1. Meanings of Words and The Categories of Things Indian and Aristotle (Article) Uppasala

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ontents of last vols. 1. XI.III-XLIV, 1994-1995 memoriam Nils Simonsson (by Per Kværne) 5 memoriam Geo Widengren (by Anders Hultgård) 7 raham, Gidon: Towards a Standardised Presentation of Compounds in Avot Yeshurun's Latter Poetry 11 itchura, Uzbek t: Some Instrumental and Phonetic Data on Intonation and Stress in Mishar Tatar 39 ató, Éva Ágnes: Towards a Typological Classification of Turkish Pro-forms. 83 khult, Mats: The Old Testament and Text Linguistics 93 imeen-Anttila, Jaako: From East to West: The Transmission of Maqāmas and Other Narra- tive Material 105 ksson, Bo: Arabic Dialectology: The State of the Art (Review Article) 115 ckson, Peter: Notes on Indo-European Ritual Phraseology with Special Regard to Vedic 133 hani, Carina: The Formal Structure of Gul Khan Naşir's Poetry. 141 einardus, Otto F.A .: Guido Renis „Ecce Homo“ in der koptischen Frommigkeit 149 eouak, Mohamed: Histoire de la hiğāba et des huğģāb en al-Andalus umayyade (2e/VIIIe- 4e/Xe siècles) 155 ir, Reuven: Mysticism and Poetry in Arabic Literature 165 ffazzoli, Ahmad: Two Funerary Inscriptions in Cursive Pahlavi from Fars 177 mir, Ahmet: Die bulgarisch-tschuwaschische Frage in der tatarischen Literatur 183 igt, Rainer M .: Die Verba primae w und j im Syrischen 187 ngzhong, Zhu, Chulu Üjiyediin and Stuart, Kevin: The Frog Boy: An Example of Minhe Monghor 197 bok Reviews. 208 orks Received 222 st of Contributors 224

1. XLV-XLVI, 1996-1997 Memoriam Walter Bjorkman (by Lars Johanson) 5 hannes Bronkhorst: Louis Dumont et les renonçants indiens 9 ristiane Bulut: Turco-Iranian Language Contact: the Case of Kurmanji (Review Article) 13 Y. Elizarenkova: The Concept of Water and the Names for It in the Rgveda 21 ck Fellman: A Solution to the Problem of Gurage 31 inoru Hara: Śrī-Mistress of a King 33 geborg Hauenschild: Türksprachige Benennungen für den Maulwurf 63 arina Jahani: Byā o baloč - the Cry of a Baloch Nationalist 81 to F.A. Meinardus: Tollwut und der heilige Abû Tarabû 97 efküre Mollova: Aspect adiutif de certains verbes Turks à -š 101 ahit Périkhanian: Vologaeses. Iran. *val(a)- et ses dérivés en iranien et en arménien 115 hra Shams: A la recherche de Hâfez. Étude sur les traductions françaises de l'oeuvre de Hâfez, 1800-1852 123 eidi Stein: Zur Darstellung des türkischen Vokalsystems in der frühen Periode türkischer Sprachstudien in Europa 137 ristoph Werner: Eine Karriere in der Provinz: Mīrzā Muḥammad Šafi Tabrīzī zwischen Nādir Šāh und Karīm Hān Zand 147 u Yongzhong and Kevin Stuart: Minhe Monguor Children's Games 179 Isak son and Eva Riad: Frithiof Rundgren's Published Works 1986-1997. A B bliography in Honour of Professor Frithiof Rundgren on the Occasion of hs 75th Birthday the 25 December 1996 217

ORIENTALIA

SUECANA

An International Journal of Indological, Iranian, Semitic and Turkic Studies

VOL. XLVIII (1999)

Editorial board:

