re
apprehended as different owing to differences of pronunciation, as
appears from the fact that we apprehend a difference when merely hearing
the sound of Devadatta or Yaj/n/adatta reading.--Although, we reply, it
is a settled matter that the letters are recognised as the same, yet we
admit that there are differences in the apprehension of the letters; but
as the letters are articulated by means of the conjunction and
disjunction (of the breath with the palate, the teeth, &c.), those
differences are rightly ascribed to the various character of the
articulating agents and not to the intrinsic nature of the letters
themselves. Those, moreover, who maintain that the individual letters
are different have, in order to account for the fact of recognition, to
assume species of letters, and further to admit that the apprehension of
difference is conditioned by external factors. Is it then not much
simpler to assume, as we do, that the apprehension of difference is
conditioned by external factors while the recognition is due to the
intrinsic nature of the letters? And this very fact of recognition is
that mental process which prevents us from looking on the apprehension
of difference as having the letters for its object (so that the opponent
was wrong in denying the existence of such a process). For how should,
for instance, the one syllable ga, when it is pronounced in the same
moment by several persons, be at the same time of different nature, viz.
accented with the udatta, the anudatta, and the Svarita and nasal as
well as non-nasal[201]? Or else[202]--and this is the preferable
explanation--we assume that the difference of apprehension is caused not
by the letters but by the tone (dhvani). By this tone we have to
understand that which enters the ear of a person who is listening from a
distance and not able to distinguish the separate letters, and which,
for a person standing near, affects the letters with its own
distinctions, such as high or low pitch and so on. It is on this tone
that all the distinctions of udatta, anudatta, and so on depend, and not
on the intrinsic nature of the letters; for they are recognised as the
same whenever they are pronounced. On this theory only we gain a basis
for the distinctive apprehension of the udatta, the anudatta, and the
like. For on the theory first propounded (but now rejected), we should
have to assume that the distinctions of udatta and so on are due to the
processes of conjunctio