The Theory of 'word meaning' - Sanskrit and Tamil

"Lakshana Traya" , a theory of word meaning which is also available in the Tamil Tolkaapiyam ( 3rd cent BC). 

However I must point out that Tolkaapiyam  goes beyond this notion of word-meanings. 

While certainly it is true all words have meanings, it is NOT the case that all meanings are wordy or verbal.  There are meanings there in the world as objective realities and which emerge only as the significance of the nonverbal , intention-language or as Tol. would put it , KuRippu Mozi. Now while it is true that such intention-language can

figure in dramas, but Tol. notes it  in the stream of life, as part of the natural mode of human existence and as objective realities in the real world and not the drama-world.

This emerges in the study of GAZE or (naaddam) and which is nonverbal. While

there are many sutras related to this, I just give the following:

1042: naaddam iraNdum aRivudam paduttaRkuk

          kuuddi uraikkum kuRippurai aakum

In Love behavior,  the GAZES of the Hero and Heroine are aspects

an intention-language that function to bring about mutual agreement.

The language of the eyes where there is gazing intensively ( uNkaN nookku)

and which is MEANINGFUL implies  that meanings can be nonverbal as well.

Notice that this kind of meaning is above the type listed in the Lakshana

Traya which confines itself to only  meanings that have entered the domain

of linguistic expressions and contextual conditions.

This also shows that meanings in general  are objective realities where

only some have entered the domain of language with some others always there

as BEYOND and ABOVE language of ordinary communications.

The linguistic tradition of Sanskrit cannot accommodate such meanings as the

language is only a literary language, torn off from the stream of life

where intention-language also figure and where along  with  verbal speech

acts, there are also NONVERBAL SPEECH ACTS such as Gaze and so forth. 

This partial blindness of Sanskrit language and the grammatical theories based on it

extends to the whole of the culture promoted by that language - it does not

accommodate itself to the WHOLE RANGE of MEANINGS but only to those which

have entered the verbal mode of being.



Dr Loganathan Krishnan @ Ullaganar