GUNILLA GREN-EKLUND LARS JOHANSON TRYGGVE KRONHOLM + BO UTAS

Department of Asian and African Languages UPPSALA UNIVERSITY UPPSALA, SWEDEN

The Meanings of Words and the Categories of Things-Indian and Aristotelian

GUNILLA GREN-EKLUND, Uppsala

Here will be given only a preliminary sketch of a topic which must be much further investigated; much material, relevant to the issue, must be perused before any final and decisive conclusions can be reached. Work is planned for a study of an essential concept of both Indian philosophy and grammar, namely, padārtha. The most im- portant point on this occasion is that a comparative method will be applied as a start, primarily aiming at understanding of a Sanskrit term by telling from a Western point of view what the term does not mean. More generally, the aim is to meet a special challenge to the indologist, namely, to try to abolish such prejudices as are based on the constraints of words and their translations. To question whether the words, and especially the technical terms, used for ideas and abstract concepts, should be re- garded as being on every occasion and for ever attached to the concepts concerned is indeed to start a very Indian kind of debate, in fact, suggesting the topic of śabda as nitya or anitya.

It has been a commonly accepted idea that the reasons for using the word "category" as a translational equivalent to the Sanskrit word padārtha cannot be questioned. My contention is instead that such a translation has obscured the understanding of padārtha, an important Sanskrit term which has had a prominent position in Vaiseși- ka philosophy and in grammatical tradition. The common use of the word "catego- ry" has even to a certain extent prevented a closer interpretation of this basic term in both cases. I shall start with a short survey of Aristotle's use of the term karnyopía, then pro- ceed to some discussion of the word padārtha in certain occurrences, and finally try to reconcile these observations-or, if my aim is achieved, to distinguish between them. To be honest, the difference between the two settings was actually observed by Foucher in the expositions in his edition of Tarkasamgraha, but not conclusively. The main source for the discussion of the term "category" in Aristotle's works is the text entitled the Categories (ai karnyopíat), one of his shorter logical tractates, gathered together in Organon. In this text, actually devoted to a discussion of the ba- sics of the sentence, 10 enumerated items are presented and the same number recurs also in one other work by Aristotle, the Topica. The number 10 for the categories is not at all sacred and in other passages they are enumerated as eight or fewer. Arist- otle himself returns to the notion of categories rather seldom in his texts, in his ex- tensive works actually not more than five other times. Though the topic of "catego- ries" is not one of Aristotle's main points, it came to be influential in European thought through the scholastics, i.e. mainly during the Middle Ages.

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In order to understand the term as it is used by Aristotle and its history, it is neces- sary to start by looking closely at the Greek verb karnyopeiv, which in Greek logic, from Aristotle onwards, actually means "to predicate", in a logical and syntactic frame. From that is derived the noun katnyopía, meaning "predicament". In Arist- otle's wording (directly translated): "For everything that is expressed without being tied together (namely, in a proposition) means or expresses (onuaívet) one of the following"-and then follows the list of categories: being or existence (ovoía) or how much (ποσόν) or what kind (ποιόν), related to what (πρός τι), where (πού) or when (ποτέ) or to lie (κεϊσθαι), to have or to be in a state (έχειν), to do (ποιεϊν) or to be affected (ráoxeiv). A seemingly more sophisticated, nominally expressed trans- lation has often been used in modern languages, once it was launched in Latin ter- minology, namely, substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, con- dition, active and passive form of action. But observing the actual means of expres- sion in Greek, it may be questioned whether such terminological decisions really are adequate. The basic category, "the being", ovoía, is more often expressed by Arist- otle by a clause: "something (that) is" (ti èott). The other categories are in the same text expressed either as "how" the meaning of words may be, i.e. in the forms of ad- jectives and adverbs, or as "action", i.e. as verbs. It is rather conspiciuous that actu- ally none of them is expressed by a noun in Greek. Already on this formal basis, any close resemblance to an Indian concept of categories may be disputed. By the list of "categories", everything is encompassed, but-in Aristotle's own words-only in the sense that every subject in a sentence must be predicated as hav- ing the meaning of one of these categories. Accordingly the "category" is a descrip- tion of the subject in a sentence, but it does not involve any truth-value until it is ex- pressed in a sentence. Aristotle does not make any effort to ensure the reality of the categories, but instead, it has been remarked, they actually seem to coincide with his idea of parts of speech, later inherited by Western grammar. However, this thesis must be evaluated by a closer, internal discussion of Aristotle's own analysis of parts of speech in the text entitled Peri poietikes. When the concept of karnyopía recurs in the writings of Aristotle, he nowhere defines the entities of the world in terms of categories, though he always gives a special place to ovoía, "being" or, maybe, "substance". His special interest is in consistently connecting the syntax, i.e. the logical relation between the words in a sentence, with semantics, just aiming at finding out the connection between the syn- tax and the parts of speech, a concern that is always recurring in any grammar, whether it is based on logic or on pragmatics. Other aspects of the Aristotelian categories are treated in his other texts, but al- ways his concern is to show, firstly, what may be said about something and, sec- ondly, on all occasions also what may be said to be true. In the second most important text, Topica, the concept seems to come closer to an interpretation as some kind of "entities", when he says that for each one of them may be predicated what is individual (όρος), special (συμβεβηκός), general (γένος) or accidental (ïdtov). Anything expressed must dwell in one of the categories and to- gether they cover everything. In other passages (Physics and Metaphysics), the dis- cussion really concerns tò ov, but here he treats the question of which movements and changes may be inherent in certain of the categories. In one special case (Ni-

