For Śaṅkara, the most renowned teacher of the Advaita Vedānta school of Hinduism, Brahman or Ātman as the sole ultimate reality underlying all beings is attribute-less, indivisible, unconceptualizable and unverbalizable. In other words, Brahman-Ātman 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 Śaṅkara's views on these issues.Śaṅkara, indeed, sets forth three methods by means of which one can make linguistic references to the unsayable: (1) the method of negation (netivāda), (2) the method of indication (laksanā-vrtti), and (3) the method of imposition-cum-negation (adhyāropa-apavāda). The three methods will be closely examined in sequence with their mutual relationships exposed thereafter. The author is of the opinion that Śaṅkara's linguistic approach toward 'saying' the unsayable is rather instructive and really worth our attention.
