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| Swami Parvatikar sits with the Rudra vīṇā, the instrument resting across his body like an extension of his own breath and spine. The image fits current movement because Abhinava is speaking about sound-body, mantra-vīrya, resonance, registers, and the way one sound-current can appear through many instruments, places, and degrees of manifestation. |
The previous chunk reached the central answer through svātantrya. If consciousness is truly Maheśvara, it cannot be trapped in one frozen form. Its very difference from the inert lies in being immeasurable, capable of manifesting pot, pleasure, knowledge, knower, place, instrument, and letter within itself without ceasing to be one. The problem of how division can exist in bodhaikaghana consciousness was therefore answered: division is not a wound in consciousness, but its free self-articulation.
Now Abhinava extends that answer into the full range of sound and being. If consciousness is free in this way, then there is no great difficulty in its appearing as intensely varied forms. Stones, trees, animals, humans, gods, Rudras, Kevalins, mantras, mantra-lords, and Maheśvaras are not separate ontological islands. They are one ground of Parā Bhaṭṭārikā, abiding as Parameśvara in the mode of all-in-all.
From there the passage turns again to sound. Mantra-vīrya, the potency of mantra, is the sound-body that includes varied places, forms, manifest and unmanifest tones, clear and indistinct articulations. Abhinava uses musical instruments, vocal registers, and even animal sounds to show the same principle: one sound-current can arise through different places and degrees of clarity without leaving the field of Mātṛkā. The point is not a random phonetic curiosity. It is the same doctrine sharpened: because everything is sarvasarvātmakam, even sound’s strange, marginal, indistinct, and nonstandard forms are still held inside the one body of Śakti.
Consciousness has no real difficulty in manifesting intensely varied forms
asyaivaṃvidhacitratararūpāvabhāsena ko vā kiyān vā prayāsaḥ
“What real effort, and how much effort, could there be for it to manifest forms of such intensely varied kind?”
Abhinava now lets the previous doctrine strike with full force. If consciousness is svātantrya, if it is not an inert thing trapped in one form, then what real difficulty could there be in its manifesting citratararūpa — forms of extreme, almost unbearable variety? The question ko vā kiyān vā prayāsaḥ is not polite. It almost laughs at the objection: what effort could this possibly require for the Lord of consciousness?
For us, variety means burden. To make something, we need materials, tools, time, strength, memory, method, calculation, recovery. A limited being becomes tired because action happens through limitation. But saṃvid does not manufacture the universe as a worker manufactures an object. It does not stand outside matter and struggle to shape it. It shines, and forms appear within its own light.
Think of the scale. Billions of galaxies. Trillions upon trillions of stars. An estimated 10⁸⁰ atoms in the observable universe alone. Every atom, every body, every nervous system, every sound, every act of memory, every fear, every mantra, every birth, every dissolution — all of this would be impossible to hold for a finite mind. But Abhinava is not speaking about a finite mind. He is speaking about aparimita saṃvid, immeasurable consciousness.
So the point is not that the universe is “large.” The point is that even this immensity does not strain consciousness. For a limited intellect, multiplicity becomes chaos. For Parā Bhaṭṭārikā, multiplicity is self-display. She does not need to count the forms one by one in order to contain them. She is the very field in which counting, number, space, time, sound, and form arise.
This is why variety is not a threat to nonduality. Citratararūpāvabhāsa — the shining of intensely varied forms — is not a problem added to consciousness. It is the evidence of its freedom. A weak absolute would need to remain blank in order not to be disturbed. Abhinava’s absolute can appear as galaxies, letters, bodies, gods, stones, animals, thoughts, and mantras without losing even a grain of itself.
So the answer is devastatingly simple: no effort. Not because manifestation is trivial, but because it is not external to the manifesting consciousness. The universe is not a task placed before saṃvid. It is saṃvid appearing as its own immeasurable power.
