form of OM, becomes an important tool for theattainment of one’s mystical union with Brahman. The Sanskrit wordakṣara refers to a syllable, but it also means“indestructible.” Thus, the wordakṣaraallowed the meditational use of the holy syllable OM to ultimatelylead to one’s experiential identity with the indestructible reality ofBrahman.

The role of language and scripture in the Upaniṣadic mode ofreligious life is complicated. Here, the use of language to invoke theVedic gods becomes a lower form of religious practice. Can Brahman bereached through language? Since Brahman is beyond allcharacterizations and all modes of human perception, no linguisticexpression can properly describe it. Hence all linguistic expressionsand all knowledge framed in language are deemed to be inadequate forthe purpose of reaching Brahman. In fact, it is silence thatcharacterizes Brahman, and not words. Even so, the use of OM-focusedmeditation is emphasized, at least in the pre-final stages ofBrahman-realization.

By the time we come to the classical philosophical systems in India,one more assumption is made by almost all Hindu systems, i.e., thatall the Vedas together form a coherent whole. The human authorship ofthe Vedic texts has long been rejected, and they are now perceivedeither as being entirely uncreated and eternal or created by God atthe beginning of each cycle of creation. Under the assumption thatthey are entirely uncreated, their innate ability to convey truthfulmeaning is unhampered by human limitations. Thus if all the Vedictexts convey truth, there cannot be any internal contradictions. If anomniscient God, who by his very nature is compassionate and beyondhuman limitations, created the Vedas, one reaches the same conclusion,i.e., there cannot be any internal contradictions. The traditionalinterpretation of the Vedas proceeds under these assumptions. If thereare seeming contradictions in Vedic passages, the burden of findingways to remove those seeming contradictions is upon the interpreter,but there can be no admission of internal contradictions in the textsthemselves.

2. Conception of Language among Sanskrit grammarians

Before the emergence of the formalized philosophical systems or thedarśanas, we see a number of philosophical issuesrelating to language implicitly and explicitly brought out by theearly Sanskrit grammarians, namely Pāṇini,Kātyāyana and Patañjali. Pāṇini (400bce)composed his grammar of Sanskrit with a certainnotion of Sanskrit as an atemporal language. For him, there wereregional dialects of Sanskrit, as well as variation of usage in itsscriptural (chandas) and contemporary(bhāṣā) domains. All these domains aretreated as sub-domains of a unified language, which is not restrictedby any temporality.

Patañjali’sMahābhāṣya refers to theviews of Vyāḍi and Vājapyāyana on the meaning ofwords. Vyāḍi argued that words like “cow”denote individual instances of a certain class, whileVājapyāyana argued that words like “cow” denotegeneric properties or class properties (ākṛti),such as cowness, that are shared by all members of certain classes.Patañjali presents a long debate on the extreme positions inthis argument, and finally concludes that both the individualinstances and the class property must be included within the range ofmeaning. The only difference between the two positions is about whichaspect, the individual or the class property, is denoted first, andwhich is understood subsequently. This early debate indicatesphilosophical positions that get expanded and fully argued in thetraditions of theNyāya-Vaiśeṣikasand theMīmāṃsakas.

The early commentators on Pāṇini’s grammar from the lateMauryan and post-Mauryan periods, Kātyāyana andPatañjali (200–100bce), displaya significant reorganization of Brahmanical views in the face ofopposition from Jains and Buddhists. For Kātyāyana andPatañjali, the Sanskrit language at large is sacred like theVedas. The intelligent use of Sanskrit, backed by the explicitunderstanding of its grammar, leads to prosperity here and in the nextworld, as do the Vedas. Kātyāyana and Patañjali admitthat vernaculars as well as Sanskrit could do the function ofcommunicating meaning. However, only the usage of Sanskrit producesreligious merit. This is an indirect criticism of the Jains and theBuddhists, who used vernacular languages for the propagation of theirfaiths. The grammarians did not accept the religious value of thevernaculars. The vernacular languages, along with the incorrect usesof Sanskrit, are all lumped together by the Sanskrit grammarians underthe derogatory termsapaśabda andapabhraṃśa, both of which suggest a view that thevernaculars are degenerate or “fallen” forms of the divinelanguage, i.e., Sanskrit. Kātyāyana says: “While therelationship between words and meanings is established on the basis ofthe usage of specific words to denote specific meanings in thecommunity of speakers, the science of grammar only makes a regulationconcerning the religious merit produced by the linguistic usage, as iscommonly done in worldly matters and in Vedic rituals” (firstVārttika on theAṣṭādhyāyī). Kātyāyanarefers to these “degenerate” vernacular usages as beingcaused by the inability of the low-class speakers to speak properSanskrit. The grammarians tell the story of demons that used improperdegenerate usages during their ritual and hence were defeated.

