Parātrīṃśikā Vivaraṇa (Part 59): Hearing as the Work of Bhagavatī

hearing as a living act of reception, gathering, and transmitted meaning rather than mere sound.

Abhinava now extends the previous discussion of hearing into a much wider claim: the Goddess is not only the hidden power that gathers sound into meaningful speech, but the living reality of all cognition and expression themselves. In the earlier chunk, he had already shown that true hearing depends on saṃkalana, the sovereign gathering of phonemic sequence into unity, and that without this power one hears only undifferentiated kalakala. Now he pushes the point further. Hearing is no isolated faculty. Seeing, speaking, grasping, and the rest are equally forms of Bhagavatī. From there he clarifies what hearing is not — it is not mere auditory reception of broken or distinct sounds — and supports this through the doctrine of upāṃśu japa, where the Self alone hears in the level of Madhyamā. So the movement of this chunk is from the Goddess as the power of meaningful hearing to the Goddess as the inner reality of all cognitive and expressive acts, and then to a finer distinction between inward hearing and externally audible sound.

In truth, hearing, seeing, speaking, grasping — all of these are forms of the Goddess herself

vastuto hi śṛṇoti paśyati vakti gṛhṇāti ityādi bhagavatyā eva rūpam |

yathoktam
yena rūpaṃ rasaṃ gandhaṃ sparśaśabdau ca maithunam |
etenaiva vijānāti kimatra pariśiṣyate ||

“In truth, hearing, seeing, speaking, grasping, and the rest are forms of the Goddess herself. As it has been said: ‘By this alone one knows form, taste, smell, touch, sound, and even sexual union — what then remains outside it?’”

Abhinava now makes the previous point universal. He had already shown that hearing is not a passive sensory event but depends on the Goddess as the sovereign power of saṃkalana, the gathering that turns raw succession into meaningful speech. Now he goes further: hearing is not exceptional. Seeing, speaking, grasping — all of them are equally her forms. The Goddess is not merely the hidden condition of one faculty among others. She is the living reality of cognition and expression as such.

That is why the supporting verse matters so much. It sweeps together the whole range of experience — form, taste, smell, touch, sound, even sexual union — and says: all this is known by this alone. That “this” is the decisive point. Abhinava’s concern is not with a collection of separate faculties operating side by side like tools in a box. He is pointing to one underlying conscious power expressing itself through different modalities. Hearing, seeing, speaking, grasping are many at the surface, but inwardly they are the Goddess’s one life.

This is a strong move because it prevents the whole earlier discussion of hearing from being isolated or psychologized. The issue was never just acoustics, language, or auditory processing. It was always about the deeper fact that meaningful cognition is an act of consciousness-power. Here Abhinava simply says it openly: the Goddess is that power in all domains.

So the force of the passage is this: Bhagavatī is not only the power that makes hearing possible; she is the inner form of all cognition, articulation, and appropriation. Nothing in lived experience stands outside her operation.

Hearing is not merely the reception of distinct or broken sounds

na tu śravaṇaṃ nāma
sphuṭakalakalātmakatāragadgadādirūpavarṇākarṇanameva |

“But hearing is not merely the reception of phonemes in the form of clearly broken, noisy, shrill, stammering, and the like sounds.”

Abhinava now sharpens the previous point by negation. If hearing, seeing, speaking, and grasping are all forms of the Goddess herself, then hearing cannot be reduced to the bare sensory registration of audible sound-patterns. It is not enough that phonemes arrive in some outwardly distinct form — clear, noisy, shrill, broken, stammering. All that still remains at the level of sound as event.

This matters because one can very well receive such sound and yet not truly hear in the fuller sense. Abhinava is cutting away the crude view that hearing is exhausted by the ear’s contact with articulated noise. The auditory stream may be present; the Goddess’s act of hearing is something deeper. Real hearing includes the inner power by which what arrives successively becomes held, linked, and gathered into intelligible unity.