comachean Ethics), the concept of "the good" (tò ayaeóv) is tested against the cate- gories, with the conclusion that this is not something independent, since it may be expressed by all the categories. Furthermore, we are are told in all passages that there is an obvious distinction between ovoía and the other themes, since there is identity with the subject when this is the subject of any predicate; the other catego- ries are in this respect accidental (Posterior Analytics). Thus, the overall definition of the categories is always bound to the analysis of the structure and the meaning of sentences and they are not treated as pragmatically defined. The idea of categories was a main topic of European intellectual discourse during the Middle Ages, based on Aristotle. In the handbooks of the scholastics as well as in the school grammars the categories were simplified by notional definitions and actually given a touch of metaphysics, as if they were part of a real being. One of the scholastics' main concerns was with ontological and epistemological issues. But it was the categories in the Aristotelian sense that much later were rephrased in a vig- orous way by I. Kant in his idealistic epistemology. Kant defined the categories, still further away from being entities, rather as inherent forms of thought and knowledge, given a priori, such as unity and diversity, negation, causality, reality and others, up to a decided number of 12 arranged in systematic order. Other Western philosophers, for instance, Schopenhauer and Mill, have used the expression also in a methodological way. The tradition from Aristotle, however, seems to turn up in philosophical discourse in the fact that the categories are con- stantly means of defining semantic items by language, and in later times, there is a certain connection with metaphysics. But the categories continued to express a spe- cial aspect of reality, which was based on sheer human experience of the processes of mind. Thus, anyhow, they came to form part of epistemology, whatever was the world which was to be known by means of the categories. Western philosophy has in fact always been bound to define any category by its capacity to be used in an as- sertion, judged as true or false, just as by Aristotle. There is actually a difference in the development of the concept in the sense that the categories of Aristotle tell about the meaning, whereas Kant's categories, for instance, define both the meaning and the knowledge, though given in a human world.

Now, what about the Indian way? The term padārtha in Vaiseşika and other systems of thinking has almost unanimously been translated in Western languages by the word "categories". A still more suggestive word, used in imitation of Aristotle, is sometimes found, viz. "predicaments", though it is quite clear that Vaiśeșika is not a philosophy of language. Here we should mainly try to find out the difference be- tween Aristotle and Vaiśeşika. In order to recognize what has been common knowl- edge, we have to keep to schoolbooks, advanced ones of course. The definitions of padārtha in the logical systems will thus be represented here mainly by the instruc- tive text by Sivāditya entitled Saptapadārthī. Initially, in this text, padārtha is de- fined by a sūtra saying that pramitivişayah padārthah, they are definitely objects of knowledge. Later on in the text (sūtra 140)-as elsewhere-the knowable things are said to be tattva, and if there is no reality, that is, atattva, there is no knowledge. The seven padārthas are counted (dravya, guņa, karma, sāmānya, viśeșa, samavāya, and abhāva-the last occurring as an addition to the original list of six padārthas in

