THE DENIAL OF SEMANTIC RELATION IN INDIAN CLASSICAL CULTURE E.A. Desnitskaya Chair of Oriental Philosophy and Culturology Faculty of Philosophy Saint-Petersburg State University Mendeleevskaya Liniya 5, Saint-Petersburg, Russia, 199034 The existence of semantic relation was postulated in Katyayana’s Varttika (3 B.C.E.), which served a key-stone for the further development of Indian language philosophy. <...> However in different Sanskrit texts (Tantras, the Nirukta, works on ritual and poetics) the existence of semantic relation had been denied explicitly. <...> This paper considers specific characteristics of extralinguistic kinds of activities that stipulated the genesis of these texts and elicits the reasons why their authors rejected to use ordinary language, for the sake of establishing new semantic relations. <...> Indian classical culture was especially attentive to language. <...> The basis of Indian semantics is the first Varttika of Katyayana (~3 B.C.E.), which says: siddhe shabdarthasambandhe. “Established / permanent is the relation between the word (shabda) and its meaning (artha).” [1. <...> The precise meaning of the Varttika was controversial already for Patanjali (2 B.C.E.), the author of the ‘Great Commentary’ on Panini’s Grammar (the Mahabhashya). <...> Notably, the third possible translation, which seems more plausible from our point of view, was never mentioned by Patanjali, probably because the high respect to the word in Vedic ritual system made him to consider the word to be eternal. <...> Nevertheless Katyayana could have in mind the third interpretation, because the subject of his interest was obviously pure grammar, not the nature of the word and its referent. 87 Вестник РУДН, серия Философия, 2014, № 1 Secondly the meaning of the word siddha, used in the Varttika, may have different explanations. <...> The further part of the Varttika, which appeals to ordinary language, prompts to translate siddha as ‘established’. <...> Patanjali however considers siddha to be a synonym of the word nitya ‘permanent’ or ‘eternal’. <...> It is in Buddhist Tantra Prajnopayavinishcayasiddhi by Anangavajra [5], that Katyayana’s Varttika is paraphrased in negative sense: shabdarthayor-asambandhat (II. 5c) .as there is no relation between the word and [its] meaning. <...> This statement seems to be self-contradictory, because if there were no semantic relation, the meaningfulness of all texts, including this very Tantra <...>