The relationship between Sanskrit words and their meanings is said tobe established (siddha) and taken as given by thegrammarians. Patañjali understands this statement ofKātyāyana to mean that the relationship between Sanskritwords and their meanings is eternal (nitya), not created(kārya) by anyone. Since this eternal relationship,according to these grammarians, exists only for Sanskrit words andtheir meanings, one cannot accord the same status to the vernaculars,which are born of an inability on the part of their speakers to speakproper Sanskrit.

While Pāṇini uses the termprakṛti to referto the derivationally original state of a word or expression beforechanges effected by grammatical operations are applied,Kātyāyana and Patañjali use the termvikṛta to refer to the derivationally transformedsegment. However, change and identity are not compatible within morerigid metaphysical frameworks, and this becomes apparent in thefollowing discussion. In hisVārttikas or comments onPāṇini’s grammar, Kātyāyana says that one couldhave argued that an item partially transformed does not yet lose itsidentity (Vārttika 10 on P. 1.1.56). But such anacceptance would lead to non-eternality (anityatva) oflanguage (Vārttika 11,Mahābhāṣya, I, p. 136), and that is notacceptable. Patañjali asserts that words in reality are eternal(nitya), and that means they must be absolutely free fromchange or transformation and fixed in their nature. If words are trulyeternal, one cannot then say that a word was transformed and is yetthe same. This points to the emerging ideological shifts inphilosophical traditions, which make their headway into the traditionof grammar, and finally lead to the development of newer conceptionswithin the tradition of grammar and elsewhere.

In trying to figure out how the emerging doctrine ofnityatva(“permanence”, “immutability”) of languagecauses problems with the notion of transformation(vikāra) and how these problems are eventually answeredby developing new concepts, we should note two issues, i.e., temporalfixity or flexibility of individual sounds, and the compatibility ofthe notion of sequence of sounds, or utterance as a process stretchedin time. From within the new paradigm ofnityatva oreternality of sounds, Kātyāyana concludes that the truesounds (varṇa) are fixed in their nature in spite ofthe difference of speed of delivery (Vārttika 5 on P.1.1.70,Mahābhāṣya, I, p. 181). The speed ofdelivery (vṛtti) results from the slow or fastutterance of a speaker (vacana), though the true sounds arepermanently fixed in their nature. Here, Kātyāyana broachesa doctrine that is later developed further by Patañjali, andmore fully by Bhartṛhari. It argues for a dual ontology. Thereare the fixed true sounds (varṇa), and then there arethe uttered sounds (vacana, “utterance”). It isPatañjali who uses, for the first time as far as we know, thetermsphoṭa to refer to Kātyāyana’s“true sounds which are fixed” (avasthitāvarṇāḥ) and the termdhvani(“uttered sounds”). Patañjali adds an importantcomment to Kātyāyana’s discussion. He says that the realsound (śabda) is thus thesphoṭa(“the sound as it initially breaks out into the open”),and the quality [length or speed] of the sound is part ofdhvani (“sound as it continues”)(Mahābhāṣya, I, p. 181). The termsphoṭa refers to something like exploding or cominginto being in a bang. Thus it refers to the initial production orperception of sound. On the other hand, the stretching of that soundseems to refer to the dimension of continuation. Patañjalimeans to say that it is the same sound, but it may remain audible fordifferent durations.

This raises the next problem that the grammarians must face: can aword be understood as a sequence or a collection of sounds?Kātyāyana says that one cannot have a sequence or acollection of sounds, because the process of speech proceedssound-by-sound, and that sounds perish as soon as they are uttered.Thus, one cannot have two sounds co-existing at a given moment torelate to each other. Since the sounds perish as soon as they areuttered, a sound cannot have another co-existent companion(Vārttikas 9 and 10 on P. 1.4.109). Kātyāyanapoints out all these difficulties, but it is Patañjali whooffers a solution to this philosophical dilemma. Patañjalisuggests that one can pull together impressions of all the utteredsounds and then think of a sequence in this mentally constructed imageof a word (Mahābhaṣya, I, p. 356). Elsewhere,Patañjali says that a word is perceived through the auditoryorgan, discerned through one’s intelligence, and brought into beingthrough its utterance (Mahābhaṣya, I, p. 18).While Patañjali’s solution overcomes the transitoriness of theuttered sounds, and the resulting impossibility of a sequence, thereis no denial of sequentiality or perhaps of an imprint ofsequentiality in the comprehended word, and there is indeed no claimto its absolutely unitary or partless character. Patañjalimeans to provide a solution to the perception of sequentiality throughhis ideas of a mental storage of comprehension. But at the same time,this mental storage and the ability to view this mental image allowsone to overcome the difficulty of non-simultaneity and construct aword or a linguistic unit as a collection of perceived sounds orwords, as the case may be. Kātyāyana and Patañjalispecifically admit the notion ofsamudāya(“collection”) of sounds to represent a word and acollection of words to represent a phrase or a sentence(Vārttika 7 on P. 2.2.29). Thus, while the ontology ofphysical sounds does not permit their co-existence, their mentalimages do allow it, and once they can be perceived as components of acollection, one also recognizes the imprint of the sequence in whichthey were perceived. Neither Kātyāyana nor Patañjaliexplicitly claim any higher ontological status to these word-images.However, the very acceptance of such word-images opens up numerousexplanatory possibilities.