46 Gunilla Gren-Ekluna Unentana suecana ALV

Kaņada's Vaiśeşikasūtra 1.1.4, as well as in the bhāşya by Praśastapāda) and they are subsequently defined by enumeration. It may be said of these padārthas that they correspond to what is seen by the outer or the inner eye as tattva, as items in the world, in fact in a realistic kind of world. Looking at them in this way, it is easy to understand the combinations of what we would usually distinguish as abstract and concrete notions or as wholes and as analysed things. With reference to the merging of Nyāya and Vaiśeșika, it must be pointed out that also the original, enumerated items in Nyäya, which in translations are so often called "categories", are in fact in Sanskrit called tattva and not padārtha. The evidenced combination of the Nyāya and Vaiśeșika concepts is rendered in various ways by the schoolbooks, for ex- ample, such surveys as Tarkasamgraha and Tarkabhāa. In general, the original Nyāya concepts, the tattvas, seem to have a more or less logical or even a rather methodological aim in the sense of pramāņa, while the Vaiśeșika padārtha occur in most instances as prameya. Annambhatta in Tarkasamgraha treats initially the methods of analysis and discusses the padarthas as part of the prameyas, together with certain of the Nyäya tattvas. The rephrasing commentaries here just mention the padārtha as artha. Keśava Miśra in Tarkabhāșa, on the other hand, directly sub- ordinates padārtha to the Nyāya tattva, just as part of the prameya. It is anyhow quite clear that the idea of padārtha is one, and just one, part of the epistemology of the combined Nyāya-Vaiseșika system. The issue should be further discussed when we come to the essential question of how to find a clue to the concept of tattva and perhaps to the idea of reality. Also the soteriological aspects of another notion used in this connection might be discussed, namely jñāna, which seems to be very impor- tant in the final system. It may additionally be remarked that for Sämkhya the enumeration of the entities of the world occurs under the heading of tattva, which number 25 in the most au- thoritative texts, while padārtha is used as a term only in a rather special way. In Sāmkhyakārikā 61, there is a description of the totality of the world, commented upon as threefold, namely, vyaktāvyaktapurușa - the manifest, the unmanifested and the purusa. This may be an indication that a basic meaning of prameya has also penetrated here. Apparently the same applies also to the Vedänta, where the pa- dārthas are known as cit and acit. But by what are the padārtha and tattva ascertained in Nyāya-Vaiśeşika? Ac- cording to Tarkabhāşa, they may be right and real (sat) when pointed out in an intel- lectual process, even in a logical treatment; but it never occurs in this system of thought that they have to be truly or falsely told in a sentence, as is the claim of Aristotle. Instead they are aiming at a superior reality, a brahman or a brahman simile. It is obviously tempting to compare, approximately as Foucher did in his com- mentary on the translation of Tarkasamgraha, between Aristotle and Vaiśeşika, as follows: ovơía/dravya ποσόν, ποιόν, ποιόν/guna (actually including the sub-items samkhya and parimana for ποσόν and samyoga for πρός τι) κεϊσθαι, έχειν, ποιεϊν, πάσχειν/karma But the "where" (nou) and the "when" (nOTÉ) do not appear on the same level in

