Is Sound Eternal, as the Mimansa Philosophers Believe It to Be or Is It Transitory as the Nyaya Says?
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published 04/01/2008
 
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Behind the claim that sound is eternal appears to be the idea that it must be eternal because the utterance of the word is for the purpose of another. Without this eternality, one person could not make anything known to another, because once the word was spoken, it would no longer exist. Another reason why sound is seen as eternal is to validate the authority of the Vedic scripture, and to show that it is itself eternal.
In this essay I will examine this claim that the word (or sound) is eternal, as set out in the Mimansa, and also the objections to this as set out in the Nyaya (Sourcebook, 1957, pp488-501). I believe that the Mimansa view makes a lot of sense, and although it perhaps seems strange to say that sound is eternal, it does explain how we can form relations between words and groups of words. It also explains how we know a word is the same word each time we hear an utterance of it, and do not believe it to be a new and different word.
 
 

Table of Contents Is Sound Eternal, as the Mimansa Philosophers Believe It to Be or Is It Transitory as the Nyaya Says? Table of Contents

 
  1. Examineing the claim that word (or sound) is eternal.
  2. Argument used by the Nyaya philosophers.
  3. Sound seems to be multiplied by the number of people who make the sound.
  4. Mimansa says - objection used in the Nyaya that we often refer to ‘making' sounds is a misunderstanding.
  5. Mimansa seems to have an answer for nearly all the objections.
  6. The arguments for the eternality of sound.
 
 
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