[Advaita-l] mithyaa / anirvachaniiya and asattva

श्रीमल्ललितालालितः lalitaalaalitah at lalitaalaalitah.com
Sun Mar 17 14:08:43 CDT 2013


*श्रीमल्ललितालालितः
*www.lalitaalaalitah.com


On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Naresh Cuntoor <nareshpc at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> > The relation of 'son' with the 'woman' which is denoted by word 'of' is
> > opposed to barrenness of woman. Hence, there is contradiction.
>

Here I meant that contradiction between meanings of constituent words
exist. I don't know what was meant by K Sadananda.
​​

> One could think of other examples like vandhyaaputraH - andha-dRuShTiH
> (sight of the blind), mUkavachanam (i.e., mUkasya vachanam - speech of a
> mute person), etc. Such things do not exist (modulo medical advancements
> anyway) because a blind person does not see and so on. These things do not
> exist because of a tautology, not a contradiction.
>

I checked dictionary to know meaning of this word 'tautology'. I can see
that this just means आम्रेडनम् or repetition. So, you are just repeating
your words again.
I have no problem with your assumptions.

But, for those who want to know my point here is it again:
vandhyAputraH means putrahInAyAH putraH as you tried to point later. But,
as putrahInA means a woman and putraH means son, so there is no repetition
either useful or useless. This much regarding difference of visheShya part.
Talking of visheShNAMshsa, putrahInA means ​​putrAbhAvaH and this is
certainly not the meaning of word putraH.
So, I don't see any repetition.
However, what you conceive as repetition comes only after we add another
word to the word vandhyAputraH to make a sentence. But, that must have same
meaning to cause it. So, vandhyAputraH sutarahitAjAtaH is a repetition and
no sane person uses such sentence in this world. No sane person uses ghaTo
ghaTaH to denote pot, because abhedAnavayaH is only accepted when
vAchyatAvachchhedaka-s are different, as in jIvo brahma or sundaro bAlakaH.
In other words, there must be difference of uddeshyatAvachchedaka and
vidheya in order to make a sentence valid. Moreover, such sentences are not
accepted as valid because they have useless repetition of words, useless
because of ayogyatA to quench AkA~NkshA.

For a contradiction, you would need a set of statements along the following
> lines:
> (a) All people can see
> (b) Some people are blind
> (c) Blind people cannot see.
>
> But in andhadRuShTiH or vandhyaaputraH, there are no such contradictions.
>

There is a contradiction in meanings of constituents of samasta-pada.
​​

> It is tautological to say that "blind people cannot see" or "vandhyaa does
> not have a putra" or equivalently "son of a vandhyaa does not exist".
>

Correct. But, then the sentence formation will be :
अन्धो न पश्यति ।
वन्ध्या सुतहीना भवति ।
वन्ध्याया सुतो न भवति ।
etc.

But, we are not talking about these sentences. We were just talking about
the word vandhyAputraH.
To add, वन्ध्यासुतोऽलीकः sentence is also correct and doesn't bring any
repetition, because it is telling that vandhyAsutaH is not pAramArthika,
vyAvahArika and prAtibhAsika.

​​

> Yes, vandhyaaputraH is a word. Surely, it is the same as putrahInAputraH
> who does not exist because of the first part of the word.
>

Solved it already.
​​

>  anyone.
> > It is actually prAtibhAsika.
> >
> >
> My bad.
>

That's not a problem.
​​



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