Verse 3.3.2

Sanskrit text, Unicode transliteration and English translation of verse 3.3.2:

प्रतिपत्तिर्भवत्यर्थे ज्ञाने वा संशयः क्वचित् ।
स्वरूपेषूपलब्धेषु व्यभिचारो न विद्यते ॥ २ ॥

pratipattirbhavatyarthe jñāne vā saṃśayaḥ kvacit |
svarūpeṣūpalabdheṣu vyabhicāro na vidyate || 2 ||

2. There is sometimes knowledge and sometimes doubt in regard to the meaning and the intention of the speaker. No mistake is possible about the forms of the words which are perceived.

Commentary

The author now says that the own form of a word is a meaning in a primary sense.

[Read verse 2 above]

[The word gauḥ and the object of which it is the name, both appear to us in the form ayaṃ gauḥ. That means that a word conveys an object (a meaning) and conveys its own form in the process. This process of conveying a meaning as one with itself is called expression (abhidhāna). That is how the convention is understood. The very purpose of convention is worldly usage and therefore, it has to follow worldly usage. In worldly usage, the word and the meaning are identified. The senses are only a means to cognition and do not become part of it The sense of vision, for instance, does not become part of our perception of an object. Certain things like signs enter into the cognition which they cause, but remain apart from it. For instance, the sign ‘smoke’ causes the inference of fire but remains apart. The word is also a means of cognition like the senses and signs, but there is this difference that the object whose cognition it causes appears as one with it.

One might here object to the last statement by saying, rather sarcastically, that the letters of the alphabet are not found reflected in the object. In other words, we do not see any identity between word and meaning. But this objection derives from an imperfect understanding of fundamental doctrines. That word is said to be expressive (vācaka) which is the function called ‘vāk’ of the power of consciousness. This function is called verbal expression (śabdana). Even in silent recitation, it is so called. In its first stage, it is undifferentiated into word and meaning. It remains in the state of the supreme word. Afterwards, it enters into the region of the mind, and the breath (prāṇavṛtti) and becomes differentiated, into the expressed and the expression (vācya and vācaka). In this state which is called the ‘middle one’ (madhyamā), the expressive word (vācaka), without aban- doning the state of the supreme word which consists in undifferentiated consciousness, refers to form and meaning closely bound up and standing in apposition to each other in the form gaur ayam arthaḥ. There is said to be super-imposition of one over the other (adhyāsa). There is differentiation between the expression and the expressed and yet the two are identified. In the next stage, the word, while still not giving up its basis in the previous stages, becomes audible through articulation in the mouth. The word, being thus a manifestation of the supreme word, retains its characteristic of identity between word and meaning (śabdana) even after the two have been differentiated. In one single operation, a complex meaning involving a qualifier and something qualified (viśeṣaṇa and viśeṣya) is conveyed as one with the words which express it. For example, in the sentence śuklaḥ paṭo'yaṃ = this white cloth, the cloth as qualified by the colour white, is conveyed as one single thing. The white colour is not understood as something quite distinct. Similarly, in ghaṭo'yam = this jar, the object jar is understood as qualified by the word jar, its viśeṣaṇa. This process of understanding the word and meaning as one is called śabdana. Sometimes, the meaning of the word is the form of the word itself as in agnim antodāttam adhīṣva = ‘recite agni’, with the udātta accent on the last syllable’. Where the meaning is an external object, the word and the meaning appear as one. They are not cognised separately. The word conveys both its own form and the meaning by its expressive power (abhidhā). Three things communicate themselves while communicating other things: Cognition, the word and the lamp; Thus, the word conveys its own form and its meaning as the expressed sense. It is not that its form merely becomes the object of the sense of hearing. Its form and its meaning become the contents of the same cognition. They are in apposition to each other (samānādhikaraṇa). The form as the expressed sense is different from the same thing as expressive of the meaning. In the latter capacity, the word is active (kartṛbhūmim upārūḍha), it is consciousness (parāmarśa), it is the supreme word (parā vāk), it is light (prakāśa) and, therefore, it is different from the word as the expressed sense (vācya), as the thing one is conscious of (parāmṛśyamāna). When the hearer hears the words of others, he understands their meaning as identical with them and infers the meaning of the speaker also as identical with the words. Thus, there is superimposition, not only between the word and the meaning as understood by the hearer, but also as expressed by the speaker. So, from a word like ghaṭa, we understand three things all mixed un: the word, the meaning and the intention of the speaker. That is why the question gaurityatra kaḥ śabdaḥ, has been asked in the Mahābhāṣya in order to isolate the word from this complex cognition. Even the cognition of a new-born child is mixed up with the word. Thus, whether the relation is looked upon as fitness or causality, superimposition (adhyāsa) is involved in both.

Thus, due to the function called śabdana, which is the very life of what is called illumination (prakāśa), both the word and the meaning become the contents of this cognition and both are in apposition to each other and identity is superimposed on them (abhedādhyāsa). In ‘Paśyantī’, where there is no differentiation, the question of differentiation does not arise at all..The word remains the very life of meaning even in the stage of verbal usage (vyavahāra) and that is why the whole universe is said to be a manifestation (vivarta) of the word.

The form of the word is its first expressed sense because it is part of the process (antaraṅga), it is unavoidable (aheya) and it is distinctive (asādhāraṇa). Here there is no dependence on convention. It may be looked upon as a universal or otherwise, as explained in the Brahmakāṇḍa.]

The author now says what the indication is of the existence of the fixed (samavasthita) relation between -word and meaning.