4.2. Naiyāyikas' View on Sentence-Meaning

Nyāyaśāstra is renowned as ' Pramāṇaśāstra', and hence, the concept of sentence and sentence-meaning are not the only concern of it. As Jayantabhaṭṭa states, the ancient Naiyāyikas did not give much importance to the discussions on language (1970, p.143). But it is to be noted that the School of Navya Nyāya took the matter seriously and made remarkable contribution in the study of language. For them, sentence is the collection of words and sentence-meaning is the collection of word-meanings. Śābdabodha is the term they use to represent the cognition of the meaning of a sentence. It is already discussed that Naiyāyikas also admit the theory of Abhihitānvaya, with a slight difference from that of the Bhāṭṭa School of Mīmāṃsā, to explain the process of verbal cognition. Thus, the mutual connection between the word-meanings or saṃsarga is the sentencemeaning.

In Kārikāvalī, Viśvanātha expounds the complete process of verbal cognition in a single verse:

padajñānantu karaṇaṃ dvāraṃ tatra padārthadhīḥ śābdabodhaḥ phalaṃ tatra śaktidhīḥ sahakāriṇī.
  —(1988, p.546)

Laugākṣi Bhāskara states that the meaning of a sentence consists in the mutual relation of the meanings expressed by the words:

"padopasthitānāṃ mithaḥ saṃsargaḥ vākyārthaḥ",
  —(Tarkakaumudī, 1886, p.44).

According to Jagadīśa, sentence-meaning is the mutual relation of word-meanings, and in this relation, one meaning is correlated with another (Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā, 2002, p.22). Thus, it is obvious that almost all scholars in the School of Nyāya accept the mutual relation of wordmeanings as the sentence-meaning. It must be noted that, according to this philosophy, sentence-meaning is not to be taken as the primary or secondary meanings of a sentence. It is because this school does not accept either the primary significatory power (śakti) or the secondary one (lakṣaṇā) in a sentence. To the Naiyāyikas, word is the meaningful unit of language and they express their primary meaning through śakti. Śakti is the will of God, which determines the meaning of the word:

"asmāt padādayamartho boddhavya itīśvarecchā śaktiḥ",
  —(Tarkasaṅgraha, 1971, p.151).

Navya Naiyāyikas describe śakti as the will of the speaker, which assigns the meaning to the word.

Though the ancient works of the Nyāya School did not emphasize on the discussions related with language studies, later texts like Śabdaśaktiprakāśikā, Vyutpattivāda, Nyāyamañjarī, Bhāṣāratnam etc. give special stress on Naiyāyika's view about the complex phenomenon of verbal cognition. In the Nyāya tradition, Jayanta, the author of Nāyamañjarī, was the first, who elaborately discuss the concept of sentence-meaning. In this work, he discussed the theories of verbal comprehension in detail.

He refers to diverse views held by the preceptors:

"tatra vipratipattiśca bahurūpā vipaścitām",
  —(1970, p.300),

And rejects all these views.

Besides, he also refutes the Grammarians' theory of Pratibhā, Anvitābhidhānavāda and Abhihitānvayavāda (1970, p.335). After rejecting all these views, Jayanta introduces a unique idea about the cognition of sentence-meaning, known as ' tātparyavāda'. According to him, the word tātparya signifies the power of word which conveys the related meaning of the words in a sentence. Thus Jayanta states that tātparya is the cause of the cognition of sentence meaning. In Navya Nyāya, this power of words is called 'saṃsargamaryādā'. In the School of Navya Nyāya, this term refers to the syntactic expectancy of words (ākāṅkṣā).

Gadādharabhaṭṭa remarks that the meaning of a sentence, which is the relation that exists among the individual meanings of the words, is put forth by the saṃsargamaryādā or the syntactic expectancy:

"ekapadārthe' parapadārthasya saṃsargaḥ saṃsargamaryādayā bhāsate",
  —(Vyutpattivāda, 1973, p.1).

Thus Naiyāyikas reject all the different views regarding the verbal comprehension of a sentence presented by the other systems such as Grammar, Mīmāṃsā etc. They maintain that the verb in a sentence is not important, but the nominative substantive (prathamāntārtha) is the primary substantive (mukhyaviśeṣya) in the sentence. All the remaining parts in a sentence are the qualifiers of that word^[1].

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

This view if Nayayikas will be explained later under 2.5.2