3.17 · Word, Thing and Thought

Word, meaning and idea are confused by being laid over one another; saṃyama on their distinction gives understanding of the sounds of all beings.

Word by word

śabda

word, sound

artha

object, meaning

pratyayānām

and of idea

itaretara

one upon another

adhyāsāt

from superimposition

saṃkaraḥ

confusion, mixing

tat-pravibhāga

their distinction

saṃyamāt

from saṃyama on

sarva-bhūta

all beings

ruta

sounds, cries

jñānam

knowledge, understanding

Where it fits

From time Patañjali turns to language. Word, object and idea are normally laid over one another; saṃyama on their difference gives understanding of the cries of all beings. The power comes from pulling apart what ordinary knowing mixes, the move the pāda later makes with mind and self (3.35, 3.53).

Reading

Word, object and idea get laid over one another until they seem one thing. Vyāsa's example: the word 'cow', the animal and the idea of a cow are confused, and whoever can tell the three apart knows everything. Patañjali says that saṃyama on their difference gives understanding of the sounds of all beings. Indian grammarians argued over these questions at length, and much of Vyāsa's comment here is grammar. One way to read this today: much of what we react to is our word for a thing, not the thing.

Vyāsa

“So word, thing meant and idea are mixed up, because each is laid over the others: 'cow' the word, 'cow' the thing, 'cow' the idea. Whoever knows how to tell them apart knows everything.”

Vyāsa's Yoga-bhāṣya, the oldest commentary. New translation from the Sanskrit, with reference to Woods (1914), p. 235.

Practice

Choose one charged word you use often, such as 'failure', 'home' or 'lazy'. Write three lines: the word itself, the actual thing or event it points to, and the idea or feeling it carries in you. Notice where the three had blurred.

A question to sit with

Are you reacting to the thing, or to the word for it?

Where commentators disagree

What is a 'word': a sequence of sounds, or a single whole grasped by the mind (sphoṭa)?

Vyāsa

Letter-sounds cannot coexist, so they cannot make a word by themselves. The word is a unity that the mind binds together from them: one act of mind, without parts or sequence, 'a thing of the mind'. (Woods 1914, pp. 233–234)

Vācaspati Miśra

Argues at length that the mind, in grasping a word, rests on the word-prototype (sphoṭa), which is undivided and partless though it seems to have parts. Woods sums up his position: the sphoṭa is a latent impression in the intellect. (Woods 1914, pp. 239–240 (and p. 239, n. 1))

Bhoja

Gives two accounts of the word: a sound made of letters in a fixed order, or a sound in which no order of letters is conceived (sphoṭa), grasped by a trained mind. He says that on either account it conveys its fixed meaning, and does not choose between them. (Tatya 1885, p. 109; Mitra 1883, wisdomlib on 3.17)

Key ideas

saṃyama (holding together), siddhi (powers)