Although Kātyāyana and Patañjali argue that thenotion of change or transformation of parts of words was contradictoryto the doctrine ofnityatva (“permanence”) oflanguage, they were not averse to the notion of substitution. Thenotion of substitution was understood as a substitution, not of a partof a word by another part, but of a whole word by another word, andthis especially as a conceptual rather than an ontologicalreplacement. Thus, in going from “bhavati” to“bhavatu”, Pāṇini prescribes thechange of “i” of “ti” to“u” (cf. P.3.4.86: “eruḥ”). Thus, “i” changes to“u”, leading to the change of“ti” to “tu”, and thisconsequently leads to the change of “bhavati” to“bhavatu”. For Kātyāyana andPatañjali, the above atomistic and transformationalunderstanding of Pāṇini’s procedure goes contrary to thedoctrine ofnityatva (“permanence”) of words.Therefore, they suggest that it is actually the substitution of thewhole word “bhavati” by another whole word“bhavatu”, each of these two words being eternalin its own right. Additionally they assert that this is merely anotional change and not an ontological change, i.e., a certain item isfound to occur, where one expected something else to occur. There isno change of an itemx into an itemy, nor does oneremove the itemx and placey in its place(Vārttikas 12 and 14 on P. 1.1.56). This discussionseems to imply a sort of unitary character to the words, whethernotional or otherwise, and this eventually leads to a movement towarda kind ofakhaṇḍa-pada-vāda(“the doctrine of partless words”) in theVākyapadīya of Bhartṛhari. While one mustadmit that the seeds for such a conception may be traced in thesediscussions in theMahābhāṣya,Patañjali is actually not arguing so much against words havingparts, as against the notion of change or transformation(Mahābhāṣya on P. 1.2.20, I, p. 75).

Kātyāyana and Patañjali clearly view words ascollections of sounds. Besides using the term“samudāya” for such a collection, they alsouse the word “varṇasaṃghāta”(“collection of sounds”). They argue that words are builtby putting together sounds, and that, while the words are meaningful,the component sounds are not meaningful in themselves. The notion of aword as a collection (saṃghāta) applies not onlyin the sense that it is a collection of sounds, but also in the sensethat complex formations are collections of smaller morphologicalcomponents.

This leads us to consider the philosophical developments in thethought of Bhartṛhari (400ce), andespecially his departures from the conceptions seen inKātyāyana and Patañjali. Apart from his significantcontribution toward an in depth philosophical understanding of issuesof the structure and function of language, and issues of phonology,semantics and syntax, Bhartṛhari is well known for his claimthat language constitutes the ultimate principle of reality(śabdabrahman). Both the signifier words and thesignified entities in the world are perceived to be a transformation(pariṇāma) of the ultimate unified principle oflanguage.

For Kātyāyana and Patañjali, the level ofpadas (“inflected words”) is the basic level oflanguage for grammar. These words are freely combined by the users toform sentences or phrases. The words are not derived byKātyāyana and Patañjali by abstracting them fromsentences by using the method ofanvaya-vyatireka(“concurrent occurrence and concurrent absence”)(Vārttika 9 on P. 1.2.45). On the other hand, they claimthat a grammarian first derives stems and affixes by applying theprocedure of abstraction to words, and then in turn puts these stemsand affixes through the grammatical process of derivation(saṃskāra) to build the words. Here,Kātyāyana and Patañjali do make a distinction betweenthe levels of actual usage (vacana) and technical grammaticalanalysis and derivation. While full-fledged words (pada)occur at the level of usage, their abstracted morphological componentsdo not occur by themselves at that level. However, they do not seem tosuggest that the stems, roots, and affixes are purely imagined(kalpita).

Bhartṛhari has substantially moved beyond Kātyāyanaand Patañjali. For him, the linguistically given entity is asentence. Everything below the level of sentence is derived through amethod of abstraction referred to by the termanvaya-vyatireka orapoddhāra.Additionally, for Bhartṛhari, elements abstracted through thisprocedure have no reality of any kind. They arekalpita(“imagined”) (Vākyapadīya, III, 14,75–76). Such abstracted items have instructional value for thosewho do not yet have any intuitive insight into the true nature ofspeech (Vākyapadīya, II. 238). The true speechunit, the sentence, is an undivided singularity and so is its meaningwhich is comprehended in an instantaneous cognitive flash(pratibhā), rather than through a deliberative and/orsequential process. Consider the following verse of theVākyapadīya (II.10):

Just as stems, affixes etc. are abstracted from a given word, so theabstraction of words from a sentence is justified.

Here, the clause introduced by “just as” refers to theolder more widely prevalent view seen in theMahābhāṣya. With the word “so,”Bhartṛhari is proposing an analogical extension of the procedureof abstraction (apoddhāra) to the level of asentence.

