---
type: Concept
bundle: mimamsa-dharma
bundle_version: 0.10.0
id: sabda-nityata
title: Śabda-nityatā
iast: Śabda-nityatā
devanagari: शब्दनित्यता
description: 'The doctrine that the word (śabda) and its meaning-bearing relation are eternal, manifested rather than created by each utterance; the metaphysical ground of the Veda''''s authorlessness; NOT the claim that a spoken noise lasts forever, NOT sound mysticism.'
darshana:
- Pūrva-Mīmāṃsā
text_source: Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.18
tags:
- sabda-nityata
- mimamsa
- eternal-word
- philosophy-of-language
not:
- term: 'the claim that a spoken sound physically lasts forever'
  why: 'The audible noise clearly ceases. The doctrine concerns the word-type and its fixed relation to meaning, of which each utterance is a manifestation, not a fresh creation.'
  instead: 'Render śabda-nityatā as the eternality of the word-type and its meaning-relation, manifested (not created) by each utterance.'
- term: 'sound mysticism (sound as cosmic vibration)'
  why: 'That register belongs to Tantric and devotional traditions (see nāda in bhakti-marga). The Mīmāṃsā thesis is a sober philosophy-of-language claim about the permanence of the word-meaning bond, argued against the view that words are conventional and produced.'
- term: 'onomatopoeia or natural resemblance'
  why: 'The eternal relation is not a resemblance between sound and thing; it is a fixed, inherent signifying relation (see autpattika).'
related:
- /concepts/apauruseyatva.md
- /concepts/autpattika.md
- /concepts/jati.md
timestamp: '2026-07-08'
okf_version: '0.2'
license: CC BY-SA 4.0
---

# Śabda-nityatā -- शब्दनित्यता

**Not:** sound that lasts forever, sound mysticism, onomatopoeia

## What It Actually Means

Against the Nyāya view that words are produced and their meanings conventional, Mīmāṃsā argues that the word and its power to mean are eternal. When two people say "cow," they manifest the one eternal word, not two new ones, and that word''s capacity to convey its meaning was never instituted at a time. This eternality is what lets the Veda be authorless: if words and meanings are beginningless, the Veda''s sentences need no composer. Śabda-nityatā is thus the load-bearing metaphysics beneath apauruṣeyatva.

## Audience Metaphor

When two pianists play middle C, they do not each invent the note; they sound the one fixed pitch that existed before either sat down. Mīmāṃsā hears every "cow" as a middle C: one eternal word made audible again, not a fresh coinage.

## Citations

1. Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.6-23 (the śabda-nityatā adhikaraṇa) -- see [references/mimamsa-sutra.md](../references/mimamsa-sutra.md)
2. Kumārila, Ślokavārttika on the eternality of the word -- see [references/slokavarttika.md](../references/slokavarttika.md)