So this line continues the movement of the chunk exactly. First, Abhinava universalized the point: all faculties are forms of Bhagavatī. Now he says what hearing is not. It is not mere acoustic intake, not the passive reception of phonemic disturbance. That prepares the way for the more precise distinction he is about to make through upāṃśu, madhyamā, and the difference between inwardly heard and outwardly audible sound.

So the force of the passage is this: sound is not yet hearing. The mere arrival of distinct audible phonemes does not exhaust what śravaṇa really is.

Support from the Svacchanda: in upāṃśu japa, the Self alone hears

tathāhi - śrīparameśvara eva śrīsvacchandaśāstre japavibhāganirṇayāvasara evameva nirūpitavān
ātmanā śrūyate yastu sa upāṃśuriti smṛtaḥ atra hi madhyamāpade ātmaiva
saṃśṛṇute nāparaḥ

“For thus, Śrī Parameśvara himself has explained this very point in the Śrīsvacchandaśāstra while determining the divisions of japa: ‘That which is heard by oneself is remembered as upāṃśu.’ For here, at the level of Madhyamā, it is the Self alone that hears, not another.”

Abhinava now brings in scriptural support to show that his point about hearing is not speculative. In the Svacchanda, while distinguishing kinds of japa, Parameśvara says that what is heard by oneself alone is called upāṃśu. This matters because it confirms that hearing is not defined only by outward audibility. There is a real level at which speech is heard inwardly, by the Self itself, without becoming something available to another hearer.

That is why Abhinava immediately identifies this with Madhyamā. The utterance has shape, inward articulation, and hearability, but it has not yet crossed into full external manifestation. So hearing is already present, but not as public sound. The Self hears itself.

This sharpens the whole argument. Earlier Abhinava said that hearing is not mere reception of sound and that without saṃkalana one hears only kalakala, undifferentiated noise. Here he adds a different distinction: even when articulation is present, hearing need not yet be outward or shared. There is an interior domain of speech where the hearer and the speaker are not two. That is exactly why upāṃśu matters here. It shows that meaningful hearing can occur prior to external sound.

So the force of the passage is this: at the level of Madhyamā, the Self alone hears. Hearing is therefore deeper than audibility to others, and speech already has an inward life before it becomes external.

If even very subdued utterance could be heard by another merely because of articulatory contact, it would still count as audible sound

ityuktam sthānādiprayatnasphuṭatāyāṃ dantauṣṭha-
puṭādisaṃyogavibhāgena atinibhṛtamapi śabdoccāre nikaṭataravartiparaśravaṇamapi syāditi saśabdatāpattireva |

“This has been said because, if through the clear activity of articulatory positions and efforts — by the conjunction and separation of teeth, lips, palate, and the like — even a very subdued utterance could be heard by another standing nearby, then it would indeed fall into the category of audible sound.”

Abhinava now blocks a crude misunderstanding. One might say: perhaps the difference between inward utterance and outward sound is only a matter of volume. Perhaps a very faint articulation, formed by the speech-organs, still belongs to the inner level, even if someone very close could hear it a little. Abhinava rejects that. If another can hear it, then it has already crossed into saśabda, outwardly audible sound.

That is the force of the passage. The distinction is not between loud and soft. It is between what remains inwardly held and what has actually become available to another hearer. Once the articulatory process — teeth, lips, palate, mouth-cavity, and the rest — yields a sound that another can catch, however faintly, the utterance has already entered the outward domain.

This fits the whole argument exactly. Abhinava has already said that hearing is not mere acoustic reception, and that in upāṃśu at the level of Madhyamā the Self alone hears. Here he clarifies the boundary: if the sound becomes available to another consciousness through actual articulatory externalization, it no longer belongs to that inward level.

So the point is precise: faintness does not make a sound inward. If another can hear it, it is already outward, already saśabda.

