shabdapramANa

    shabda or verbal testimony is one of the six pramANas recognized by advaita vedAnta. This is dealt with in chapter IV of vedAntaparibhAshA (VP).

    In the nyAya school shabda is defined thus: AptavAkyam shabdaH—Verbal testimony is the statement of a trustworthy person.
Verbal testimony is of two kinds—laukikam (secular) and vaidikam (scriptural). Verbal testimony can be in the form of spoken or written words. This is adopted in vedAnta also. 

    The  statement of a person becomes trustworthy if he is free from such defects as delusion, incorrect knowledge, intention to deceive, etc. In the case of statements in the vedas such defects are impossible because the vedas are apaurusheya, that is, they are not the composition of any person. The question of reliability arises only in respect of statements made by human beings.

    The chapter on verbal testimony in VP starts with the statement--- atha Agamo nirUpyate, which means—Now verbal testimony is being discussed. The word ‘Agama’ means ‘authentic word’, and also the vedas. This word thus covers both secular and scriptural statements.

    Apart from being the words of a trustworthy person (which condition is automatically satisfied in the case of statements from the vedas), the next condition laid own for a statement to be a means of valid knowledge (pramANa) is that it should not be contradicted by any other means of knowledge, such as perception, inference, etc. In respect of secular statements it is easy to determine whether this condition is satisfied or not. Even if, at the time the secular statement is heard or read there was no knowledge of its being contradicted, it is possible that subsequently a knowledge arises through any of the other pramANas which shows that the knowledge conveyed by the secular statement was wrong. In such a circumstance the knowledge from the secular statement, which was till then considered to be valid, would become invalid.

    In the case of statements from the vedas, which include the upanishads, the question arises as to how the knowledge from such a statement could ever be contradicted by any other pramANa such as perception. This can be understood if we remember that our ancients have clearly demarcated the spheres of authority of the veda on the one hand and all the other means of knowledge on the other. In matters that cannot be known except from the vedas, such as what yajna should be performed for fulfillment of a particular desire, how it should be performed, etc., the only authority is the vedas. Even though our perception shows that the world is real, the upanishads say that it is not the truth from the absolute point of view. In such matters also the upanishads supercede perception because perception is not competent to dislodge the assertion of the upanishads. The upanishads are not of human origin (being apaurusheya), and so there is no possibility of any defect in them, unlike in perception.

   As regards matters which fall clearly within the scope of perception Shri Shankara says in his bhAshya on br. up. 3.3.1:--

    “Nor are the Srutis supposed to have authority in matters that are contradicted by other means of knowledge, as, for instance, if they said, ‘Fire is cold and wets things’. If, however, a passage is ascertained (by the application of the six tests, namely, beginning and conclusion, repetition, originality, result, eulogy and demonstration) to have the meaning given by the Srutis, then the evidence of the other means of knowledge must be held to be fallacious”.

     It is through verbal statements, spoken as well as written, that knowledge is transmitted. The scope of verbal testimony is much wider than that of the other means of knowledge. Through perception we can know only what is here and now. Inference, etc., also have their own limitations. But it is through verbal testimony in the form of books, newspapers and other records that we come to know what has happened in the past and what is happening elsewhere at the present time. This is why this means of knowledge has been analysed at great length in works of the nyAya school as well as in VP.

    Sruti is the ultimate pramANa. It is the pramANa which leads to the highest purushArtha, namely, liberation. Once a person has attained liberation with the help of Sruti, then Sruti itself ceases to be pramANa for him.

    The conditions necessary for a sentence to convey its meaning and the various ways in which the meanings of words are to be understood are dealt with in detail in VP. These apply to both secular and scriptural statements.

    According to VP there are four conditions that determine the mutual relation between the words of a sentence. These are, expectancy, consistency, contiguity, and the knowledge of the purport. This is a theoretical analysis which may not be of interest to many persons. However, having taken up the task of preparing a summary of the chapter on verbal testimony I cannot completely leave it out. I shall therefore explain each of these very briefly. 

1. Expectancy- When a person hears a word which signifies some action, there arises in his mind  expectancy about the subject of the action, the object, the place, time, etc. Similarly when a noun, say, table, is mentioned, the hearer expects the speaker to give further details about it, such as “I have bought a new table”, etc. A sentence is complete only if it fulfills such expectations.      

