History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v7.c93.483

v7.c93.483

Let us now turn to the interpretation of *vākya* (sentence). The Ṛgveda and the Sāmaveda are metrical and therefore there is generally no difficulty in arriving at what constitutes in them one syntactical unit (vākya). But much of the Kṛṣṇa Yajurveda is in prose Therefore, PMS (II. 1. 46) defines ²¹²² what makes one vākya by stating that when a number of words serve a single purpose, but if one or a few of those words are separated from the rest, the latter words are incomplete in effecting a purpose and stand in need of the words separated, then all these words make one vākya. An example is the mantra 'I offer thee, that art dear to Agni, at the command of God Savitṛ with the arms of Aśvins, with the hands of Pūṣan'. This is one sentence, the purpose of which is nirvāpa (offering). For other definitions of *vākya*, vide the author's notes on Sāhityadarpaṇa (II. 1) p. 34. For constituting words into a sentence with an understandable meaning expectancy ²¹²³ (ākāṅkṣā), compatibility (yogyatā) and proximity (sannidhi) are required, particularly the first. For example, Śaṅkarācārya on V. S. I. 4 3 says that without ākāṅkṣā there is no cognition that the words form a *vākya*. The word *ekavākyatā* occurs in V. S. III. 4. 24 and conveys that there is a twofold ākānkṣā viz. grammatical as well as psychological. It is the listener or reader who has, on hearing or reading a word, a desire to know another idea or word to get a complete sense. When several sentences, each conveying its own sense as far as it goes, are brought together having regard to the fact that one of them may be principal and the others auxiliary, they form one syntactical whole. This shows that sentences are of two kinds, vākyas and mahāvākyas, as the Sāhityadarpaṇa puts it.