Without mentioning Patañjali or Kātyāyana by name,Bhartṛhari seems to critique their view that the meaning of asentence, consisting of the interrelations between the meanings ofindividual words, is essentially not derived from the constituentwords themselves, but from the whole sentence as a collection ofwords. The constituent words convey their meaning first, but theirinterrelations are not communicated by the words themselves, but bythe whole sentence as a unit. This view of Kātyāyana andPatañjali is criticized by Bhartṛhari(Vākyapadīya II.15–16, 41–42). It isclear that Bhartṛhari’s ideas do not agree with the viewsexpressed by Kātyāyana and Patañjali, and that theviews of these two earlier grammarians are much closer, though notidentical, with the views later maintained by theNyāya-Vaiśeṣikas and Mīmāṃsakas. ForBhartṛhari, the sentence as a single partless unit conveys itsentire unitary meaning in a flash, and this unitary meaning as well asthe unitary sentence are subsequently analyzed by grammarians intotheir assumed or imagined constituents.

Finally, we should note that Bhartṛhari’s views on the unitarycharacter of a sentence and its meaning were found to be generallyunacceptable by the schools ofMīmāṃsāandNyāya-Vaiśeṣika, as well as bythe later grammarian-philosophers likeKauṇḍabhaṭṭa andNāgeśabhaṭṭa. Their discussion of thecomprehension of sentence-meaning is not couched in terms ofBhartṛhari’s instantaneous flash of intuition(pratibhā), but in terms of the conditions ofākāṅkṣā (“mutualexpectancy”),yogyatā(“compatibility)”, andāsatti(“contiguity of words”). In this sense, the latergrammarian-philosophers are somewhat closer to the spirit ofKātyāyana and Patañjali.

3. General philosophical approaches to the status of Vedic scriptures

Early Vedic notions about the authorship of the Vedic hymns aredifferent from philosophical views. Vedic hymns use words likekāru (“craftsman”) to describe the poet, andthe act of producing a hymn is described as (Ṛgveda10.71.2): “Like cleansing barley with a sieve, the wise poetscreated the speech with their mind”. The poets of the Vedichymns are also calledmantrakṛt (“makers ofhymns”). Further, each hymn of the Veda is associated with aspecific poet-priest and often with a family of poet-priests. But,already in theṚgveda, there are signs of the beginningof an impersonal conception of the origin of the Vedas. For instance,the famousPuruṣa-hymn of theṚgvedadescribes the hymns of theṚgveda, the formulae ofYajus and the songs of Sāman as originating from the primordialsacrifice of the cosmic being (Ṛgveda 10.90.9). Thistrend to ascribe impersonal origin to the Vedas gets furtheraccentuated in theBrāhmaṇas and theUpaniṣads.

Later Hindu notions about the Vedic scriptures and their authority arein part reflections of Hindu responses to the criticisms of the Vedaslaunched by the Buddhists and the Jains. The early Buddhist critiqueof the Vedas targets the authors of the Vedic hymns. Vedic sages likeVasiṣṭha, Viśvāmitra, and Bhṛgu aredescribed as the ancient authors of the mantras(porāṇāmantānaṃkattāro), but they are criticized as being ignorant ofthe true path to the union with Brahmā (Tevijjasutta;Dīghanikāya;Suttapiṭaka). So theVedas are depicted as being words of ignorant human beings who do noteven recognize their own ignorance. How can one trust such authors ortheir words? The Buddhist and the Jain traditions also rejected thenotion of God, and hence any claim that the Vedas were words of God,and hence authoritative, was not acceptable to them. On the otherhand, the Jain and the Buddhist traditions claimed that their leadingspiritual teachers like Mahāvīra and Buddha were omniscient(sarvajña) and were compassionate toward humanity atlarge, and hence their words were claimed to be authoritative.

Beginning around 200bce, Hindu ritualists(Mīmāṃsakas) and logicians(Naiyāyikas andVaiśeṣikas) began todefend their religious faith in the Vedas and in the Brahmanicalreligion with specific arguments. Some of these arguments haveprecursors in the discussions of the early Sanskrit grammarians,Kātyāyana and Patañjali. TheMīmāṃsakas accepted the arguments of theBuddhists and the Jains that one need not accept the notion of acreator-controller God. However, theMīmāṃsakas attempted to defend the Vedasagainst the criticism that the ancient human sages who authored thehymns of the Vedas were ignorant, while the figures like the Buddhaand Mahāvīra were omniscient. They contested the notion ofan omniscient person (sarvajña), and argued that nohumans could be omniscient and free from ignorance, passion, anddeceit. Therefore, the Buddha and Mahāvīra could not be freefrom these faults either, and hence their words cannot be trusted. Onthe other hand, the Vedas were claimed to be eternal and intrinsicallymeaningful words, uncreated by any human being(apauruṣeya). Since they were not created by humanbeings, they were free from the limitations and faults of humanbeings. Yet the Vedas were meaningful, because the relationshipbetween words and meanings was claimed to be innate. The Vedas wereultimately seen as ordaining the performance of sacrifices. TheMīmāṃsakas developed a theory ofsentence-meaning which claimed that the meaning of a sentence centersaround some specific action denoted by a verb-root and an injunctionexpressed by the verbal terminations. Thus, language, especially thescriptural language, primarily orders us to engage in appropriateactions.