2. Consistency- This means that the objects or ideas denoted by the words in a sentence should not be mutually contradictory. A sentence such as “He is wetting the place by sprinkling fire” is an example. If a sentence in which there is such a contradiction appears, it means that the real meaning is something different from the literal meaning and that the sentence has a deeper significance than what appears. One example given is the sentence, “Thou art That”. Here the literal meanings of the words ‘Thou’ and ‘That’ are the individual and Isvara respectively. These two have totally contradictory characteristics and so they cannot be equated. Therefore the implied meanings have to be taken. How this is to be done will be explained later on when that topic comes up.

3. Contiguity- As a person hears or reads a sentence he understands the meaning of each word. The words should follow one another in such a manner that the sense of the whole sentence can be understood. If some word is omitted it will have to be supplied to get the meaning. In the vedas instances of such omissions occur. One example from the karma kANDa has been given in VP. The missing word to be added is known from the context. The justification for adding such words is the need for contiguity.

4. Knowledge of the purport (tAtparya)- This may also be stated as the intention of the speaker. This is a matter of common experience. Some words have more than one meaning. Which meaning is to be adopted depends on the context, which determines the intention of the speaker. The Samskrit word ‘saindhava’ means ‘horse’ as well as ‘salt’. When a person who is eating asks some one attending on him to bring saindhava, the word clearly means salt. But when a person is ready to go riding and asks his servant to bring saindhava it is clear that he means a horse. In the scriptures there are places where the purport is to be taken in preference to the literal meaning. That is how this condition is important. 

    The meanings of words are of two kinds, primary (shakti) and implied (lakshya).

       The primary meaning of a word is its literal meaning. The word ‘cow’ means the animal known by that name. According to advaita vedAnta, the word ‘cow’ means the species cow and not any particular cow. Some of the other schools such as nyAya, however hold that a word means only a particular entity and not the species. This is not accepted by advaita. When the word ‘cow’ is mentioned, we think of the cow in general and not of any particular cow. The species is known as ‘jAti’ and an individual of the species is known as ‘vyakti’. When a person hears the word ‘cow’  it is the common characteristics of all cows that come to mind. When a cow is pointed out to a child and he is told that it is a cow it is the particular characteristics of a cow that he remembers and that is why he is able to recognize another cow which he sees elsewhere, even if it is of a different colour or size. Thus each word directly denotes the ‘jAti’ and only indirectly the particular ‘vyakti’ which is referred to.

     The uninitiated may think that all this discussion about whether a word denotes the species or an individual is mere hair-splitting without any practical utility. To them it must be pointed out that Shri Shankara has found this theory useful for refuting the contention of an opponent in his bhAshya on brahmasUtra 1.3.28. He says there, “Words are connected with the general characteristics and not with the individuals, for the individuals are infinite, and it is impossible to comprehend the relation of a word (with all of them)”.      

     The primary meaning of a word is known as ‘vAcyArtha’.

      It may happen that in a particular sentence the literal meaning of a word does not give rise to the intended sense of the sentence as a whole. In such cases the literal meaning of the word is discarded and an implied meaning is adopted. Such an implied meaning is known as ‘lakshyArtha’  and the implication is known as ‘lakshaNa’. There are three kinds of implication. These are:--

1. jahal-lakshaNa—exclusive implication.
2. ajahal-lakshaNa—inclusive implication.
3. jahad-ajahal-lakshaNa- quasi-implication or exclusive-inclusive implication.

    The third type of implication is used for explaining the meaning of the mahAvAkya “Tat tvam asi”. This will be explained later on.

     These three kinds of implication will now be explained.

1. Exclusive implication—In this the literal meaning of the word is discarded, but a connected meaning, which makes the sentence meaningful, is adopted. The classic example is the sentence: “There is a cowherds’ colony on the (river) Ganga”. Obviously the colony cannot be in the water of the river. So the word ‘Ganga’ has to be understood as meaning ‘bank of Ganga’. The use of this kind of implication is common in practice. For example, the city of Frankfurt in Germany is always referred to as ‘Frankfurt am Main’  which means ‘Frankfurt on the (river) Main’. We have to understand this as ‘the banks of the river’. When we say “India won the match” it does not mean the country as a whole, but the Indian team.

     The second kind of implication is now taken up.

2. Inclusive implication. In this the primary meaning is retained and an additional meaning is implied. The classic example is, “The red runs”. The meaning is, “The red horse runs”, where ‘red’ is retained and ‘horse’ is added from the context. This is also common in practice. One example-A hawker selling plantains is going along my street, pushing a cart containing plantains. I call him by shouting, “Eh, plantain, come here”. What I mean is that the plantain-seller should come along with his cart of plantains. So the word ‘plantain’ is retained and ‘plantain-seller’ is added by implication.  

