Indian Semantic Analysis: The Nirvacana Tradition (review)

In this book, Eivind Kahrs, an eminent Sanskrit scholar, investigates the learned Sanskrit literature of Śaiva Kashmir and explains the nirvacana tradition of semantic analysis. I read this book with great interest as I found many foundational propositions of semantics in the nirvacana tradition, and feel that this book correctly apportions many of the ideas of modern linguistics to an ancient source of wisdom. Many linguists will find the view emerging from this tradition appealing. Meaning is considered a property by which language and thoughts are linked to the world, and also a social construct, as a body of individuals making up a community builds up patterns of meaning through which it articulates its cultural identity. Such patterns of meaning are ways of classifying the world. According to this tradition, the meaning of most words depends systematically on their relations to other words in sentences.

The Sanskrit term for meaning (which is understood as the potential to vocalize information states about the world) is artha. Artha is a concept that includes those aspects of meaning that do not depend on the context of use, those aspects that are permanent. Kaiyaṭa on this point remarks ‘ “whatever is permanent.” The artha of a word is the appearance of a cognition. Whenever a word is pronounced, then a cognition appears with the shape of the artha; that is to say, the artha is permanent because it is permanent in the form of a continuous flux’ (45). The nirvacana tradition makes use of a set of thematic roles: the stable point when there is movement away, the recipient or indirect goal, the instrument, the locus, the object or goal, and the agent.

The second part of the book deals with grammar. The author discusses Pāṇini’s view of grammar, dealing with Sanskrit. The Indian grammarian divides the linguistic facts into two areas: the corpus of the Vedic texts and the standard colloquial Sanskrit of his times. His methodology is to start with what is common to all domains of the language and to give a description by means of rules that apply to it entirely. Differences of various kinds are then accounted for by rules giving exceptions or options. Accordingly, Pāṇini formulated general rules to account for features shared by all domains and exceptional rules to account for deviating features pertaining only to a particular domain.

This is no doubt a most intriguing book, one from which linguists are likely to learn a lot, and to be surprised that much of their knowledge can be traced back to ancient Indian grammarians. But it is also fair to say that the book is very technical and that those who are most likely to benefit are Sanskrit scholars who will find in it immense erudition and expertise. The book deserves much praise.