Recenzowane materiały z konferencji: 3rd International Conference on Eastern Thought. Word in Cultures of the East: Sound - Language - Book, Eastern Philosophy Section, dn. 28-30.11.2013, Kraków. Bibliogr. s. 112

Śabara (5th or 6th century CE), in the oldest known commentary to the Mīmāṃsāsūtras, states that the primary meaning of a word is ākr̥ti or "form" - different from both default answers to the question of meaning; individual and class. Śabara’s concept of ākr̥ti is strictly connected with his word-oriented metaphysics - just as the phenomenal world is derived from the Vedic Word, so is every cognition based on a verbal (lingual) component. And ākr̥ti is this very verbal component, present in every act of cognition and in every object. It is a base and a source of individual world-objects (seen in Śabara-bhāṣya as mere manifestations of eternal word-objects). It is also a medium that makes a recognition of an individual possible. Thus every pramāṇa, method of cognition, is based on a verbal component; even perception. In Ślokavārttika, a later commentary written by Kumārila Bhaṭṭa, ākrt̥ i is admittedly identified with jāti, or "class", yet it is seen as more complex. Kumārila introduces an idea of a double character of objects and mean- ings. Every word’s meaning has two intermingled components; individual and common, just as objects are in fact dual - different from others (an individual) and bearing some similarity to others (a member of a class). None of the two meanings can be treated as secondary. Thus ākrti becomes a single, yet not unitary, answer to the question of meaning. It keeps its verbal character, for a class, too, has for Kumārila a double character - linguistic and real. What is more, the existence of a class makes reasoning and verbal cognition possible, and the class itself is cognised in a basic, direct act of perception.