The Prābhākara mimāṃsā theory of related designation

Mark Siderits

pp. 253-297

in: Jaysankar Lal Shaw (ed), Analytical philosophy in comparative perspective, Berlin, Springer, 1985

Abstract

There are three well-known accounts of the cognition of sentence meaning in Indian philosophy of language: the pure sentence theory of the Grammarians, the designated relation theory of the Bhāṭṭa Mīmāmsakas and the Naiyāyaikas, and the related designation theory of the Prabhakara Mimamsakas.¹The first and second of these theories are relatively well understood. Brough, for instance, has given a clear articulation and able defense of the sentence theory.² And the designated relation theory really requires little by way of introduction, since it is so close to what is probably the most widespread common-sense view of how we comprehend sentences—the view that we first grasp the meanings of individual words and then combine them to get a mutually related whole.