Why Paśyantī?


My blog is called Paśyantī:  pronounced puhsh-YAN-tee (पश्यन्ती), with stress on the second syllable, the “ś” a soft “sh” as in “shine.”

The four levels of vāk (speech)

This framework comes from Sanskrit grammatical and philosophical traditions, most notably Bhartṛhari’s Vākyapadīya, and echoed in Kashmir Śaiva sources like Abhinavagupta’s Tantrāloka, which describe speech unfolding in four stages, from subtlest to grossest:

Parā vāk (परा): “supreme” speech. The undifferentiated source of all speech, prior to any distinction of word and meaning. Pure potential, identified in Kashmir Śaivism with the highest reality itself.

Paśyantī (पश्यन्ती): “the seeing one.” Speech at the stage where it is still a unified, intuitive seeing or vision; an idea grasped as a whole, before it fragments into sequence or grammar. The name comes from “to see”, reflecting that at this level meaning is seen rather than said.

Madhyamā (मध्यमा): “the middle one.” Speech that has begun to differentiate into mental sequence; the internal, unspoken formulation of a sentence in the mind, syntactically ordered but not yet vocalized.

Vaikharī (वैखरी): “the corporeal/gross one.” Speech fully externalized; the spoken word, articulated through breath and physical organs, audible to others.

Why I chose Paśyantī for the blog

I chose this name because it names the stage of speech I most want my writing to enact: the moment where an idea is grasped whole, intuitively, before it’s forced into the sequential, linear compromise of sentences. Scholarly and devotional writing on itihāsa, Āgama, and Vedānta so often gets flattened into secondary paraphrase — vaikharī without paśyantī behind it! Naming the blog Paśyantī is a standing reminder to myself: the goal isn’t just to produce polished vaikharī prose, but to first see the text clearly, verify it at the source, sit with the darśana, before letting it descend into words.​​​​​​​​​​​

Just as Kālidāsa, before beginning the Raghuvaṃśa, confessed his own inadequacy to the weight of the great lineage he was about to sing; invoking Śiva and Pārvatī not from confidence but from humility before language itself. I close with the verse he opens that very poem with, the invocation that has become paradigmatic for anyone who dares to take up vāk seriously:

वागर्थाविव संपृक्तौ वागर्थप्रतिपत्तये।

जगतः पितरौ वन्दे पार्वतीपरमेश्वरौ॥

Transliteration:

vāgarthāviva sampṛktau vāgarthapratipattaye,

jagataḥ pitarau vande pārvatīparameśvarau.

Meaning:

“I bow to Pārvatī and Parameśvara, the parents of the universe, who are as inseparably united as word (vāk) and meaning (artha), so that I may attain true understanding of word and meaning.”

Kālidāsa opens his epic not with a boast of skill but with a prayer for competence; asking that his vāk be granted genuine union with artha, not merely the appearance of it. That is the humility I’d want Paśyantī to carry too: that speech is worth nothing without the vision behind it, and that even seeing the vision clearly is itself a grace to be sought, not assumed.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 


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