The crux of the problem in various interpretations of the vedic and vedantic literature, I think, lies in misinterpretation of words and phrases and their meaning. At times the misinterpretation of words and phrases seem to have been unreasonably extended to the extent where they sound absolutely illogical. And unfortunately, the justification given to support an illogical explanation is that metaphysics is something beyond logic.
A Lucknow born Urdu poet Krishna Bihari Noor once wrote:
सच घटे या बढ़े तो सच न रहे, झूट की कोई इंतिहा ही नहीं
Truth is always precise and limited, a lie has no limit.
Books of logic emphatically support Krishna Bihari Noor’s argument and say that a true statement, or proposition, has a single truth value — either true or false. In logic a statement can either be true or false. It is false if it’s not true. So, the subject boils down to a simple question: to what extent should a meaning of a word or a phrase be stretched to retain its relevance?
Fortunately for us, Indian sages like Panini, Yaska (who lived around the 7th to 5th century BCE) and Bhartrihari(5th century CE) have worked extensively on Vedic words, their meaning and etymology. Lately, in early 20th century philosophers like Wittgenstein, Frege, Russell, and Chomsky have worked profoundly to guide us in this direction.
Bhartrihari in his work, Vakyapadiya, verse 3.3.1 writes:
ज्ञानं प्रयोक्तुर्बाह्योऽर्थः स्वरूपं च प्रतीयते ।
शब्दैरुच्चरितैस्तैषां संबन्धः समवस्थितः ॥
When a speaker utters a word we get knowledge of three things: speaker’s intent, the object it denotes and word’s lexical relationship. The words, intent, denotation and its relationship is definite and fixed.
The crux of both, ancient Indian as well as modern western linguistic experts is that a word carries its meaning essentially in three defined levels — denotation, connotation and lastly the myth. This is something akin to the metaphor of “inverted pyramid” which cub journalists are taught during their apprenticeship in journalism.
Denotation of a word is it’s literal, basic, objective definition — something that the word stands for. This is the first level of the word’s meaning. In Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus Ludwig Wittgenstein describing his ‘picture theory of language,’ explains how a word represents an object in the real world, free from any associated emotions or cultural implications.
The second level is connotation. To connote means to signify or suggest certain additional meanings or values apart from word’s explicit or primary meaning. Connotation carries the cultural/emotional undertones that a word suggests (subjective meaning). Denotation provides clarity for precise communication, whereas connotation adds emotional depth and nuance, shaping how a message is felt beyond its surface meaning.
Myth represents the third level of a word’s meaning. This happens when a word’s connotations become deeply ingrained in culture, forming broader ideological ideas.
To make things clear I take the word “rose” as an example. The word “rose” denotes a flower the botanical name of which is Rosa.
Connotation: The word “rose” connotes love, beauty, passion, and romance, especially red roses, but also signifies royalty and perfection, with meanings varying by colour (white for purity, yellow for friendship).
The mythical level of the word ‘rose’ connotes myths around the word “rose”, involving divine creation, love, and sacrifice, like Aphrodite’s blood turning white roses red after she cut herself rushing to save Adonis, or the Persian legend of the nightingale’s blood creating red roses, while other tales suggest roses were once thornless, gaining thorns due to human wickedness. They’re also linked to religious lore, representing purity (white) or passion (red), and feature in creation myths. To Britishers the word often reminds of the ‘Wars of the Roses’ — a series of bloody English civil wars (1455-1487) fought for the throne between two rival branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (red rose) and the House of York (white rose).
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