Sarvadarshanasangraha 13.38

13.38

To this it is said: perception itself is the means of valid cognition here. For the apprehension of a single word distinct from the various letters, as in '"cow" is a single word', is common to all people. Indeed, in the absence of a subverting cognition, the experience of a word cannot be said to be false. Moreover, through the impossibility of explaining the apprehension of word-meaning otherwise, sphoṭa must be accepted. Nor does the claim that that cognition arises from the phonemes alone stand examination, since it does not bear analysis: do the phonemes generate the cognition of meaning collectively or individually? Not the first, for phonemes, being momentary, cannot form a collection. Not the last, because the cognition of meaning cannot arise from individual phonemes. Nor is there any alternative other than being combined or separated. Therefore, since the expressive capacity of phonemes is untenable, that by whose power the apprehension of meaning takes place is the sphoṭa. Those who know this declare: 'The eternal word, distinct from phonemes, manifested by phonemes, and expressive of meaning, is sphoṭa.' For this very reason they explain the meaning of the word 'sphoṭa' in two ways: it is sphoṭa because it is split open, that is, manifested by phonemes, hence manifested by phonemes; or it is sphoṭa because meaning bursts forth, that is, becomes manifest from it, hence expressive of meaning. And so it was said by the revered Patañjali in the Mahābhāṣya: 'Now, what is the word in "cow"? That through the utterance of which there arises the cognition of objects possessing a dewlap, tail, hump, hooves, and horns—that is the word.' And Kaiyaṭa explained this in a continuous exposition ending with: 'Grammarians hold that the expressive word is distinct from the phonemes. Because, if phonemes were expressive, the utterance of the second and subsequent phonemes would be purposeless, and so on; thus sphoṭa, distinct from them, manifested by articulated sounds and expressive [of meaning], has been established at length in the Vākyapadīya.'