Philology as Cosmology : Yakṣa's Processual Universe in the Nirukta

This research argues that the Nighaṇṭu-Nirukta, traditionally classified as a lexical and exegetical work, encodes a distinctive cosmological framework grounded in a unified grammar of transformation. The paper reconstructs five recurrent interpretive operators-polarity (mithuna), conjunction (saṃyoga), productive becoming (bhāvanā), dissolution (nāśa), and correspondence (puruṣa-vidhā) - which structure Yakṣa's explanations across linguistic, natural, and social domains. It further argues that the tripartite philological taxonomy unfolds into a cyclical cosmological sequence embedded in the thematic progression of the Nirukta, tracing differentiation from undivided potential through opposition, stabilization, articulation, and return. Unlike later Hindu cosmologies centred on emanation, metaphysical substance, or enumerative ontologies (as in Sāṃkhya), Yakṣa's cosmology is processual and relational, deriving cosmic order from structured linguistic and functional recurrence. In contrast to early Greek cosmologies that posit primary substances (water, air, apeiron) as ontological origins, the Nirukta grounds its cosmological reasoning in articulated activity rather than material archē. The study concludes that Yakṣa presents a form of cosmology in which language and world are structurally homologous and in which cosmic order is understood as the patterned unfolding of becoming rather than the arrangement of substances.