In this connection, we may note thatMīmāṃsā and other systems of Hinduphilosophy developed a notion of linguistic expression as one of thesources of authoritative knowledge(śabdapramāṇa), when other more basic sourcesof knowledge like sense perception (pratyakṣa) andinference (anumāna) are not available. Particularly, inconnection with religious duty (dharma), and heaven(svarga) as the promised reward, only the Veda is availableas the source of authoritative knowledge. ForMīmāṃsā, the Veda as a source ofknowledge is not tainted by negative qualities like ignorance andmalice that could affect a normal human speaker.

To understand theMīmāṃsā doctrine ofthe eternality of the Vedas, we need to note that eternality impliesthe absence of both a beginning and an end. In Indian philosophy, twokinds of persistence are distinguished, namely the ever unchangingpersistence (kūṭastha-nityatā), likethat of a rock, and the continuous and yet incessantly changingexistence of a stream like that of a river(pravāha-nityatā). The persistence claimedfor the Vedas by the Mīmāṃsakas would appear to be ofthekūṭastha (“unchangingpersistence”) kind, while its continuous study from timeimmemorial would be of thepravāha-nitya(“fluid persistence”) kind. Further, the meanings whichthe words signify are natural to the words, not the result ofconvention.Mīmāṃsā does not think thatthe association of a particular meaning with a word is due toconventions among people who introduce and give meanings to the words.Further, words signify only universals. The universals are eternal.Words do not signify particular entities of any kind which come intobeing and disappear, but the corresponding universals which areeternal and of which the transient individuals are mere instances.Further, not only are the meanings eternal, the words are alsoeternal. All words are eternal. If one utters the word“chair” ten times, is one uttering the same word tentimes? The Mīmāṃsakas say that, if the word is not thesame, then it cannot have the same meaning. The word and the meaningboth being eternal, the relation between them also is necessarily so.An important argument with which the eternality of the Vedas issecured is that of the eternality of the sounds of a language.

TheMīmāṃsā conceives of an unbroken andbeginningless Vedic tradition. No man or God can be considered to bethe very first teacher of the Veda or the first receiver of it,because the world is beginningless. It is conceivable that, just as atpresent, there have always been teachers teaching and studentsstudying the Veda. For the Mīmāṃsakas, the Vedas arenot words of God. In this view, they seem to accept the Buddhist andthe Jain critique of the notion of God. There is no need to assumeGod. Not only is there no need to assume that God was the author ofthe Vedas, there is no need to assume a God at all. God is notrequired as a Creator, for the universe was never created. Nor is Godrequired as the Dispenser of Justice, for karman brings its ownfruits. And one does not need God as the author of the Vedas, sincethey are eternal and uncreated to begin with. The Ṛṣis,Vedic sages, did not compose the Vedas. They merely saw them, and,therefore, the scriptures are free from the taint of mortalityimplicit in a human origin. TheMīmāṃsānotion of the authority of the authorless Veda also depends upon theirepistemic theory, that claims that all received cognitions areintrinsically valid (svataḥpramāṇa), unless and until they are falsified bysubsequent cognitions of higher order.

The traditions of the Naiyāyikas and the Vaiśeṣikasstrongly disagreed with the views of the Mīmāṃsakasand they developed their own distinctive conceptions of language,meaning, and scriptural authority. They agreed with theMīmāṃsakas that the Vedas were a source ofauthoritative knowledge(śabda-pramāṇa), and yet theyoffered a different set of reasons. According to them, only the wordsof a trustworthy speaker (āpta) are a source ofauthoritative knowledge. They joined the Mīmāṃsakas inarguing that no humans, including Buddha and Mahāvīra, arefree from ignorance, passion, etc., and no humans are omniscient, andtherefore the words of no human being could be accepted as infallible.However, they did not agree with the Mīmāṃsakas intheir rejection of the notion of God. In the metaphysics of theNyāya-Vaiśeṣika tradition, thenotion of God plays a central role. In defending the notion of God (asin theNyāyakusumāñjali of Udayana), theyclaimed that God was the only being in the universe that wasomniscient and free from the faults of ignorance and malice. He was acompassionate being. Therefore, only the words of God could beinfallible, and therefore be trusted. For the Naiyāyikas andVaiśeṣikas, the Vedas were words of God, and not the wordsof human sages about God. The human sages only received the words ofGod in their meditative trances, but they had no authorship role.

