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A postman with rhetoric skills: The primacy of language in the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi

ABSTRACT This paper studies one of the widely read texts of Advaita, namely, the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi. In the main, this work examines the importance of language in Advaita epistemology. In the Vivekacūḍāmaṇi, language, apart from playing a faithful postman, employs an additional rhetoric punch that persuades the seeker of perennial metaphysical truths to traverse into the boundaries of analysis and speculation, which fades into what the present text intends to reveal. This perlocutionary function of language leads us to discover certain ostensive metaphysical categories, such as nirguṇa, nirviśeṣa and nirākāra; appearing to be alienating from the categories of phenomenal realities. Apart from its axiological objectives, the unique linguistic style of the text does uphold the praxis-oriented approach of non-dualistic philosophy, wherein the language achieves the ‘self-emptying of itself,’ and arrives at the podium of meta-language and meta-philosophy.