z:\ ambedkar\vol 04\vol4 04.indd MK SJ YS 23 9 2013/YS 8 11 2013 139
APPENDIX I 139
“The word ‘making’ sounds, merely means implying or uttering them”.
“One sound is simultaneously heard by different persons, just as one Sun is seen by them at one and the same time. Sound, like the Sun, is a vast, and not a minute object, and thus may be perceptible by different persons, though remote from one another.”
“The letter y, which is substituted for i in the instance referred to under Sutra 10, is not a modification of i, but a distinct letter. Consequently sound is not modified.”
“It is an increase of ‘noise’, not of sound, that is occasioned by a multitude of speakers. The word ‘noise’ refers to the ‘conjunctions’ and ‘disjunctions’ of the air which enter simultaneously into the hearer’s ear from different quarters; and it is of these that an increase takes place”.
“Sound must be eternal, because its utterance is fitted to convey a meaning to other persons. If it were not eternal (or abiding), it would not continue till the hearer had learned its sense, and thus he would not learn the sense, because the cause had ceased to exist.”
“Sound is eternal, because it is in every case correctly and uniformly recognized by many persons simultaneously; and it is inconceivable that they should all at once fall into a mistake”.
“When the word go (cow) has been repeated ten times, the hearers will say that the word Go has been ten times pronounced, not that ten words having the sound of Go have been uttered; and this fact also is adduced as a proof of the eternity of sound in Sutra 20”.
“Because each sound is not numerically different from itself repeated.”
“Sound is eternal, because we have no ground for anticipating its destruction.”
“But it may be urged that sound is a modification of air, since it arises from its conjunctions, and because the Siksha (or Vedanga treating of pronunciation) says that ‘air arrives at the condition of sound’ and as it is thus produced from air, it cannot be eternal”. A reply to this difficulty is given in Sutra 22—
“Sound is not a modification of air, because, if it were, the organ of hearing would have no appropriate object which it could perceive. No modification of air (held by the Naiyayikas to be tangible) could be perceived by the organ of hearing, which deals only with intangible sound”.
“And the eternity of sound is established by the argument discoverable in the vedic text, ‘with an eternal voice, O Virupa’.