All levels of beings and powers are one ground of Parā Bhaṭṭārikā
ata eva sarve pāṣāṇatarutiryaṅmanuṣyadeva rudrakevalimantra tadīśatanmaheśādikā ekaiva parābhaṭṭārikābhūmiḥ sarvasarvātmanaiva parameśvararūpeṇāste
“Therefore, all — stones, trees, animals, humans, gods, Rudras, Kevalins, mantras, their lords, Maheśvaras, and so on — are one single ground of Parā Bhaṭṭārikā, abiding in the form of Parameśvara as the all in the form of all.”
Abhinava now expands the point from cosmic variety to the full hierarchy of beings. Since saṃvid has no difficulty manifesting intensely varied forms, all levels of existence must be understood as one field of Parā Bhaṭṭārikā. Not only gods. Not only mantras. Not only awakened beings. Stones, trees, animals, humans, gods, Rudras, Kevalins, mantras, mantra-lords, Maheśvaras — all are included.
The list is deliberately wide. Pāṣāṇa, stone, stands for what appears most inert. Taru, tree, for vegetal life. Tiryañc, animal, for non-human sentient life. Manuṣya, human, for the self-reflective middle field. Then come deva, Rudra, Kevalin, mantra, tadīśa, tanmaheśa — increasingly subtle and powerful levels of manifestation. The whole ladder is one ground.
This does not mean all levels function identically. A stone is not a Rudra. A tree is not a mantra-lord. A human is not automatically Maheśvara in manifest power. Abhinava is not flattening distinctions. He is saying that their ground is one: ekaiva parābhaṭṭārikābhūmiḥ. Their difference is real as manifestation, but not as separation from the supreme field.
The phrase sarvasarvātmanaiva returns with full force. Each level is not merely a fragment cut off from the whole. Each abides in the mode of all-in-all, because the ground itself is Parameśvara-rūpa. The one consciousness appears as stone, tree, animal, human, god, mantra, and lord — not by becoming divided into alien substances, but by freely taking these modes within itself.
So the previous point becomes concrete. If manifesting billions of galaxies and countless forms is no effort for consciousness, then neither is this hierarchy of being. The lowest and highest are held in one Śākta ground. The inert-looking stone and the mantra-lord are not equal in expression, but both are expressions of Parā Bhaṭṭārikā. Difference remains; exclusion collapses.
The same sound may arise from different places and still be treated as one
tathāhi vīṇāvipañcīkacchapikāmurujādiṣu sa eva svano'nyato'nyato deśādapyudbhavannekasthāna iti kathyate
“For example, in the vīṇā, vipañcī, kacchapikā, muruja, and other instruments, the same sound, though arising from different places, is still spoken of as having one place.”
Abhinava now gives an ordinary analogy from sound itself. In different instruments — vīṇā, vipañcī, kacchapikā, muruja, and others — a sound may arise from different physical locations, through different structures, materials, resonances, and methods of production. Yet we still recognize it as the same svana, the same sound or tone.
In modern terms, the same note can sound different on a violin, flute, piano, or human voice. The pitch may be recognizably the same, but the timbre, resonance, attack, and bodily support differ. Abhinava’s point is similar: variation of instrument and place does not erase the deeper identity of the sound-current. The sound changes its body, not its essential recognizability.
This supports the previous point about mantravīrya. If sound can arise from different places and still be treated as one sound, then variation of place does not automatically destroy identity. The same sonic principle can manifest through diverse supports. The place changes; the recognizable sound-current remains one.
So when Abhinava speaks of varied sthāna, varied places of emergence, he is not saying that every variation creates an absolutely separate sound-reality. Difference of locus belongs to manifestation. But the sound-body has a deeper continuity. One current can appear through many channels.
This is also why the example is musical, not merely grammatical. Music makes this easier to feel. A note played on one instrument and the same note played on another are not identical in texture, color, or resonance. Yet something is recognized as one. The tone has changed its body, not its essential identity.
The same logic applies to vāk. A letter, mantra, or sound may emerge through different bodily places, registers, instruments, beings, or degrees of clarity. But if all sound belongs to the one Mātṛkā, then plurality of emergence does not break the deeper unity of the sound-body. The one becomes many without losing the power by which it is known as one.
