Skip to content
Wellsprings
hindu-mindWe're still mapping where this idea was first discussed. Key passages and related ideas below.

Audible Speech (Vaikharī)

The spoken word: language at its most outward, the audible tip of a much deeper descent.

Vaikharī is ordinary spoken speech — the fully formed, audible word as it leaves the mouth and reaches another's ear. It is the most external and concrete of the four levels, the surface that everyone recognizes as 'language.' In this scheme it is only the final, outermost expression of a much deeper process that began in the silent creative pulse of consciousness and descended through vision and inner thought into sound.

Key passages(7)

Vivekacūḍāmaṇi · Śaṅkara (traditionally ascribed; authorship doubted)

High

Śiva-sūtra · Vasugupta

High

Chāndogya Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)

High

Bhagavad-gītā · Vyāsa (Yoga-bhāṣya commentator)

Moderate

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)

Moderate

Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad · Vedic Revelation (śruti)

Moderate

Upadeśasāhasrī · Ādi Śaṅkara

Moderate