On a different level, this argument came to mean that God only spokein Sanskrit, and hence Sanskrit alone was the language of God, andthat it was the best means to approach God. God willfully establisheda connection between each Sanskrit word and its meaning, saying“let this word refer to this thing.” Such a connection wasnot established by God for vernacular languages, which were onlyfallen forms of Sanskrit, and hence the vernaculars could not becomevehicles for religious and spiritual communication. TheNaiyāyikas argued that vernacular words did not even havelegitimate meanings of their own. They claimed that the vernacularwords reminded the listener of the corresponding Sanskrit words thatcommunicated the meaning.

4. Language and Meaning

The termartha in Sanskrit is used to denote the notion ofmeaning. However, the meaning of this term ranges from a real objectin the external world referred to by the word to a mere concept of anobject which may or may not correspond to anything in the externalworld. The differences regarding what meaning is are argued out by thephilosophical schools ofNyāya,Vaiśeṣika,Mīmāṃsā,various schools of Buddhism, Sanskrit grammar, and poetics. Amongthese schools, the schools ofNyāya,Vaiśeṣika, andMīmāṃsā have realist ontologies.Mīmāṃsā focuses mainly on interpretingthe Vedic scriptures. Buddhist thinkers generally pointed to languageas depicting a false picture of reality. Sanskrit grammarians weremore interested in language and communication than in ontology, whileSanskrit poetics focused on the poetic dimensions of meaning.

The modern distinction of “sense” versus“reference” is somewhat blurred in the Sanskritdiscussions of the notion of meaning. The question Indian philosophersseem to raise is “what does a word communicate?” They werealso interested in detecting if there was some sort of sequence inwhich different aspects of layers of meaning were communicated.Generally, the notion of meaning is further stratified into three orfour types. First there is the primary meaning, something that isdirectly and immediately communicated by a word. If the primarymeaning is inappropriate in a given context, then one moves to asecondary meaning, an extension of the primary meaning. Beyond this isthe suggested meaning, which may or may not be the same as the meaningintended by the speaker.

The various Indian theories of meaning are closely related to theoverall stances taken by the different schools. Among the factorswhich influence the notion of meaning are the ontological andepistemological views of a school, its views regarding the role of Godand scripture, its specific focus on a certain type of discourse, andits ultimate purpose in theorizing.

In the Western literature on the notion of meaning in the Indiantradition, various terms such as “sense,”“reference,” “denotation,”“connotation,” “designatum,” and“intension” have been frequently used to render theSanskrit termartha. However, these terms carry specificnuances of their own, and no single term adequately conveys the ideaofartha.Artha basically refers to the objectsignified by a word. In numerous contexts, the term stands for anobject in the sense of an element of external reality. For instance,Patañjali says that when a word is pronounced, anartha “object” is understood. For example:“bring in a bull”, “eat yogurt”, etc. It istheartha that is brought in and it is also theartha that is eaten.

The schools ofNyāya andVaiśeṣikaset up an ontology containing substances, qualities, actions,relations, generic and particular properties, etc. With this realisticontology in mind, they argue that if the relation between a word anditsartha (“meaning”) were a natural ontologicalrelation, there should be real experiences of burning and cutting inone’s mouth after hearing words like “agni”(“fire”) and “asi”(“sword”). Therefore, this relationship must be aconventional relationship (saṃketa), the conventionbeing established by God as part of his initial acts of creation. Therelationship between a word and the object it refers to is thought tobe the desire of God that such and such a word should refer to suchand such an object. It is through this established conventionalrelationship that a word reminds the listener of its meaning. Theschool ofMīmāṃsā represents thetradition of the exegesis of the Vedic texts. However, in the courseof discussing and perfecting principles of interpretation, this systemdeveloped a full-scale theory of ontology and an important theory ofmeaning. For the Mīmāṃsakas, the primary tenet is thatthe Vedic scriptural texts are eternal and uncreated, and that theyare meaningful. For this orthodox system, which remarkably defends thescripture but dispenses with the notion of God, the relationshipbetween a word and its meaning is an innate eternal relationship. ForbothNyāya-Vaiśeṣikas andMīmāṃsakas, language refers to external states of theworld and not just to conceptual constructions.

The tradition of grammarians, beginning with Bhartṛhari, seemsto have followed a middle path between the realistic theories ofreference (bāhyārthavāda) developed byNyāya-Vaiśeṣika andMīmāṃsā on the one hand, and thenotional/conceptual meaning (vikalpa) of the Buddhists on theother. For the grammarians, the meaning of a word is closely relatedto the level of understanding. Whether or not things are real, we dohave concepts. These concepts form the content of a person’scognitions derived from language. Without necessarily denying oraffirming the external reality of objects in the world, grammariansclaimed that the meaning of a word is only a projection of intellect(bauddhārtha,buddhipratibhāsa). Theexamples offered by Sanskrit grammarians such as“śaśaśṛṅga”(“horn of a rabbit”) and“vandhyāsuta” (“son of a barrenwoman”) remain meaningful within this theory. Sanskritgrammarians are thus not concerned with ontological or truthfunctional values of linguistic expressions. For them the truth of anexpression and its meaningfulness are not to be equated.

