Vedanta-Sutras Part I · 59 of 103

Adhyaya I: Pada III: Sutras 29-30

Those, moreover, who maintain that the individual letters are different have, in order to account for the fact of recognition, to assume species of letters, and further to admit that the apprehension of difference is conditioned by external factors. Is it then not much simpler to assume, as we do, that the apprehension of difference is conditioned by external factors while the recognition is due to the intrinsic nature of the letters? And this very fact of recognition is that mental process which prevents us from looking on the apprehension of difference as having the letters for its object (so that the opponent was wrong in denying the existence of such a process). For how should, for instance, the one syllable ga, when it is pronounced in the same moment by several persons, be at the same time of different nature, viz. accented with the udâtta, the anudâtta, and the Svarita and nasal as well as non-nasal 1? Or else 2—and this is the preferable explanation—we assume that the difference of apprehension is caused not by the letters but by the tone (dhvani). By this tone we have to understand that which enters the ear of a person who is listening from a distance and not able to distinguish the separate letters, and which, for a person standing near, affects the letters with its own distinctions, such as high or low pitch and so on. It is on this tone that all the distinctions of udâtta, anudâtta, and so on depend, and not on the intrinsic nature of the letters; for they are recognised as the same whenever they are pronounced.

On this theory only we gain a basis for the distinctive apprehension of the udâtta, the anudâtta, and the like. For on the theory first propounded (but now rejected), we should have to assume that the distinctions of udâtta and so on are due to the processes of conjunction and disjunction described above, since the letters themselves, which are ever recognised as the same, are not different. But as those processes of conjunction and disjunction are not matter of perception, we cannot definitely ascertain in the letters any differences based on those processes, and hence the apprehension of the udâtta and so on remains without a basis.—Nor should it be urged that from the difference of the udâtta and so on there results also a difference of the letters recognised.

For a difference in one matter does not involve a difference in some other matter which in itself is free from difference. Nobody, for instance, thinks that because the individuals are different from each other the species also contains a difference in itself.

The assumption of the sphota is further gratuitous, because the sense of the word may be apprehended from the letters.—But—our opponent here objects—I do not assume the existence of the sphota. I, on the contrary, actually perceive it; for after the buddhi has been impressed by the successive apprehension of the letters of the word, the sphota all at once presents itself as the object of cognition.—You are mistaken, we reply. The object of the cognitional act of which you speak is simply the letters of the word. That one comprehensive cognition which follows upon the apprehension of the successive letters of the word has for its object the entire aggregate of the letters constituting the word, and not anything else.

We conclude this from the circumstance that in that final comprehensive cognition there are included those letters only of which a definite given word consists, and not any other letters. If that cognitional act had for its object the sphota—i. e. something different from the letters of the given word—then those letters would be excluded from it just as much as the letters of any other word. But as this is not the case, it follows that that final comprehensive act of cognition is nothing but an act of remembrance which has the letters of the word for its object.—Our opponent has asserted above that the letters of a word being several cannot form the object of one mental act. But there he is wrong again.

The ideas which we have of a row, for instance, or a wood or an army, or of the numbers ten, hundred, thousand, and so on, show that also such things as comprise several unities can become the objects of one and the same cognitional act. The idea which has for its object the word as one whole is a derived one, in so far as it depends on the determination of one sense in many letters 1; in the same way as the idea of a wood, an army, and so on. But—our opponent may here object—if the word were nothing else but the letters which in their aggregate become the object of one mental act, such couples of words as gârâ and râgâ or pika and kapi would not be cognised as different words; for here the same letters are presented to consciousness in each of the words constituting one couple.—There is indeed, we reply, in both cases a comprehensive consciousness of the same totality of letters; but just as ants constitute the idea of a row only if they march one after the other, so the letters also constitute the idea of a certain word only if they follow each other in a certain order. Hence it is not contrary to reason that the same letters are cognised as different words, in consequence of the different order in which they are arranged.

The hypothesis of him who maintains that the letters are the word may therefore be finally formulated as follows. The letters of which a word consists—assisted by a certain order and number—have, through traditional use, entered into a connexion with a definite sense. At the time when they are employed they present themselves as such (i. e. in their definite order and number) to the buddhi, which, after having apprehended the several letters in succession, finally comprehends the entire aggregate, and they thus unerringly intimate to the buddhi their definite sense. This hypothesis is certainly simpler than the complicated hypothesis of the grammarians who teach that the sphota is the word. For they have to disregard what is given by perception, and to assume something which is never perceived; the letters apprehended in a definite order are said to manifest the sphota, and the sphota in its turn is said to manifest the sense.

