(This is unlikely to be of interest to anybody but me, but then again most things on this blog fall into that category!)
In all things associated with language—grammar, semantics, exegesis, hermeneutics, literary theory, you name it—the Sanskritic intellectual tradition developed perhaps the most sophisticated toolkit available to pre-modern humans. One of the most substantial advances on this front was made by the Navya Naiyāyikas (the “New Logicians”), who came up with a formal terminology designed to make communication unambiguous (or at least as unambiguous as can be possible in a natural language). Their terminology was adopted by intellectuals with wide-ranging commitments and projects, such as Mīmāṃsā (hermeneutics), Vyākaraṇa (grammar), and Vedānta (philosophical theology, for lack of a better description).
Jan Houben’s article “‘Semantics’ in the Sanskrit tradition ‘on the eve of colonialism’” shows how Vaiyākaraṇas (grammarians), Naiyāyikas (logicians), and Mīmāṃsakas (exegetes) all used terminology borrowed from the Navya Naiyāyikas to precisely and unambiguously describe the kind of “verbal knowledge” (śābda-bodha) produced in a speaker of Sanskrit upon hearing the sentence:
The question for all three groups of intellectuals is the same: what is the main meaning-bearing element of a sentence, and how does it relate to all the other elements? All three agree on what the sentence conveys to a speaker of Sanskrit; where they differ is on the “keystone” of the sentence.
1) For the Naiyāyikas, the heart of the sentence is the word in the prathamā vibhakti (not necessarily the kartṛ), which in English corresponds to the grammatical subject of the sentence. They therefore parse this as:
2) For the Vaiyākaraṇas, the meaning of a sentence is a single whole (sphoṭa) that can only secondarily be divided into various constituents. However, when this is done, they attribute primacy to the verbal action, the kriyā. Thus, they parse this sentence as:
3) For the Mīmāṃsakas too, the verb is the center of attention. However, unlike the Vaiyākaraṇas, who focus on the verbal root, the Mīmāṃsakas focus on the verbal ending. Houben says that for them, “the basic meaning of all verbs is a ‘creative urge’ (bhāvanā, from the causative of √bhū, ‘to be, become’) which stimulates action in accordance with the prescriptions. This basic creative urge is expressed—transmitted to the listener—by the verbal ending, not by the verbal root which merely qualifies this creative urge.” Thus, the Mīmāṃsaka parse is:
In all things associated with language—grammar, semantics, exegesis, hermeneutics, literary theory, you name it—the Sanskritic intellectual tradition developed perhaps the most sophisticated toolkit available to pre-modern humans. One of the most substantial advances on this front was made by the Navya Naiyāyikas (the “New Logicians”), who came up with a formal terminology designed to make communication unambiguous (or at least as unambiguous as can be possible in a natural language). Their terminology was adopted by intellectuals with wide-ranging commitments and projects, such as Mīmāṃsā (hermeneutics), Vyākaraṇa (grammar), and Vedānta (philosophical theology, for lack of a better description).
Jan Houben’s article “‘Semantics’ in the Sanskrit tradition ‘on the eve of colonialism’” shows how Vaiyākaraṇas (grammarians), Naiyāyikas (logicians), and Mīmāṃsakas (exegetes) all used terminology borrowed from the Navya Naiyāyikas to precisely and unambiguously describe the kind of “verbal knowledge” (śābda-bodha) produced in a speaker of Sanskrit upon hearing the sentence:
rāmo ’nnaṃ pacati
“Rāma cooks rice”
The question for all three groups of intellectuals is the same: what is the main meaning-bearing element of a sentence, and how does it relate to all the other elements? All three agree on what the sentence conveys to a speaker of Sanskrit; where they differ is on the “keystone” of the sentence.
1) For the Naiyāyikas, the heart of the sentence is the word in the prathamā vibhakti (not necessarily the kartṛ), which in English corresponds to the grammatical subject of the sentence. They therefore parse this as:
anna-niṣṭha-viklitti-janaka-pākânukūla-kṛtimān rāmaḥ
Houben translates this as “It is Rāma who possesses the volitional effort conducive to cooking which produces the softening and moistening which is based in rice.”2) For the Vaiyākaraṇas, the meaning of a sentence is a single whole (sphoṭa) that can only secondarily be divided into various constituents. However, when this is done, they attribute primacy to the verbal action, the kriyā. Thus, they parse this sentence as:
vartamāna-kālīna-rāmâbhinna-kartṛkânna-karmaka-pākaḥ
Again, Houben (with my modifications): “It is the activity of cooking, taking place in the present time, having an agent which is [not different from] Râma, having an object which is [not different from] rice.”3) For the Mīmāṃsakas too, the verb is the center of attention. However, unlike the Vaiyākaraṇas, who focus on the verbal root, the Mīmāṃsakas focus on the verbal ending. Houben says that for them, “the basic meaning of all verbs is a ‘creative urge’ (bhāvanā, from the causative of √bhū, ‘to be, become’) which stimulates action in accordance with the prescriptions. This basic creative urge is expressed—transmitted to the listener—by the verbal ending, not by the verbal root which merely qualifies this creative urge.” Thus, the Mīmāṃsaka parse is:
rāma-niṣṭha-kartṛtva-samānādhikaraṇā anna-karmikā vartamāna-kālīna-pākânukūla-bhāvanā
Houben: “It is the creative urge which is conducive to cooking, taking place in the present time, having the same substratum as the agenthood residing in Rāma, having as object rice.”
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