Sphoṭa

IAST|Sphoṭa (literally "bursting, opening") is an important concept in Sanskrit philosophy of language, relating to the problem of speech production, how the mind orders linguistic units into coherent discourse.

Early concept of sphota

The concept of sphoṭa changed considerably over two millennia of linguistic thought. Two sources have been proposed for the origin of the term - that it was initially proposed by "sphoTAyana", an ancient grammarian referred to in Panini; or that it was developed by some author before Patanjali, and is etymologically derived from "sphuT", (burst). Yaska, in his Nirukta (1.1), says: "indriya-nityam vacanam-audumbaraayaNaH", language is eternal in the faculties, where AudumbarAyaNaH is another ancient grammarian. Based on this, some scholars, feel that the idea may owe something to AudumbarAyan [cite article
title=Audumbarayana's Theory of Language,
author={Brough, J.},
journal={Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London},
volume={14},
number={1},
pages={73--77},
year={1952},] . Possibly some of the ideas were in the air, though Panini himself never discusses it.

According to Patañjali (2nd c. BCE), sphoṭa is the invariant quality of speech. The noisyelement ("dhvani", audible part) can be long or short, loud or soft, but the sphoṭa remains unaffected by individual speaker differences. Thus, a single letter or 'sound' ("varNa") such as "k", "p" or "a" is an abstraction, distinct from variants produced in actual enunciationcite book
title = Bimal Krishna Matilal
author = The word and the world: India's contribution to the study of language
publisher = Oxford
year = 1990 ] . Patanjali gives some analogies: distance remains the same whatever means one travels along it; a drumbeat may be louder, but it remains a drumbeat, so also a sphoṭa remains unaltered however fast or loud a speaker may utter it. This concept appears to be close to the modern notion of phoneme, an abstraction for a range of sounds.

The grammarian Vyadi, author of the lost text "saMgraha", may have developed some ideasin sphoṭa theory; in particular, he made some distinctions relevant to dhvani are referred to by Bhartrihari.

Bhartrihari's sphota

In Bhartrihari (4th c. AD) the term sphoṭa takes on a finer nuance, but there is some dissension among scholars as to what Bhartrihari intended to say. Sphota retains its invariant attribute, but now it's indivisibility is emphasized and it now operates at several levels.

Bhartrihari develops this doctrine in a metaphysical setting, where he views sphoTa as the language capability of man, revealing his consciousness [cite book
title = Coward, Harold G.,
author = The Sphota Theory of Language: A Philosophical Analysis
publisher = Motilal Banarsidass,
year = 1997,
isbn = 8120801814, The first part of this text is a good review of the metaphysical underpinnings in Bhartrihari. ] . Indeed, the ultimate reality is also expressible in language, the "shabda-brahman" or the Eternal Verbum. Early indologists such as A. B. Keith felt that Bhartrihari's sphoṭa was a mystical notion, owing to the metaphysical underpinning of Bhartrihari's text, "vAkyapAdiya" where it is discussed, but it appears to be more of a psychological notion. Also, the notion of "flash or insight" or "revelation" central to the concept also lent itself to this viewpoint. However, the modern view is that it is perhaps a more psychological distinction.

Bhartrihari expands on the notion of sphoTa in Patanjali, and discusses three levels:
# "varNa-sphoṭa", at the syllable level. George Cardona feels that this remains an abstraction of sound, a further refinement on Patanjali for the concept of phoneme- now it stands for units of sound.
# "pada-sphoṭa", at the word level, and
# "vakya-sphoṭa", at the sentence level. In verse I.93, Bhartrihari states that the sphota is the universal or linguistic type - sentence-type or word-type, as opp to their tokens (sounds).He makes a distinction between "sphoṭa", which is whole and indivisible, and "nAda", the sound, which is sequenced and therefore divisible. The sphoṭa is the causal root, the intention, behind an utterance, in which sense is similar to the notion of lemma in most psycholinguistic theories of speech production. However, sphoṭa arises also in the listener, which is different from the lemma position. Uttering the "nAda" induces the same mental state or sphoṭa in the listener - it comes as a whole, in a flash of recognition or intuition ("pratibhā" "shining forth"). This is particularly true for "vakya-sphoṭa" or sentence-vibration, where the entire sentence is thought of (by the speaker), and grasped (by the listener) as a whole.

On the other hand, the modern Sanskriticist S.D. Joshi feels however, that Bhartrihari may not have been talking about meanings at all, but a class of sounds.

