Triple are the constituents of a book: the word, the author, the reader. The word which says what the author has to indicate, and the reader has to apprehend, seems to be the one element we seem to neglect, as if it were something we know so well that we may not investigate its nature, its function, its end. For the word, like every constituted thing, seems to have a birth, a lifespan, and a death. In the word ‘Rama’ before saying ‘Ra’, there was nothing, as it were; after saying ‘Ra’ there is just ‘ra’; and when ‘ma’ is said ‘ma’ is heard; and then Rama comes to be after the two syllables have been experienced in an enunciation. Now the problem is, if Rama, or Agni, or Vriksha have any life at all beyond their birth, existence, and extinction, in a sentence like ‘Rama went into exile’, if Rama were just two syllables, two breaths, that the vocal chord shapes into a sound apprehended, we would have as many words as statements such as it must have been when man began—that is, if man began at all.

If (the word) Rama has just one single moment of existence, there would therefore be no language at all. All statements would just be cries. But since the word Rama has, or seems to have, some permanent existence, it is fair that intellectuals should inquire how it came to be that a sound began to have some sort of permanent existence.

But we all, anyone, anywhere in the world, would like to have a language that will mean the same thing and for all time. It is just the same way that you feel you will live for ever, though your lifespan might be seventy or eighty years. The feel that you are everlasting demands that everything be everlasting. Hence the demand that the word be eternal. If man is eternal, so is the word.