Or let it even be admitted that the letters are different ones each time they are pronounced; yet, as in that case we necessarily must assume species of letters as the basis of the recognition of the individual letters, the function of conveying the sense which we have demonstrated in the case of the (individual) letters has then to be attributed to the species.

From all this it follows that the theory according to which the individual gods and so on originate from the eternal words is unobjectionable.

Footnotes 201:1 The reference is to Pûrva Mîmâmsâ Sûtras I, 1, 5 (not to I, 2, 21, as stated in Muir’s Sanskrit Texts, III, p. 69).

202:1 In which classes of beings all the gods are comprised.

202:2 Which shows that together with the non-eternality of the thing denoted there goes the non-eternality of the denoting word.

202:3 Âkriti, best translated by εἶδος.

204:1 The pûrvapakshin, i. e. here the grammarian maintains, for the reasons specified further on, that there exists in the case of words a supersensuous entity called sphota which is manifested by the letters of the word, and, if apprehended by the mind, itself manifests the sense of the word. The term sphota may, according as it is viewed in either of these lights, be explained as the manifestor or that which is manifested.—The sphota is a grammatical fiction, the word in so far as it is apprehended by us as a whole. That we cannot identify it with the ‘notion’ (as Deussen seems inclined to do, p. 80) follows from its being distinctly called vâkaka or abhidhâyaka, and its being represented as that which causes the conception of the sense of a word (arthadhîhetu).

205:1 For that each letter by itself expresses the sense is not observed; and if it did so, the other letters of the word would have to be declared useless.

205:2 In order to enable us to apprehend the sense from the word, there is required the actual consciousness of the last letter plus the impressions of the preceding letters; just as smoke enables us to infer the existence of fire only if we are actually conscious of the smoke. But that actual consciousness does not take place because the impressions are not objects of perceptive consciousness.

208:1 ‘How should it be so?’ i.e. it cannot be so; and on that account the differences apprehended do not belong to the letters themselves, but to the external conditions mentioned above.

208:2 With ‘or else’ begins the exposition of the finally accepted theory as to the cause why the same letters are apprehended as different. Hitherto the cause had been found in the variety of the upâdhis of the letters. Now a new distinction is made between articulated letters and non-articulated tone.

209:1 I. e. it is not directly one idea, for it has for its object more than one letter; but it may be called one in a secondary sense because it is based on the determinative knowledge that the letters, although more than one, express one sense only.

29.And from this very reason there follows the eternity of the Veda.

As the eternity of the Veda is founded on the absence of the remembrance of an agent only, a doubt with regard to it had been raised owing to the doctrine that the gods and other individuals have sprung from it. That doubt has been refuted in the preceding Sûtra.—The present Sûtra now confirms the, already established, eternity of the Veda. The eternity of the word of the Veda has to be assumed for this very reason, that the world with its definite (eternal) species, such as gods and so on, originates from it.—A mantra also (‘By means of the sacrifice they followed the trace of speech; they found it dwelling in the rishis,’ Rig-veda Samh. X, 71, 3) shows that the speech found (by the rishis) was permanent.—On this point Vedavyâsa also speaks as follows: ‘Formerly the great rishis, being allowed to do so by Svayambhû, obtained, through their penance, the Vedas together with the itihâsas, which had been hidden at the end of the yuga.’

30.And on account of the equality of names and forms there is no contradiction (to the eternity of the word of the Veda) in the renovation (of the world); as is seen from Sruti and Smriti.

If—the pûrvapakshin resumes—the individual gods and so on did, like the individual animals, originate and pass away in an unbroken succession so that there would be no break of the course of practical existence including denominations, things denominated and agents denominating; the connexion (between word and thing) would be eternal, and the objection as to a contradiction with reference to the word (raised in Sûtra 27) would thereby be refuted. But if, as Sruti and Smriti declare, the whole threefold world periodically divests itself of name and form, and is entirely dissolved (at the end of a kalpa), and is after that produced anew; how can the contradiction be considered to have been removed?