the Indian system; the Indian ideas of space and time are located as sub-items to dravya. Of the Indian concepts, which seem to be missing in the Greek categories, two or three may be found to be compatible with some other notions, actually treated by Aristotle, even in the same connection, but they are sorted out as inherent in all the categories. Actually, genus (γένος), species (συμβεβηκός) and “property" (ίδιον) may be taken as possible counterparts to sāmānya, viśeșa and samavāya. Outside any comparison, there is the Aristotelian δρος, όρισμός, “limitation/definition", which may be relevant only in a system of class logic; on the Indian side, the con- cept of abhāva has no Greek counterpart, and it is by no means the same as "false" in opposition to "true". The idea of denial is in Indian thought included in reality and this is also probably only meaningful in an Indian thought-system, where sym- metry is essential and both what is and what is not can be regarded as objects of knowledge. In a coming to the end of the comparison, however, it must be stated that the aim makes the essential difference. A formal observation is that the Aristotelian catego- ries since they are expressed by verbs and adverbs, are all together actional, occa- sional and process-expressing; the Indian ideas, on the other hand, are in fact con- ceived of as static and as entities. Along with this, we are dealing with the use of words to handle the language and its sentences, on the one hand, and to make an in- ventory of reality, on the other. The similarities are more or less occasional, but it would not be surprising if at least the first and very basic resemblances in terms of substance, qualities and action may have something to do with language universals, marked in a similar way in the two languages Greek and Sanskrit. I may add only a short note on the concept of padārtha, as used in the grammati- cal literature. Its meaning in this occurrence is not very far from what is meant by the term in Vaiśeşika-philosopy. Strictly speaking, the word means "the thing, or the purpose of the word, the pada". This opens up a discussion on the triadic relation of word, reference and thing in Western linguistics. One basic idea must be borne in mind, namely that in Indian epistemology and psychology the perception of the thing is closely bound to the object, more than to the subject as it is in Western thought. As regards the word padārtha in linguistic speculation, it seems likely that both the thing and the idea about it in the perceiving mind is included in the word artha. The word, pada, or even better the "sound" of the word, śabda, may rather be described as the mere symbol, in the sense of an upacāra, of the artha. Once again, we may compare this with the Greek thinking and its expressions. The original basis of the Western analysis on this point is the Greek Aóyos, which in itself seems to bear both the spoken word (ρήμα, έπος) and also the meaning of the word. But the real object, the npayua, belonging to the sphere of action in the world, is expressed by quite different terms. It is not really compatible with artha, which comprises both the thing and the conception of the thing referred to; there may certainly be some kind of connection with another meaning of artha (object or intention). In Indian grammar and linguistic philosophy it is thus possible to observe a paral- lelism between the use of the word padārtha in grammar and in Vaiśeşika-philoso- phy: there is a thing, a reality, and it is knowable, in the case of grammar by the lin- guistic sign.

48 Gunilla Gren-Eklund Orientalia Suecana XLVIII

It may also be noted as significant that the padārtha in grammatical tradition, go- ing back to Yāska, may just as well be a bhāva as a sattva; the noun is perceived as central and not the verbal action, as by Aristotle. An analysis of Aristotle's categories and the padārthas displays differences and seems to contribute to another and very essential question, namely, whether we may actually set the same or different boundaries between the realm of metaphysics and epistemology in the traditions of philosophical thought in India and in the West.

To conclude: the categories, as an idea in Western thought, are a matter of language, logic and semantics, developing to form part of a kind of epistemology in which the means of knowledge are treated independently from the objects of knowledge. It is only in the common and more popular use of the term that it seems to suggest a metaphysical meaning. In Indian thinking, on the other hand, the padārthas were metaphysical notions from the beginning, but their use came to be integrated as part of another kind of epistemology, in which the concern is the objects of knowledge, as well as the means of knowledge. Even though Aristotle, Kant, etc., used the word "categories" in a framework of logic and epistemological method, it must be admitted that the more or less popular use of the word in the Western languages has come to designate not abstract and merely linguistic or logical but concrete notions and the term has come to denote at least certain aspects of reality. We then come much closer to the idea of padārtha in the Indian texts. But my contention is that we are not entitled to use the word "cate- gories" as a translation of either padārtha, tattva or prameya or, as sometimes hap- pens, even dharma, if we do not at least know about the big differences in the origi- nal settings. I am not even sure whether I should plead for the use of a more neutral transla- tion, such as "entities", for padārthas instead. This term also reminds us via Latin about the expression tò őv in Greek, suggesting a world of true realities. In fact, it is formed just like the Sanskrit word astitva, and is very similar in meaning. It would also be rather suitable, because one of the characteristics of padārtha, according to Nyāya, is, in fact, astitva, beside jñeyatva and abhidheyatva-concepts which have been the main topic of this lecture.

*Lecture held at Xth World Sanskrit Conference, Bangalore, January 1997