Bimal K. Matilal has tried to unify these views - he feels that for Bhartrihari the very process of thinking involves vibrations, so that thought has some sound-like properties. Thought operates by "shabdana"or languageing, - so that the mechanisms of thought are the same as that of language. Indeed, Bhartrihari seems to be saying that thought is not possible without language. This leads to a somewhat whorfian position on the relationship between language and thought. The sphoṭa then is the carrier of this thought, as a primordial vibration.

Sometimes the "nAda-sphoTa" distinction is posited in terms of the signifier-signified mapping, but this is a misconception. In traditional Sanskrit linguistic discourse (e.g. in Katyayana), "vAchaka" refers to the signifier, and "vAchya" the signified. The "vachaka-vachya" relation is eternal for Katyayana and the Mimamsakas, but is conventional among the Nyaya. However, in Bhartrihari, this duality is given up in favour of a more holistic view - for him, there is no independent meaning or signified; the meaning is inherent in the word or the sphoTa itself.

Beyond Bhartrihari

Sphoṭa theory remained widely influential in Indian philosophy of language and was the focus of much debate over several centuries. It was adopted by most of the vyakaraNa school (grammarians), but both the mimamsa and nyaya schools rejected it, primarily on the grounds of compositionality. Adherents of the sphota doctrine were holistic or non-compositional ("a-khanDa-pakSha"), suggesting that many larger units of language are understood as a whole, whereas the Mimamsakas in particular proposed compositionality ("khanDa-pakSha"). According to the former, word meanings, if any, are arrived at after analyzing the sentences in which they occur. Interestingly, this debate had many of the features animating present day debates in language over semantic holism, for exampley .

The Mimamsakas felt that the sound-units or the letters alone make up the word. The sound-units are uttered in sequence, but each leaves behind an impression, and the meaning is grasped only when the last unit is uttered. The position was most ably stated by Kumarila Bhatta (7th c.) who argued that the sphoṭas at the word and sentence level are after all composed of the smaller units, and cannot be different from their combination [Gaurinath Sastri "A Study in the Dialectics of Sphota", Motilal Banarsidass (1981).] . However, in the end it is cognized as a whole, and this leads to the misperception of the sphoTa as a single indivisible unit. Each sound unit in the utterance is an eternal, and the actual sounds differ owing to differences in manifestation.

The Nyaya view is enunciated among others by Jayanta (9th c.), who argues against the Mimamsa position by saying that the sound units as uttered are different; e.g. for the sound "g", we infer its "g"-hood based on its similarity to other such sounds, and not because of any underlying eternal. Also, the "vachaka-vachya" linkage is viewed as arbitrary and conventional, and not eternal. However, he agrees with Kumarila in terms of the compositionality of an utterance.

Throughout the second millennium, a number of treatises discussed the sphoTa doctrine. Particularly notable is Nageshabhatta's "SphotavAda" (18th c). Nagesha clearly defines sphoTa as a carrier of meaning, and identifies eight levels, some of which are divisible.

In modern times, scholars of Bhartrihari have included Ferdinand de Saussure, who did his doctoral work on the genitive in Sanskrit, and lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European languages at the Paris and at the University of Geneva for nearly three decades. It is thought that he might have been influenced by some ideas of Bhartrihari, particularly the sphoTa debate. In particular, his description of the sign, as composed of the signifier and the signified, where these entities are not separable - the whole mapping from sound to denotation constitutes the sign, seems to have some colourings of sphoTa in it. Many other prominent European scholars around 1900, including linguists such as Leonard Bloomfield and Roman Jakobson may have been influenced by Bhartrihari [Frits StaalThe science of language, Chapter 16, in Gavin D. Flood, ed. "The Blackwell Companion to Hinduism" Blackwell Publishing, 2003, 599 pages ISBN 0631215352, 9780631215356. p. 357-358] .

ee also

*Shabda
*Vāc
*Nyāya

References

Additional References

*Alessandro Graheli, "Teoria dello IAST|Sphoṭa nel sesto Ahnikā della Nyāyamañjarī di IAST|Jayantabhaṭṭa" (2003), University “La Sapienza” thesis, Rome (2003).
*Clear, E. H., 'Hindu philosophy', in E. Craig (ed.), "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy", London: Routledge (1998) [http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/F002SECT4]
*Saroja Bhate, Johannes Bronkhorst (eds.), "IAST|Bhartṛhari - philosopher and grammarian : proceedings of the First International Conference on IAST|Bhartṛhari", University of Poona, January 6-8, 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997, ISBN 81-208-1198-4

External links

* [http://www.languageinindia.com/june2004/anirbansphota1.html the doctrine of sphota] by Anirban Dash
* [http://www.iep.utm.edu/b/bhartrihari.htm Bhartrihari] by S. Theodorou