Ākāśavāṇī

Ākāśavāṇī · ākāśa-vāṇī, “the voice from the sky”

Grammar: feminine noun; a compound of ākāśa (the sky, space) and vāṇī (voice, speech): “the voice from the sky”.

Meaning: a voice heard from the sky, with no speaker seen. In the Purāṇas it comes at a turning point, to reassure the good, to declare what will be, or to bear witness to dharma.

In the scriptures: the Bhāgavata Purāṇa tells of the ākāśavāṇī at several turning points.

Śrī Hari’s word to the devas. When Hiraṇyakaśipu‘s cruel rule made all beings and the lokapālas afraid, they took refuge in Śrī Hari, praising him with restrained minds, giving up sleep and living on air. Then an ākāśavāṇī was heard, like the roar of thunder-clouds, echoing through the directions, a voice that removes the fear of good people: “O great devas, do not fear. May all be auspicious for you, for by hearing my word beings receive every blessing. I know the tyranny of Hiraṇyakaśipu and I will end it; wait for some time. Whoever conceives great hatred towards the devas, the Vedas, the cows, the knowers of the Veda, the good, dharma and me, surely perishes. When Hiraṇyakaśipu does harm to his son Prahlāda, a mahātmā without enmity, I will slay him, though he has the strength of the varas.” Nārada tells Yudhishṭhira that when Śrī Hari, the father of the world, spoke thus, the fear of the devas left them; they bowed and returned (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 4).

The slaying of Namuci. After the churning of the ocean, Indra stood dejected when his vajra failed against the rākshasa Namuci. Then an ākāśavāṇī spoke to him: “He cannot be killed with dry things or with wet things. I gave him the vara that death would never come to him from things wet or dry. Think of another means.” Hearing that ākāśavāṇī of Parameśvara, Indra meditated with a one-pointed mind, and it came to him that foam has the qualities of both wet and dry (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 8, Chapter 11).

Kaṃsa‘s warning. When Vasudeva had married Devakī and set out with his bride, Kaṃsa drove their chariot himself; on the way, as he held the reins, a voice from the sky said to him: “O fool, the eighth child of this Devakī whom you are carrying on the chariot will kill you.” At once Kaṃsa took a sword in his hand and seized his sister by the hair, ready to kill her, until Vasudeva turned him with good words. Later, when Vasudeva brought him his first son, Kaṃsa sent the child home, saying that the voice from the sky had named the eighth child (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 1). When he plotted against Balarāma and Śrī Kṛshṇa through the wrestlers Cāṇūra and Mushṭika, he told them that the voice from the sky had said his death would come from those two (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 36).

Witness to dharma. At the marriage feast of Aniruddha, Rukmī played dice with Balarāma. Balarāma won a stake of ten crore varahās fairly, and Rukmī claimed it as his own and called on the witnesses beside him. Then an ākāśavāṇī said: “By dharma Balarāma has won the stake. Rukmī is certainly speaking untruth.” Rukmī, urged on by the wicked kings and driven by death, rejected that word and mocked Balarāma, and Balarāma raised an iron club and slew him (Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 61).

In the Brahma Purāṇa: in the Gautamī Māhātmya, which Brahmā tells Nārada, the ākāśavāṇī, the unembodied voice (aśarīriṇī vāk), speaks again and again on the banks of the Gautamī. It guides the seeker to the river, names the tīrtha that is born, and at the dawn of creation it teaches Brahmā himself.

The voice that taught Brahmā. Brahmā tells Nārada that when he was born in the lotus, he saw only the five elements; there were no Vedas, and he could not see even the lotus from which he was born. As he stayed silent, he heard the Voice: “O Brahmā, perform the creation of the universe, of moving and unmoving beings.” He asked how and with what he should create. The Voice answered that the mother of the universe is called Prakṛti and works under the guidance of Vishṇu, and told him to perform yajña, for the eternal Śruti says, “Verily, yajña is Vishṇu”, and nothing is beyond the reach of those who perform yajña. Brahmā asked “that devī” where and with what the yajña should be done; and the Voice, the devī who was Oṃkāra, one with the universe and a mother to all, said: “Here in the Karmabhūmi worship the Yajña-Purusha, Yajñeśvara. He alone is your means and your instrument. Hari alone is yajña, svāhā, svadhā, the mantras, the brāhmaṇas and the havis; everything comes from Vishṇu.” It told him that the Karmabhūmi lies south of Sumeru and Himavān, of the Vindhya and the Sahya, and guided him: “Go this way. Stay this side. Sit here alone. Make the saṅkalpa for the yajña, and perform what the Vedas prescribe.” When Brahmā told this unembodied speech of Vishṇu that without a paśu the yajña could not be concluded, the Voice told him to praise the supreme Purusha with the Purusha Sūkta, and that devī said, “O Brahmā, make me your paśu.” Then Brahmā knew that the unchanging Purusha was his own progenitor, placed him by the yūpa that is Kāla and bound him with the three guṇas, and the whole universe came forth from the Purusha. When it was done, the Voice said: “Everything has been concluded; the desired creation has taken place,” and told him to consign the utensils to the fire and cast off the yūpa, the Praṇītā vessel, the kuśa, the forms of the ṛtviks and of the yajña, the sruva and the halters (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 91).

The horse of Sagara. When the sixty thousand sons of Sagara had searched the world of the devas and the earth for the horse of the aśvamedha and could not find it, a divine voice said: “O sons of Sagara, the horse is kept tied in the nether world and nowhere else,” and they dug down into Pātāla (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 8).