The same principle applies across high, middle, and low registers
evaṃ tāramadhyamandreṣvapi
“Likewise also in the high, middle, and low registers.”
Abhinava now extends the same logic from instruments to vocal registers. Just as the same recognizable sound-current can arise through different instruments, so too it can appear in tāra, the high register; madhya, the middle register; and mandra, the low register.
The sound changes its height, pressure, resonance, and felt body. A low tone seems to come from depth and weight; a middle tone from steadier balance; a high tone from upward brightness and intensity. Yet across these changes, something remains identifiable as the same svara, the same tonal principle.
This matters for the doctrine of mantravīrya. Abhinava is showing that difference of register does not destroy unity of sound. The same sound-body can become low, middle, or high without becoming three unrelated realities. Variation is real, but it belongs to one current.
So the argument continues: different instruments, different places, different registers — none of these break the deeper identity of vāk. Sound can change its body and still remain within one living field of Mātṛkā. The one speech-power does not become false because it appears through many tones; its power is shown precisely by that capacity.
Prāṇa rises through the body and becomes low, middle, and high sound
sa prāṇa utthito nābheruraḥkaṇṭhaśirodhṛtaḥ |
mṛdumadhyottamairyāti mandrādidhvaninādatām ||
“As it is said in the Varṇaśikṣā:
‘That prāṇa, rising from the navel and supported by the chest, throat, and head,
through soft, middle, and highest modes, becomes the resonance of sounds such as low, middle, and high.’”
Abhinava now lets the older phonetic tradition explain the bodily ascent of sound. Prāṇa rises from nābhi, the navel, and moves through uras, the chest, kaṇṭha, the throat, and śiras, the head. Sound is not born as an abstract vibration. It travels through a living vertical body.
This directly supports the previous point about tāra, madhya, and mandra. Low, middle, and high registers are not merely external acoustic categories. They correspond to different modes of prāṇic emergence through the body. The same sound-current takes on depth, balance, or height according to how prāṇa is carried and resonated.
The terms mṛdu, madhya, and uttama mark this graded refinement: soft, middle, and highest. The sound becomes dhvani and nāda, audible tone and resonance, through the body’s internal supports. Breath is shaped into voice; voice becomes resonance; resonance becomes differentiated register.
In modern terms, we could say that sound depends on airflow, resonance cavities, vocal fold vibration, and the shaping of the vocal tract. Low and high tones involve different patterns of vibration and resonance. But Abhinava’s tradition sees this not merely as physiology. It is prāṇa becoming sound-body.
So the example strengthens the larger doctrine of mantravīrya. The one sound-current does not become many because it is broken. It becomes many because prāṇa carries it through different supports, intensities, and resonances. The body is not outside vāk here. The body is the channel through which vāk becomes audible as low, middle, and high sound.
The three registers correspond ritually to Gāyatra, Traiṣṭubha, and Jāgata
mandramadhyamatārairhi dhvanibhiḥ savanatraye |
śaṃsanti śāstre gāyatraṃ traiṣṭubhaṃ jāgataṃ kramāt ||
“With low, middle, and high sounds, in the three savanas, the śāstra teaches respectively the Gāyatra, Traiṣṭubha, and Jāgata.”
The quotation now moves from bodily sound-production into ritual order. Mandra, madhyama, and tāra mean the low, middle, and high registers of sound. In plain terms: the voice can sound from a deeper, heavier register, from a balanced middle register, or from a higher, brighter register.
Savana refers to the ritual Soma-pressing session. The traditional Soma sacrifice has three such moments: morning, midday, and the third/evening pressing. So the verse is not speaking about sound in isolation. It places sound inside a ritual day, where different registers correspond to different liturgical moments.
Gāyatra, Traiṣṭubha, and Jāgata are Vedic metrical or chant-forms. Roughly, they are connected with different metrical patterns and ritual uses: Gāyatrī-type verse is especially associated with 8-syllable pādas, Triṣṭubh with 11-syllable pādas, and Jagatī with 12-syllable pādas. Here the point is not to explain Vedic metrics exhaustively, but to show that sound’s pitch-register becomes joined to ritual measure.
