Wavkara on Saying the Unsayable
Author：Chien-hsing Ho
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For Wavkara, the most renowned teacher of the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, Brahman or Atman as the sole ultimate reality underlying all beings is attribute-less, indivisible, unconceptualizable and unverbalizable. In other words, Brahman-Atman is for him ineffable, well beyond the reach of human language. Yet, referring to the reality in words seems on many occasions inevitable, and the scriptures of the school do contain positive statements about the reality. How, then, should we understand the referring function of the scriptural language? How can one speak meaningfully of something that is unspeakable? In this paper I propose to expound Wavkara‟s views on these issues.
Wavkara, indeed, sets forth three methods by means of which one can make linguistic references to the unsayable: (1) the method of negation (netivada), (2) the method of indication (laksana-vrtti), and (3) the method of imposition-cum-negation (adhyaropa-apavada). The three methods will be closely examined in sequence with their mutual relationships exposed thereafter. The author is of the opinion that Wavkara‟s linguistic approach toward „saying‟ the unsayable is rather instructive and really worth our attention.