Utterances with non-literal meaning are part of everyday language. They “say” one thing but do not “mean” what they say. These include similes, metaphors, irony, hyperbole, and transferred epithets. Contrary to the general view, these expressions are not restricted to literary language. They are “unmarked” in literary language; that is, they are expected in that variety of language but “marked” in day-to-day language, where, being untypical, they draw attention. Listeners do not often fail to assign the intended meaning to the utterances. The Ancient Indian theory of abhidha (literal), lakshana (indicative/metaphorical), and vyanjana (suggestive/contextual) meaning, along with tatparya (speaker intention), shows how hearers assign meaning to such utterances. The theory is essentially this: when the hearer finds the literal meaning incongruous, and believes that what the speaker said was not what he wanted him to take as what he meant, he gives it a congruent meaning and takes it as the speaker’s intended meaning.
For instance, consider “gangayam
ghoshah”, which literally means “a fisherman's village on the Ganga”. But
the river Ganga is a flowing entity, and a village cannot be situated on it. So,
its abhidha meaning is incoherent. The hearer tries to resolve the
problem by extending the meaning of “Ganga”. In its extended meaning, “Ganga”
means the “banks of the Ganga”. This is the lakshana meaning of the
utterance. The hearer understands further that the speaker had it in mind that
the village, being a cool and sacred place as well, was a fit place to live.
This is the vyanjana meaning. The speaker did not say this, but said it
indirectly, assuming that the hearer would be able to figure out what he meant.
But why did he not say it directly? The best answer in this case may be that he
enjoyed playing with language. Teasing the listener by using utterances that
have hidden meaning is fun. Both the speaker and the hearer enjoy such
utterances. Incidentally, indirect speaking should not be used frequently in
real-life linguistic interaction. It then becomes boring for the hearer.
By the way, sometimes the hearer
may take the speaker’s utterance literally when he is not supposed to. As his mother
was going for a bath, she told her five-year-old son to guard the ghee in her
absence and not let the crow touch it. She said “crow”, but meant any bird or
animal. But it would not be surprising if the child, not having developed the
cognitive faculty to understand his mother’s words in the intended sense of all
birds and animals. did not stop a sparrow from touching the ghee.
Sometimes the hearer may
deliberately ignore the underlying meaning. Repeatedly asked by his son,
Nachiketa, who he was giving him to as dana (ritual gift), sage
Vajashravasa angrily said he was giving him to Yama. Yama is the god of death. Nachiketa
knew his father did not mean what he said and that he had said it in anger. The
virtuous Nachiketa preferred to act according to the uttered words. He went to
god Yama.
Notice that neither the mother’s
utterance nor the sage’s contained any incongruity; therefore, neither was a
candidate for looking for an underlying meaning. But both had, and the hearers
were expected to figure out the intended meaning. In the case of the mother and
the child, the speaker’s expectation was unreasonable. In the other case, the
speaker did not expect the hearer to act according to the unintended meaning of
his utterance.
Moving on to speaker intention, tatparya.
It is used to assign meaning to “saindhava anaya (bring saindhava)”. The word “saindhava” is ambiguous in
Sanskrit. It means salt and horse. So “saindhava” in “saindhava anaya”
said during a meal would mean “salt”, not “horse”. The hearer would assign this meaning under
the entirely reasonable assumption that in that specific context the speaker meant
“salt”.
Going beyond the meaning of
utterances, the theory can account for actions and events. The main proponents of the theory, namely, the
Nyayayikas and Anandavardhana, a celebrated poet and literary critic, did not
make this claim. But we believe that the claim can be made. Consider this: When
an Odia customer asks for a dish of water rice at a star hotel in Bhubaneswar
and is served the dish along with its accompaniments, which include slices of
raw onion, and then he asks for a tablespoon and fork, and eats water rice with
the spoon and the onion slices with the fork, it would look incongruous to all
present. Many would assign a congruent meaning to the person’s act by
interpreting it as an Anglicized act of a pretentious person.
To turn to the claim about
events. Consider this event that happened in the FIFA World Cup final
match. After the match ended, the
victorious Spanish team gave an impromptu guard of honour to Messi and the other
players of the defeated Argentinian team. Messi was its captain. There was no
convention of giving a guard of honour in the World Cup. Besides, such an
honour is accorded to the Premier League Champions, as has been the practice in the
English Premier League. Thus, the event was incongruous. It becomes congruous
when one views it as the team’s respect for Lionel Messi, who many consider the
greatest footballer of all time, and who had played his last international
match. This apart, he had long been a highly distinguished member of the
Barcelona team.
In sum, the discussion above
shows that the Ancient Indian theory of Meaning can account not only for the
data, namely utterances, for which it was proposed but also for new data, non-linguistic
data, such as actions and events. This shows the generality of the theory.
This great classic of linguistic
thought, which can account for linguistic and non-linguistic data, now has an
archival existence. It happens when a more explanatory theory or one with a
wider data domain supersedes it. Or it has no useful applications in society,
or scholars do not engage in it for non-academic reasons, including lack of encouraging
career prospects. We submit that the Ancient Indian theory of meaning under
reference has not been superseded. In that sense, it is relevant now. H.P. Grice’s theory of conversation and conversational meaning, published
in 1975, can be viewed as a competing theory.
Given the above, it is important
to re-engage with it to explore its possibilities and enrich it. Applying the theory to languages other than
Sanskrit (and languages said to be derived from it) would constitute an important engagement with
this theory. It would also be an interesting project to explore what lies
beyond this theory's scope. Perhaps gossip, backbiting, slander and quarrel, each of which thrives in false utterances. This theory can be viewed as a theory of pragmatics, in today's terminology, and work along the lines
mentioned above can contribute to the field.
From a practical point of view, a
theory can be relevant at a given time if it has significant applications. This
theory has an important application in Natural Language Understanding. For this
application, it needs to be formalised. And as a theory of what is “said” and
“what is meant by what is said”, it can have interesting applications in
studying misinformation, disinformation, hidden agendas, etc. This work is
particularly important in a time of information explosion. In short, the theory
must not stay in the archives of ideas, but be enriched theoretically and used
for educationally and socially useful work.
Note: This is a summary of a part
of the talk given at the Two-Day National Conference on Indian Language
Systems(IKS) entitled “Classical Roots, Living Knowledge, Multilingual Studies
– Special Reference to Odia and Odisha”, organized by Eastern Regional Language
Centre, Bhubaneswar on 24-25 September, 2026.
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