These imperatives of global development demand new ways of communication in order to achieve better understanding in the process of human interaction. This project aims at examining the contemporary relevance of the principles and practices of language and communication enshrined in the classical texts of India. This project also aims to examine the linkages between culture, communication and society from the perspective of Indian classical texts.

1. Sunil Sondhi
Tagore National Fellow
Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts
Indian Knowledge Tradition
Refresher Course, Jawahar Lal Nehru University
24 January 2023, New Delhi.

2. Value of Tradition
The nature of language as an important concern and linguistics analysis as a
cognitive method became established in Western philosophy only in the
twentieth century. This happened in classical Indian thought and philosophy at
least three thousand years earlier beginning with the Veda. This tradition of
linguistic thought and analysis has continued uninterrupted to modern times.
The fields of phonetics and grammar were recognized first. By the fifth century
BC Pāṇini composed a complete grammar of Sanskrit that utilized
sophisticated techniques of reference, and abstract principles of rule
precedence. A long tradition of grammatical commentary that followed
Panini’s work included Katyayana, Patanjali, and Bhartrihari.

3. Parts and the Whole
 Linguistics, like any other social science, or all science for that matter, is an
open and permeable field characterized by, and to a large extent generated
and reproduced by, observations and variations between different schools of
thought, and associated methodological orientations. Linguistics is what the
linguists say it is, it may not be what social reality is.
 What we see is not the only reality, it is relative reality. All knowledge serves
to comprehend and find our way in the maze of entangled reality. Validity of
knowledge of what reality ‘is’ and how to study it, rests on what works.
Logically it is possible to be “analytical”, but practice is essentially a holistic.
It is undivided wholeness in flowing movement. Pure thought can ‘see’
holistic reality.

4. Cultural Turn
 Linguists recognise the empirical, theoretical, methodological, and onto-
logical limits of existing intellectual frameworks and accept the in-adequacy
of their theoretical tools to address the emerging issues. This provides
opportunity for creativity from scholars of non-western world who have so
far excelled mainly in the use of knowledge traditions of the west.
 Linguistics has primarily been seen so far as a science of means, logically
analyzing the ways in which communication functions as means of power.
Cultural linguistics considers linguistics as a science that includes study of
both ends and means.

5. Letter and Spirit
While the seeds of the study of speech and language in India may be traced
in the Ṛgveda, and the study of the structure of language as authoritatively
established in the Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī, and Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya, a
full-fledged statement and discussion of science and spirit of language was
given in Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya in the fifth century.
From the early Vedas and Upaniṣads, the Indian approach to language and
communication has never been limited to composition and transmission of
information about the objective world. All aspects of human experience were
regarded as open to expression through language. Linguistics in India always
had and continues to have both phenomenal and metaphysical dimensions.

6. Asya Vamiya Sukta
The Asya Vamiya Sukta is one the most philosophical , but rather enigmatic
Suktas of Rig Veda, ascribed to Rishi Dīrghatamas . In some of the verses of
this long Sukta, the Rishi mentions about the nature and levels of speech,
among many other things. Speech gives recognition to perceptible objects
and processes in nature.
There are four levels of speech and thought. Only the wise who are well
trained, endowed with intelligence and understanding know them all. As for
the rest; the three levels remain concealed and inactive. Common man
knows only the fourth. (Rig Veda, 1.164.45).

7. Vag Sukta
It travels with the Rudras and the Vasus, with the Ādityas and All-Gods It
wander. It holds aloft both Varuṇa and Mitra, Indra and Agni, and the Pair of
Aśvins. It loads with wealth the zealous devotee whose work is worship.
Gods have established It in many places with many homes to enter and abide
in. Through It alone all eat the food that feeds them, each man who sees,
breathes, hears the word spoken. They know it not, but yet they dwell beside It.
Hear, one and all, the truth as It declares.

8. Vag Sukta
Speech makes the man exceeding mighty, make him a sage, a Ṛṣi, and a
Brahman. It bend the bow for Rudra that his arrow may strike and slay the
hater of devotion. It rouses and orders battle for the people, and it penetrates
Earth and Heaven.
Its home is in the waters, in the ocean. Thence It extends over all existing
creatures, and touches even heaven with its forehead. It breathes a strong
breath like the wind, while It holds together all existence. Beyond the earth and
beyond the heavens It has become so mighty in its grandeur. (RV 10.125)

9. Paniniya Siksa
 A tigress holds and carries her cubs between her teeth carefully so that they
are held neither so loosely that they may get dropped, nor so tightly that they
may get strangled.
 Similarly, one should speak with such skill that words are used neither so
loosely that they become meaningless, nor so rigidly that the meaning
doesn’t relate with the living reality. [Paniniya Siksa, 25].

10. Bounded Perception
For Bhartṛhari, the child and the scholar are in the same position as far as
limitations and inadequacies of perception and understanding are
concerned. Both understand and express only an aspect of the reality.
Words express only a representation of the reality of the object or event.
Common words do not touch the undifferentiated and unmanifest reality,
but move about in the world of differentiated and manifest reality. In a
sense, we create some form of reality for ourselves, by thinking and speaking
about it. Speech is uncertain and ambiguous, like the Absolute Reality.
Therefore, it is free and creative.

11. Word and Meaning
When a word can give different meanings, how does one decide the most
appropriate word in a particular context? Bhartrihari refers to a list of
factors that determine the meaning of a word. The list includes complemen-
tary aspects, unrelated aspects, relevance, contradiction, situation-context,
evidence from another sentence, and the proximity of another word.
From this, it is evident that the form of a word by itself is not sufficient to
provide the most appropriate meaning in all contexts. Meaning lies in the
intention behind the spoken word and the context in which it is commun-
icated and heard.

12. Conclusion
We must keep in mind the fact that man is never literal in the expression of
his ideas, except in matters most trivial. The more vital his thoughts the
more have his words to be explained by the context of his life. The men who
are cursed with the gift of the literal mind are the unfortunate ones who are
always busy with their nets and neglect the fishing.
In learning a language, when from mere words we reach the laws of words
we have gained a great deal. But if we stop at that point, we do not reach the
end--for grammar is not literature, prosody is not a poem. When we come to
literature we find that though it conforms to rules of grammar it is yet a
thing of joy, it is freedom itself. Its form is in law but its spirit is in creativity.

13. Short Bibliography
 Belvalker, S.K. (1915) Systems of Sanskrit Grammar. Poona, University of Bombay.
 Potter, Karl H. (2011) The Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Vol 1: Bibliography. Delhi:
MLBD.
 Capra, Fritjof, and Pier Luisi (2014) The Systems View of Life. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
 Chatterji, Suniti Kumar, ed. (2016) The Cultural Heritage of India, Vol V: Languages and
Literatures. Calcutta: The Ramakrishna Mission.
 Coward Horold G., K. Kunjunni Raja, ed. (1990) Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies, Vol. V: The
Philosophy of the Grammarians. Delhi: MLBD.
 Dasgupta, Surendra Nath, and Sushil Kimar De (2017) A History of Sanskrit literature: The
Classical Period. Delhi: MLBD.
 Iyer, K.A. Subramania (1992) Bhartrihari, A Study of Vakyapadia in the Light of the Ancient
Commentaries. Pune: Deccan College.
 Matilal, B.K. (2014) The Word and the World: India’s Contribution to the Study of Language.
Delhi: Oxford.
 Tagore, Rabindranath (2021) Sadhana: The Realisation of Life. New Delhi:Naven Books.
 Vatsyayan, Kapila (2018) Bharata: The Natyashastra. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi