ABSTRACT
It is generally accepted that Indian philosophers of language do not posit sense as a component of the meaning of an expression in addition to its reference.* There is, for instance, no notion of analyticity - of propositions which are true by virtue of meaning alone - in Indian philosophy. Likewise no distinction is drawn between contingently and necessarily nonexistent objects: Two stock examples of a nonexistent are the horns of a hare and the son of a barren woman, and these two examples are treated as in all respects alike. We find instead a more or less pure reference theory of meaning: The meaning of an expression is that entity which the expression designates. Here the name-bearer relation seems to reign supreme as the central metaphor of semantics. I shall, however, argue that, predominant though the reference theory might be, certain Indian philosophers of language were nonetheless forced to recognize sense as a distinct element in meaning. That the sense-reference distinction was never extensively made use of by Indian philosophers of language is clear; I shall not be concerned to dispute this or attempt to explain it. Instead I wish to explore how recognition of something sense-like is forced on philosophers working in a tradition dominated by semantic realism. I suspect we may discover something important about the motivation behind the sensereference distinction through such an exploration.