The real distinction: what is heard by others is saśabda

paraiḥ saṃśrūyate yastu saśabdo'sau prakīrtitaḥ |
ityuktam yataḥ na cātra nikaṭādiviśeṣaḥ kaścit iti |

“That which is heard by others is termed saśabda. This has been said because here there is no distinction based on nearness and the like.”

Abhinava now gives the decisive criterion. The issue is not loud versus soft, nor near versus far. He has already blocked that misunderstanding. A very subdued utterance, if it is actually heard by another, has already crossed into the domain of saśabda. So the real distinction is not quantitative but structural: is the utterance available only to the Self, or has it become available to another hearer?

That is why the line is so clean. Paraiḥ saṃśrūyate — “it is heard by others.” That is the threshold. Once another consciousness can hear it, the utterance belongs to the outwardly manifest level. It is no longer merely upāṃśu or inwardly held Madhyamā. It has taken on public audibility.

The phrase na cātra nikaṭādiviśeṣaḥ kaścit matters because it removes the last escape route. One cannot say: “well, perhaps it is still inward, only the other person was very close.” No. Proximity is not the principle. The distinction does not rest on accident of distance, volume, or bodily closeness. It rests on whether the sound has attained outward manifestation for another knower.

This fits the whole chunk exactly. First, Abhinava universalized cognition as Bhagavatī’s own form. Then he denied that hearing is mere reception of sound. Then the Svacchanda citation showed that in upāṃśu japa the Self alone hears. Then he clarified that even articulate but not fully externalized utterance remains Madhyamā. Now the line draws the boundary sharply: what is heard by others is saśabda.

So the force of the passage is this: the distinction is not about faintness, but about externalization. Once another hears it, it is saśabda.

Even where lips and tongue are involved, if the sound does not fully emerge outward, it still belongs to the level of Madhyamā

parapramātṛdarśanamātragocarajihvoṣṭhapuṭādisaṃyoge tu yadyapi ātmana eva
śravaṇaṃ syāt na parasya tathāpi madhyamāpadameva etat saṃpadyate -
varṇasya bahirātmalābhābhāvāt | vāyvabhighātāt hi sphuṭavarṇaniṣpanna eva
na ca tatra vāyvabhighāto bāhyatāpattiparyantaḥ syāt |

“But even when there is contact of tongue, lips, palate, and the like, perceptible only to the speaker himself and not to another knower, although the hearing belongs to the self alone and not to another, still this comes under the level of Madhyamā, because the phoneme has not attained an outward embodiment. For a clearly manifest phoneme arises only through the striking of air, and there the impact of air does not reach the point of externalization.”

Abhinava now tightens the distinction once more. He has already shown that hearing is not mere sound-reception, that upāṃśu belongs to the self-heard level, and that what is heard by others is saśabda. Here he addresses an intermediate case: what about utterance where the articulatory organs — tongue, lips, palate, mouth-cavity — are indeed engaged, yet the sound still does not become fully external?

His answer is precise: even then, this still belongs to Madhyamā. Why? Because articulation alone is not enough. The decisive point is whether the varṇa has attained bahir-ātma-lābha, an outward embodiment. If it has not, then however close it may be to audible speech, it has not yet crossed into the fully external level.

The criterion is therefore not mere movement of the organs, nor even an incipient acoustic event. A clearly manifest phoneme requires vāyv-abhighāta, the striking or propulsion of air to the point where the sound becomes outwardly available. If that outwardization does not occur, then the utterance remains inwardly held, even if it is already shaped by articulation. This is why Abhinava refuses to reduce the distinction to simple loudness or softness. The issue is ontological and functional, not merely quantitative.

This completes the flow well, because it shows the full gradation:
mere noise is not yet articulated hearing,
mere inward hearing is not yet external speech,
and even shaped articulation is still Madhyamā unless the phoneme truly emerges outward.

So the point is: articulation without full externalization remains Madhyamā. The threshold is not the contact of speech-organs by itself, but the actual outward birth of the phoneme.