By the middle of the second millennium of the Christian era, certainuniformity came about in the technical terminology used by differentschools. The prominent schools in this period are the new school ofNyāya initiated by Gaṅgeśa, the schools ofMīmāṃsā, Vedānta, and Sanskritgrammar. While all these schools are engaged in pitched battlesagainst each other, they seem to accept the terminological lead of theneo-logicians, the Navya-Naiyāyikas. Following the discussion ofthe termartha by the neo-logicianGadādharabhaṭṭa, we can state the general frameworkof a semantic theory. Other schools accept this general terminology,with some variations.

It may be said that the termartha (“meaning”)stands for the object or content of a verbal cognition or a cognitionthat results from hearing a word(śābda-bodha-viṣaya). Sucha verbal cognition results from the cognition of a word(śābda-jñāna) on the basis ofan awareness of the signification function pertaining to that word(pada-niṣṭha-vṛtti-jñāna).Depending upon the kind of signification function(vṛtti) involved in the emergence of the verbalcognition, the meaning belongs to a distinct type. In generalterms:

1. When a verbal cognition results from the primary significationfunction (śakti /abhidhāvṛtti /mukhyavṛtti) of a word, the object or content of thatverbal cognition is called primary meaning(śakyārtha /vācyārtha /abhidheya).
2. When a verbal cognition results from the secondary significationfunction (lakṣaṇāvṛtti /guṇavṛtti) of a word, the object or content ofthat verbal cognition is called secondary meaning(lakṣyārtha).
3. When a verbal cognition results from the suggestive significationfunction (vyañjanāvṛtti) of a word, theobject or content of that verbal cognition is called suggested meaning(vyaṅgyārtha /dhvanitārtha).
4. When a verbal cognition results from the intentionalsignification function (tātparyavṛtti) of a word,the object or content of that verbal cognition is called intendedmeaning (tātparyārtha).

Not all the different schools of Indian philosophy accept all of thesedifferent kinds of signification functions for words, and they holdsubstantially different views on the nature of words, meanings, andthe relations between words and meanings. However, the aboveterminology holds true, in general, for most of the medieval schools.Let us note some of the important differences.Mīmāṃsā claims that the sole primarymeaning of the word “bull” is the generic property or theclass property (jāti) such as bull-ness, while theindividual object which possesses this generic property, i.e., aparticular bull, is only secondarily and subsequently understood fromthe word “bull”. The school calledKevalavyaktivāda argues that a particular individualbull is the sole primary meaning of the word “bull,” whilethe generic property bull-ness is merely a secondary meaning.Nyāya argues that the primary meaning of a word is anindividual object qualified by a generic property(jāti-viśiṣṭa-vyakti),both being perceived simultaneously.

Sanskrit grammarians distinguish between various different kinds ofmeanings (artha). The termartha stands for anexternal object (vastumātra), as well as for the objectthat is intended to be signified by a word (abhidheya). Thelatter, i.e., meaning in a linguistic sense, could be meaning in atechnical context (śāstrīya), such as themeaning of an affix or a stem, or it may be meaning as understood bypeople in actual communication (laukika). Then there is afurther difference. Meaning may be something directly intended to besignified by an expression (abhidheya), or it could besomething which is inevitably signified(nāntarīyaka) when something else is really theintended meaning. Everything that is understood from a word on thebasis of some kind of signification function (vṛtti) iscovered by the termartha. Different systems of Indianphilosophy differ from each other on whether a given cognition isderived from a word on the basis of a signification function(vṛtti), through inference (anumāna), orpresumption (arthāpatti). If a particular item ofinformation is deemed to have been derived through inference orpresumption, it is not included in the notion of word-meaning.

The scope of the termartha is actually not limited inSanskrit texts to what is usually understood as the domain ofsemantics in the western literature. It covers elements such as gender(liṅga) and number (saṃkhyā). Italso covers the semantic-syntactic roles (kāraka) suchas agent-ness (kartṛtva) and object-ness(karmatva). Tenses such as the present, past, and future, andthe moods such as the imperative and optative are also traditionallyincluded in thearthas signified by a verb root, or an affix.Another aspect of the concept ofartha is revealed in thetheory ofdyotyārtha (“co-signified”)meaning. According to this theory, to put it in simple terms,particles such asca (“and”) do not have anylexical or primary meaning. They are said to help other words used inconstruction with them to signify some special aspects of theirmeaning. For instance, in the phrase “John and Tom”, themeaning of grouping is said to be not directly signified by the word“and”. The theory ofdyotyārtha argues thatgrouping is a specific meaning of the two words “John” and“Tom”, but that these two words are unable to signify thismeaning if used by themselves. The word “and” used alongwith these two words is said to work as a catalyst that enables themto signify this special meaning. The problem of use and mention ofwords is also handled by Sanskrit grammarians by treating thephonological form of the word itself to be a part of the meaning itsignifies. This is a unique way of handling this problem.

