Of what nature then is the ‘word’ with a view to which it is said that the world originates from the ’word?’—­It is the spho/t/a, the purvapakshin says.[198] For on the assumption that the letters are the word, the doctrine that the individual gods, and so on, originates from the eternal words of the Veda could not in any way be proved, since the letters perish as soon as they are produced (i.e. pronounced).  These perishable letters are moreover apprehended as differing according to the pronunciation of the individual speaker.  For this reason we are able to determine, merely from the sound of the voice of some unseen person whom we hear reading, who is reading, whether Devadatta or Yaj/n/adatta or some other man.  And it cannot be maintained that this apprehension of difference regarding the letters is an erroneous one; for we do not apprehend anything else whereby it is refuted.  Nor is it reasonable to maintain that the apprehension of the sense of a word results from the letters.  For it can neither be maintained that each letter by itself intimates the sense, since that would be too wide an assumption;[199] nor that there takes place a simultaneous apprehension of the whole aggregate of letters; since the letters succeed one another in time.  Nor can we admit the explanation that the last letter of the word together with the impressions produced by the perception of the preceding letters is that which makes us apprehend the sense.  For the word makes us apprehend the sense only if it is itself apprehended in so far as having reference to the mental grasp of the constant connexion (of the word and the sense), just as smoke makes us infer the existence of fire only when it is itself apprehended; but an apprehension of the last letter combined with the impressions produced by the preceding letters does not actually take place, because those impressions are not objects of perception.[200] Nor, again, can it be maintained that (although those impressions are not objects of perception, yet they may be inferred from their effects, and that thus) the actual perception of the last letter combined with the impressions left by the preceding letters—­which impressions are apprehended from their effects—­is that which intimates the sense of the word; for that effect of the impressions, viz. the remembrance of the entire word, is itself something consisting of parts which succeed each other in time.—­From all this it follows that the spho/t/a is the word.  After the apprehending agent, i.e. the buddhi, has, through the apprehension of the several letters of the word, received rudimentary impressions, and after those impressions have been matured through the apprehension of the last letter, the spho/t/a presents itself in the buddhi all at once as the object of one mental act of apprehension.—­And it must not be maintained that that one act of apprehension is merely an act of remembrance having for its object the letters of the word; for the letters which are