So Abhinava’s point is this: sound is not random vibration. Prāṇa rises through the body and becomes low, middle, or high resonance; then those resonances are woven into śāstric and ritual order. Breath becomes sound, sound becomes register, register becomes metre, metre becomes sacrifice.
This strengthens the doctrine of mantravīrya. Sound has potency because it can inhabit many levels at once: bodily, phonetic, musical, ritual, cognitive, and cosmic. The same current that moves through the navel, chest, throat, and head also enters the ordered body of mantra and sacrifice.
So the larger argument remains intact: difference of register, metre, and ritual moment does not break the unity of vāk. Mandra, madhyama, and tāra differ; the three savana contexts differ; Gāyatra, Traiṣṭubha, and Jāgata differ. Yet all these differences are modes of one sound-body becoming ritually precise.
Even across high, middle, and low registers, the stable note remains one
tatsthāyisvaraikātmye'pi [yathā tāramadhyamandrādibhede'pi svara eka eva sthāyirūpaḥ |] vācyam
“Even there, one must say that the stable note has one nature. As the gloss explains: despite the distinctions of high, middle, low, and the like, the note is one in its stable form.”
Abhinava now states the principle behind the examples. A sound may appear in tāra, madhya, or mandra — high, middle, or low register — but the underlying svara remains one in its stable nature, sthāyirūpa. The register changes; the recognizable tonal identity does not simply vanish.
This is easy to understand musically. The same note can be sung low, played higher, or carried through different resonance. Its color, weight, and brightness change. In a low register, it feels deep and grounded; in a high register, sharp and lifted. Yet something remains stable enough for us to say: this is the same note appearing in a different register.
Abhinava uses this to protect the doctrine of sound from crude fragmentation. Difference of manifestation does not automatically mean difference of essence. Tāra, madhya, and mandra are real distinctions, but they do not destroy svaraikātmya, the one-naturedness of the tone.
This carries the larger point of the chunk. The one śabdaśarīra, the body of sound, can become clear or unclear, manifest or unmanifest, low or high, human or non-human, musical or verbal. But these variations belong inside one field of Mātṛkā. Sound changes register, body, place, and clarity; it does not thereby fall outside the one power of vāk.
The same letter can arise from different places in living beings
ata eva [sarvasya sarvātmakatvāt |] ca sa eva varṇaḥ kvacitprāṇini stānāntarasamullāsyapi bhavati
“Therefore — because everything is of the nature of everything — the very same letter may, in certain living beings, arise from another place of articulation as well.”
Abhinava now takes the same principle from instruments and vocal registers into living bodies. If the same sound-current can appear through different instruments, and if the same svara remains one across tāra, madhya, and mandra, then the same can happen with letters in different beings. A varṇa may arise from a different sthāna, a different bodily place, without ceasing to be that letter.
The gloss gives the reason in one phrase: sarvasya sarvātmakatvāt — because everything is all-inclusive. This is not a decorative metaphysical slogan here. It explains why sound is not imprisoned in one rigid anatomical scheme. The standard human places of articulation are real, but they do not exhaust the possibilities of vāk.
So sa eva varṇaḥ — the same letter — can be sthānāntara-samullāsī, flashing forth from another place. In humans, a letter may be assigned to the throat, palate, lips, teeth, or cerebral region. But in another living being, the bodily structure and sound-production may differ. The same sound-principle can shine through a different organic support.
This strengthens the doctrine of mantravīrya. The potency of sound is not limited to one standardized human mouth. Mātṛkā is deeper than one anatomical arrangement. The living body gives sound a particular form, but sound’s root is not reducible to that body. The letter can change its place of emergence because its real ground is the all-containing body of vāk.
In crows, ka, ṭa, and repha are perceived as produced from several bodily places
yathā dhvāṃkṣeṣu kakāraṭakārarephā uccarantaḥ sarva evodarapāyukaṇṭhatālunirvartyā upalabhyante
“For example, among crows, when ka, ṭa, and repha are uttered, they are all perceived as produced from the belly, anus, throat, and palate.”
