वेदों की प्राचीनता एवं काल-निर्णय / ओरायन (लोकमान्य बाल गंगाधर तिलक - खगोलीय वैदिक शोध)

450 THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS.

order, and its sense is said to be conveyed by these letters fol-
lowing each other in a definite succession. But Grammarians
are not satisfied with this view, and maintain that the sense of
a word is not expressed by the aggregate of its constituent
letters which are transient, but by a certain super-sensuous-
entity, called sphoṭa (i. e., manifester, from sphuṭ), which su-
pervenes the aggregate of the letters as soon as they are pro-
nounced, and reveals their meaning. Jaimini denies that there
are words in the Vedas which denote any transient objects, and
as the Vedic words and their sense are eternal, it follows, ac-
cording to him, that the Vedas are self-demonstrative, or that
they shine, like the sun, by their own light, and are, therefore
perfect and infallible. If particular parts of the Vedas are
designated after some Ṛiṣhis, it does not, we are told, prove
those sages to have been their authors, but merely the teachers
who studied and handed them down. Bâdarâyaṇa, as inter-
preted by Shaṅkarâchârya (I, 3, 26–33), the great leader of the
Vedânta School, accepts the doctrine of the eternity of sound
or words, but adds that it is the species to which the word be-
longs, and not the word itself, that is eternal or indestruct-
ible, and, therefore, though the names of deities, like Indra
and others, which are all created and hence liable to destruc-
tion, are mentioned in the Veda, it does not affect the question
of its eternity as the species to which Indra and others are said
to belong is still eternal. In short, Vedic names and forms of
species are eternal, and it is by remembering these that the
world is created by Brahmâ at the beginning of each Kalpa,
(Maitr. Up., VI, 22). The Veda is, therefore, the original
WORD the source from which every thing else in the world
emanated, and as such it cannot but be eternal; and it is
interesting, as pointed out by Prof. Max Muller in his Lectures
on Vedânta Philosophy, to compare this doctrine with that of
Divine Logos of the Alexandrian Schools in the West. The
Naiyâyikas, on the other hand, deny the doctrine of the