The Burst of Meaning (Sphoṭa)

How do we understand a word? The sounds reach the ear one after another and each dies away before the next arrives, so how does a unified meaning ever come together? The grammarian-philosophers answered with sphoṭa — a single, indivisible meaning-bearing whole that the passing sounds serve only to reveal, which then 'bursts' upon the mind all at once as the grasped meaning. The theory makes language more than a string of noises: it points to an underlying linguistic reality, and in its boldest form links the eternal word to the absolute itself.