Apbharamsa Hindi Kosha

Philosophical query into the working of language has occupied an important place in the rich tradition of thought in India since the ancient times. This book throws light on various debates in classical Indian Philosophical tradition concerning the structure of language and meaning. Papers in this book have been arranged in four groups basing on their thematic composition. The book begins with the general issues relating to language as figured in classical schools of Indian philosophy. Papers dealing with the semantic structure of language as discussed by Bhartrhari in his Vakyapadiya follow this. The next set of papers is related to some of the important semantic notions of Nyaya philosophy of language. In this respect notions like sense, reference, proper names, meaning, etc., have figured in for discussion. The last set of papers is concerned with the import of sentences wherein papers dealing with Purva-Mimamsa are included. One of the significant features of this volume is that some of the issues and problems in Indian Philosophy of language have been approached from the contemporary Western perspective with a view to explicate and evaluate them in a better way and this would be of considerable interest to scholars and students of philosophy, particularly those involved in the study of classical Indian philosophy.

The essays in this volume deal with the nature of linguistic representations as distinguished from other types of representations, including mental representations. These study language and linguistic representations, examining crucial questions like nature of language and language as a source of knowledge, accommodating linguistic representations within the broad framework of truth-based semantics and hermeneutic interpretation of language. The essays focus on the structure and limits of linguistic representations from both the Indian and Western perspectives. The semantic problems of meaning, reference and truth constitute the main issues facing any theory of linguistic representations and, therefore, these issues have been discussed in-depth. Besides, there has been an effort to understand how to locate the language-reality relationships within a broad representationalist framework. The essays take up many specific topics, examining theories of linguistic representations, such as the anti-representationalist stand of Wittgenstein and Derrida, Grice’s theory of meaning, and perspectives of Indian classical schools such as the Naiyayikas’ perspective on testimonial knowledge. The essays specially focus on the Indian theories of grammar and linguistic representations to highlight how philosophy of language, whether classical or contemporary, can hardly get rid of the semantic locus of meaning and truth.
The volume will prove invaluable to scholars of philosophy, especially those concerned with language and linguistic representations.