Abhinava now gives a wonderfully unexpected example. After Parā Bhaṭṭārikā, mantravīrya, cosmic sound, musical instruments, and ritual registers, he suddenly brings in dhvāṃkṣa — crows. It is almost comic: the metaphysics has climbed very high, and then a crow lands on the branch and says, “Include me too.”
But the example is exact. In crows, sounds resembling kakāra, ṭakāra, and repha are perceived, yet they do not arise according to the clean human phonetic scheme. They seem to come through several bodily zones — udara, belly; pāyu, anus; kaṇṭha, throat; tālu, palate. Whether or not this anatomical explanation matches modern science, the doctrinal point is clear: non-human sound does not obey the polished grammar of the human mouth.
Modern ornithology would describe this differently. Bird calls are chiefly produced by the syrinx, a vocal organ near the branching of the trachea into the bronchi, not by a human-style larynx. Airflow vibrates syringeal membranes, and the sound is then shaped by the bird’s vocal tract. So we should not read Abhinava’s list as a scientific account in the modern sense. Still, he is right in the broader observation: a crow’s sound is generated through a different bodily configuration, and it cannot be reduced to standard human articulation.
This is why the example matters. Human grammar gives the refined norm: ka from the throat, ṭa from the cerebral region, repha through its own articulatory movement. But vāk is wider than the human mouth. The crow’s cry is harsh, mixed, irregular, and slightly ridiculous to refined ears — and yet Abhinava refuses to throw it outside Mātṛkā.
So the doctrine becomes more radical through this rough example. Mantravīrya is not present only in noble chant, correct recitation, or polished Sanskrit. The same sound-body also trembles in the animal cry, in unclear articulation, in non-human resonance. The crow does not chant like a priest, thankfully — but even its cracked cry belongs to the one body of vāk.
Even indistinct crow-sounds are still the same letters because sound does not exceed Mātṛkā
avyaktatve'pi [nanu ca te hi kakārādyā avyaktatvānna kaṇṭhādisthānocāryakāditulyā ityata āhāvyaktatve'pīti |] ta eva tāvantaḥ śabdatvāt śabdasya ca mātṛkātirekiṇo'bhāvāt
“Even though they are indistinct, they are still those very letters, and just that many, because they are sound, and because there is no sound beyond Mātṛkā.
The gloss raises the objection: ‘But those ka and other sounds, being indistinct, are not equal to the ka and other letters pronounced from the standard places such as the throat.’ Therefore the text says: ‘even though indistinct.’”
Abhinava now answers the obvious objection. Fine, crows may make sounds that resemble ka, ṭa, and repha. But they are rough, unclear, non-human, and not produced like refined Sanskrit letters from the standard places of articulation. So are they really the same letters?
The answer is: avyaktatve’pi — even though they are indistinct. Their indistinctness is admitted. Abhinava is not pretending that a crow’s cry is clean recitation. It is not the same as a trained human speaker producing kakāra from the throat according to grammatical discipline. The sound is blurred, displaced, mixed, and animal.
But he still says ta eva tāvantaḥ — they are those very letters, and just that many. Why? śabdatvāt — because they are sound. And more radically: śabdasya ca mātṛkātirekiṇo’bhāvāt — because there is no sound beyond Mātṛkā. Sound cannot escape the Mother-body of letters. Even unclear sound belongs somewhere inside Her.
This is the important doctrinal move. Mātṛkā is not merely the neat alphabet written on a page or pronounced in a schoolroom. She is the matrix of sound itself. Refined mantra, ordinary speech, musical tone, animal cry, distinct letter, indistinct vibration — all of these remain within the field of vāk. Some are sphuṭa, clear; some are asphuṭa, unclear. But unclear does not mean outside.
So Abhinava is expanding the sacred alphabet beyond aesthetic purity. The crow’s cry may not be elegant, and no one sane will replace mantra-japa with crow imitation. But metaphysically, the sound is not exiled. Its roughness is still a mode of Mātṛkā. The Mother does not contain only polished Sanskrit; She also contains the cracked, harsh, half-formed edges of sound.
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