3. Quasi-implication. Here the primary meanings of the words of a sentence are partly included and partly excluded. The classic example for this is the sentence, “This is that Devadatta”. Here ‘this’ refers to the person in front now and ‘that’ refers to the same person seen at some other time in some other place. The identity of ‘this’ and ‘that’ is to be understood by discarding the person’s connection with the past time and place on the one hand and the present time and place on the other. This implication is also known by the name bhAgatyAgalakshaNa since one part of each of the items is discarded.

    This is the kind of implication that is applied for interpreting the mahAvAkya “Tat tvam asi”. The manner in which this is done is explained below.

    The word tat stands for brahman as qualified by the functions of creation, sustenance and dissolution, i.e., Ishvara or saguNa brahman. nirguNa brahman is beyond the reach of words and so no word can denote it by its primary meaning. A word can convey through its primary signification only that sense which has one of the following characteristics—generic attribute (jAti), quality, activity or relationship with some other word. nirguNa brahman has none of these. The word tvam stands for the AtmA as qualified by the mental states of waking, dream and deep sleep, i.e., jIva. These two are of mutually opposed qualities, like the glow-worm and the sun, like the servant and the king, like the well and the ocean and like the atom and the earth (verse 244 of vivekacUDAmaNi). There can be no identity between these two, which are the literal meanings (vAchya-artha) of the words tat and tvam. The identity is only between their implied meanings (lakshya-artha). The opposition between the literal meanings is due to the upAdhis, since the literal meaning of tat is Brahman with the upAdhi or limiting adjunct of mAyA and the literal meaning of tvam is AtmA with the limiting adjunct of the five sheaths. When these limiting adjuncts, which are not real, are effectively removed, there is neither Ishvara nor jIva. The two terms tat and tvam (That and Thou) are to be understood properly by their implied meanings in order to grasp the import of the absolute identity between them. This is to be done neither by total rejection of their literal meaning nor by total non-rejection, but by a combination of both.            

    The meaning of the sentence tat tvam asi is obtained by using this method. Just as in the sentence “This is that Devadatta” the identity is stated by rejecting the contradictory qualities, so also in the sentence “That thou art” the contradictory qualities  are rejected. Thus it follows that the jIva and Brahman are in essence one when the limiting adjuncts, mAyA and the five sheaths, are rejected.   

        In addition to the primary and implied senses described above, there is another kind of meaning known as gauNa or secondary. This s found in such expressions as, “ Ranjit Singh was known as the lion of Punjab”. Here the qualities of a lion such as courage, majesty, etc., are attributed to a person. Other examples are, “He is a moving encyclopaedia”, “He is a fire-brand”.  

    There are sentences in the karma kANDa of the vedas which are known as ‘arthavAda’. These convey either praise or censure. They become meaningful only when they are connected with sentences containing an injunction. One example is the statement. “He cried” in the taittirIya samhitA. There is a rather funny story behind this. Once, when the gods went to fight a war, they entrusted their valuables to the deity agni for safe custody. When the gods came back and asked for the return of the valuables, agni ran away with them. The gods chased him and caught him. Then agni began to cry. His tears became silver. Therefore, if  a person performing a sacrifice gives silver as dakshiNa to  the priests, some cause will arise for weeping in the sacrificer’s family within a year.

This arthavAda is to be connected with injunctions regarding sacrifices. The object is to say that silver should not be given as dakshiNa, but only gold. 

      The pUrvamImAmsakas contend that the statements in the jnAna kANDa of the vedas, which do not lay down any injunctions should be considered as arthavAdas. Shri Shankara refutes this contention in his brahmasUtra bhAshya on the ground that the mere statement about brahman gives rise to knowledge that leads to liberation and so such statements are not mere arthavAdas. 

  How the vedas are held to be authoritative:

    According to the nyAya school the vedas are means of valid knowledge because they are produced by God who is eternal and omniscient and they are paurusheya. The mImAmsakas do not accept this view. They hold that the vedas are eternal, they were never created by any person, human or divine and they are never subject to destruction. They are therefore apaurusheya.

    The advaitins also hold that the vedas are apaurusheya, but their reason for this is different from that of the mImAmsakas. According to VP the vedas are not eternal, but they have an origin, as stated in such shruti texts as, “The Rigveda, yajurveda, sAmaveda, rtc., are the breath of the Infinite Reality” (Br.up. 2.4.10). At the beginning of each cycle of creation God manifests the vedas exactly as hey were in the previous kalpa (cycle of creation). So they are not the creation of any person. The smRitis and the epics are composed by human beings (sages) and so they are not apaurusheya.

End of the chapter on shabda in VP.

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