6. Different views regarding sentence-meaning

Most schools of Indian philosophy have an atomistic view of meaningand the meaning-bearing linguistic unit. This means that a sentence isput together by combining words and words are put together bycombining morphemic elements like stems, roots, and affixes. The sameapplies to meaning. The word-meaning may be viewed as a fusion of themeanings of stems, roots, and affixes, and the meaning of a sentencemay be viewed as a fusion of the meanings of its constituent words.Beyond this generality, different schools have specific proposals. Thetradition ofPrābhākaraMīmāṃsā proposes that the words of asentence already convey contextualized inter-connected meanings(anvitābhidhāna) and that the sentence-meaning isnot different from a simple addition of these inherentlyinter-connected word-meanings. On the other hand, the Naiyāyikasand the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāṃsakas proposethat words of a sentence taken by themselves convey onlyuncontextualized unconnected meanings, and that these uncontextualizedword-meanings are subsequently brought into a contextualizedassociation with each other (abhihitānvaya). Therefore,the sentence-meaning is different from word-meanings, and iscommunicated through the concatenation (saṃsarga) ofwords, rather than by the words themselves. This is also the view ofthe early grammarians like Kātyāyana andPatañjali.

For the later grammarian-philosopher Bhartṛhari, however, thereare no divisions in speech acts and in communicated meanings. He saysthat only a person ignorant of the real nature of language believesthe divisions of sentences into words, stems, roots, and affixes to bereal. Such divisions are useful fictions and have an explanatory valuein grammatical theory, but have no reality in communication. Inreality, there is no sequence in the cognitions of these differentcomponents. The sentence-meaning becomes an object or content of asingle instance of a flash of cognition (pratibhā).

7. Some important conceptions

The termsśakyatāvacchedaka andpravṛttinimitta signify a property which determines theinclusion of a particular instance within the class of possibleentities referred to by a word. It is a property whose possession byan entity is the necessary and sufficient condition for a given wordbeing used to refer to that entity. Thus, the property of potness maybe viewed as theśakyatāvacchedaka controlling theuse of the word “pot”.

The concept oflakṣaṇā (“secondarysignification function”) is invoked in a situation where theprimary meaning of an utterance does not appear to make sense in viewof the intention behind the utterance, and hence one looks for asecondary meaning. However, the secondary meaning is always somethingthat is related to the primary meaning in some way. For example, theexpressiongaṅgāyāṃghoṣaḥ literally refers to a cowherd-colony onthe Ganges. Here, it is argued that one obviously cannot have acowherd-colony sitting on top of the river Ganges. This would clearlygo against the intention of the speaker. Thus, there is both adifficulty of justifying the linkage of word-meanings(anvayānupapatti) and a difficulty of justifying theliteral or primary meaning in relation to the intention of the speaker(tātparyānupapatti). These interpretivedifficulties nudge one away from the primary meaning of the expressionto a secondary meaning, which is related to that primary meaning.Thus, we understand the expression as referring to a cowherd-colony“on the bank of the river Ganges”.

It is the next level of meaning orvyañjanā(“suggestive signification function”) which is analyzedand elaborated more specifically by authors like Ānandavardhanain the tradition of Sanskrit poetics. Consider the following instanceof poetic suggestion. With her husband out on a long travel, alovelorn young wife instructs a visiting young man: “My dearguest, I sleep here and my night-blind mother-in-law sleeps overthere. Please make sure you do not stumble at night.” Thesuggested meaning is an invitation to the young man to come and shareher bed. Thus, the poetic language goes well beyond the levels oflexical and metaphorical meanings, and heightens the aestheticpleasure through such suggestions.

8. Why the differences?

The nuances of these different theories are closely related to themarkedly different interests of the schools within which theydeveloped. Sanskrit poetics was interested in the poetic dimensions ofmeaning. Grammarians were interested in language and cognition, buthad little interest in ontological categories per se, except asconceptual structures revealed by the usage of words. For them wordsand meanings had to be explained irrespective of one’s metaphysicalviews.Nyāya-Vaiśeṣikas were primarily intologic, epistemology, and ontology, and argued that a valid sentencewas a true picture of a state of reality. The foremost goal ofMīmāṃsā was to interpret and defend theVedic scriptures. Thus, meaning forMīmāṃsā had to be eternal, uncreated,and unrelated to the intention of a person, because its word parexcellence, the Vedic scripture, was eternal, uncreated, and beyondthe authorship of a divine or human person. The scriptural word wasthere to instruct people on how to perform proper ritual and moralduties, but there was no intention behind it. The Buddhists, on theother hand, aimed at weaning people away from all attachment to theworld, and hence at showing the emptiness of everything, includinglanguage. They were more interested in demonstrating how languagefails to portray reality, than in explaining how it works. Thetheories of meaning were thus a significant part of the total agendaof each school and need to be understood in their specificcontext.

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