Sphoṭa

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 Sphoṭāyana, an ancient grammarian referred to in Pāṇini; or that it was developed by some author before Patañjali, and is etymologically derived from the root √sphuṭ 'to burst'. Yāska, in his Nirukta (1.1), says that language is eternal in the faculties, where Audumbarāyaṇa is another ancient grammarian. Based on this, some scholars, feel that the idea may owe something to Audumbarāyana ^[1]. Possibly some of the ideas were in the air, though Pāṇini himself never discusses it.

According to Patañjali (2nd c. BCE), sphoṭa is the invariant quality of speech. The noisy element (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 ('varṇa') such as /k/, /p/ or /a/ is an abstraction, distinct from variants produced in actual enunciation^[2]. Patañjali 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 Saṃgraha, may have developed some ideas in sphoṭa theory; in particular, he made some distinctions relevant to dhvani are referred to by Bhartṛhari.

Bhartrihari's sphota

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

Bhartṛhari develops this doctrine in a metaphysical setting, where he views sphoṭa as the language capability of man, revealing his consciousness^[3]. Indeed, the ultimate reality is also expressible in language, the śabda-brahman, or the Eternal Verbum. Early indologists such as A. B. Keith felt that Bhartṛhari's sphoṭa was a mystical notion, owing to the metaphysical underpinning of Bhartṛhari's text, Vākyapādiya 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.

Bhartṛhari expands on the notion of sphoṭa in Patañjali, and discusses three levels:

1. varṇa-sphoṭa, at the syllable level. George Cardona feels that this remains an abstraction of sound, a further refinement on Patañjali for the concept of phoneme- now it stands for units of sound.
2. pada-sphoṭa, at the word level, and
3. vakya-sphoṭa, at the sentence level.

In verse I.93, Bhartṛhari states that the 'sphota' is the universal or linguistic type - sentence-type or word-type, as opposed to their tokens (sounds)^[2]. He makes a distinction between sphoṭa, which is whole and indivisible, and 'nāda', 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 'nāda' 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 sanskritist S.D. Joshi feels that Bhartṛhari 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 Bhartṛhari the very process of thinking involves vibrations, so that thought has some sound-like properties. Thought operates by śabdanaor 'speaking', - so that the mechanisms of thought are the same as that of language. Indeed, Bhartṛhari 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 nāda-sphoṭa distinction is posited in terms of the signifier-signified mapping, but this is a misconception. In traditional Sanskrit linguistic discourse (e.g. in Katyāyana), vācaka refers to the signifier, and 'vācya' the signified. The 'vācaka-vācya' relation is eternal for Katyāyana and the Mīmāṃsakas, but is conventional among the Nyāya. However, in Bhartṛhari, 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 vyakaraṇa school of grammarians, but both the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools rejected it, primarily on the grounds of compositionality. Adherents of the 'sphota' doctrine were holistic or non-compositional (a-khanḍa-pakṣa), suggesting that many larger units of language are understood as a whole, whereas the Mīmāṃsakas in particular proposed compositionality (khanḍa-pakṣa). 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 example.

The Mīmāṃsakas 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^[4]. However, in the end it is cognized as a whole, and this leads to the misperception of the sphoṭa 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 Nyāya view is enunciated among others by Jayanta (9th c.), who argues against the Mīmāṃsā 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 vācaka-vācya 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 sphoṭa doctrine. Particularly notable is Nageśabhaṭṭa's Sphotavāda (18th c.). Nageśa clearly defines sphoṭa as a carrier of meaning, and identifies eight levels, some of which are divisible.

In modern times, scholars of Bhartṛhari 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 Bhartṛhari, particularly the sphoṭa 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 sphoṭa in it. Many other prominent European scholars around 1900, including linguists such as Leonard Bloomfield and Roman Jakobson may have been influenced by Bhartṛhari^[5].

See also

• śabda
• Vāc
• Nyāya

References

Additional References

• Alessandro Graheli, Teoria dello Sphoṭa nel sesto Ahnikā della Nyāyamañjarī di Jayantabhaṭṭa (2003), University “La Sapienza” thesis, Rome (2003).
• Clear, E. H., 'Hindu philosophy', in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London: Routledge (1998) [1]
• Saroja Bhate, Johannes Bronkhorst (eds.), Bhartṛhari - philosopher and grammarian : proceedings of the First International Conference on Bhartṛhari, University of Poona, January 6-8, 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997, ISBN 81-208-1198-4

External links

• the doctrine of sphota by Anirban Dash
• Bhartrihari by S. Theodorou