Dhanada made protector of wealth. Dhanada, driven out of Laṅkā by Rāvaṇa, praised Bhagavān Śiva on the Gautamī at Pulastya‘s word. Śiva appeared and said again and again, “Choose the vara,” but Dhanada and Pulastya were silent with delight. Then a bodiless divine voice told Maheśvara that the status of protector of wealth should be granted to Dhanada, voicing the silent wish of Pulastya and of Dhanada’s father. The voice was auspicious: what it declared was as good as done, as good as given, as good as gained. Dhanada said, “Let this be so,” and Bhagavān Śiva, the trident-bearer, said, “May it be so” (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 27).

Daśaratha and Rāma. In the war of the devas and the dānavas, when neither side could win, an unembodied voice said: “Only they will win to whom King Daśaratha offers help, and not others.” Later, when Daśaratha performed many aśvamedhas as prāyaścitta for the death of Śravaṇa, a voice said that his body had become pure, that he was fit for company again, that sons would be born to him, and that by the virtues of his eldest son he would be freed from his pāpas. When Rāma, in exile, hesitated to offer his father piṇḍas of iṅgudī oil-cake at the Gautamī, a divine voice said: “O prince, give up your sadness. You are banished, you are in the forest and without wealth, yet devoted to dharma. One who is proud of his wealth and performs rites on it does pāpa. The devatās are satisfied with the very food the offerer himself eats.” And when the devas came in their vimānas and Rāma could not see his father among them, a divine voice told Rāma and Sītā: “King Daśaratha is freed from the three pāpas of brahma-hatyā. See him, dear one, standing with the devas” (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 53).

Water or fire. When the ṛshis could not agree whether water or fire is superior, and Brahmā, Vāyu and Bhūmi did not settle it, they praised Bhagavān Vishṇu in the Ocean of Milk. Then the divine voice, the unembodied one, the support of the universe, said: “Propitiate both by tapas, bhakti and niyama; the one from which siddhi comes first may be called superior.” The ṛshis went to the Gautamī and worshipped, some Agni and some the waters, and then the divine voice of Sarasvatī, the mother of the Vedas, declared that the waters are superior, for they are mothers, and above all the mothers of fire. Where their doubt was dispelled the river Sarasvatī rises and flows into the Gaṅgā (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 56).

The column of light. When Brahmā and Vishṇu disputed who was the greater, and Mahādeva appeared between them as a column of fiery light, a splendid divine voice said: “He who sees the limit of this column is the greater. It does not befit you to quarrel,” and at its word Vishṇu went downward and Brahmā upward (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 65).

King Śaryāti. When King Śaryāti, having tested the love of his purohita Madhucchandas with a false report of their deaths, learned that the purohita’s wife had died of grief, an unembodied voice told him: “O king, Gaṅgā will fulfil your desire entirely. Gautamī subdues all torments on the earth.” He went to the Gautamī (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 68).

Kāṇva and Koṭitīrtha. When the sacred fire of Kāṇva, the eldest son of Kaṇva, went out between two āhutis, a divine voice told him not to fetch another fire but to offer into the sparks and half-burnt twigs. Kāṇva said no. The voice spoke again: the embers are the son of Agni, and father and son are the same; what is given to the son pleases the father, with a crore times the merit, for no one is as satisfied as a father when his children are benefited. Then it declared that by Kāṇva’s puṇya a great tīrtha had arisen there, greater than any in the three worlds, where a bath and dāna, however small, done with a pure mind, give a crore-fold fruit; so it is Koṭitīrtha (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 78).

The devas at Devāgama. When the devas gathered on the Gautamī before their war with the asuras, wondering whether victory or death awaited them, an unembodied voice said: “Enough of your strain, O devas. Hasten to the Gautamī and worship Hari and Hara with bhakti. What is impossible if the Godāvarī and those two favour you?” By the grace of Hari and Īśa they won (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 90).

Viśvarūpa. When Viśvarūpa, taking up a tāmasa bhāva, blazed in his terrible tapas before a fire-pit, the unembodied divine voice told him to offer himself into the fire, keeping back his jaṭā, and he would beget a son: “He who offers himself into the fire shall become Indra, Varuṇa, indeed everything.” He did so, and the son was the one the Veda calls Vṛtra. Having spoken to the leading ṛshis, the voice ceased (Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapter 103).

Per Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, a brāhmaṇa who came to Brahmā’s sabhā said to the devas that the ākāśavāṇī had told them Śrī Hari would come after them when they praised him at Śvetadvīpa, and asked why he had not come, so that the word of the ākāśavāṇī seemed to turn out vain (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Brahma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 17). When the gopikā’s son, who had seen Bālakṛshṇa in dhyāna, wept under the aśvattha tree for another darśana, an ākāśavāṇī spoke to him, in words beneficial, few and true: the form he had seen would not appear again, and those whose yoga is not fully perfected cannot have the full darśana of the Paramātmā; but when his body passed and he obtained a divine body, he would see Govinda again. Hearing this, the boy was content and stopped weeping (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Brahma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 21).

When the brāhmaṇa who had come to Devī Pārvatī withdrew from sight, an aśarīravāṇī, a voice without a body, was heard by her: she was to see her son, who was in her house. He is Śrī Kṛshṇa of Goloka, complete in all things and eternal, who came as the fruit of her Puṇyaka vrata. The brāhmaṇa who had withdrawn from sight was not hungry or old, nor a guest, but Janārdana in the guise of a brāhmaṇa. Hearing the voice, Pārvatī went into her house and saw on her bed the child, smiling (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Gaṇeśa Khaṇḍa, Chapter 9). In the account of Kārtavīrya, a bodiless voice told him, as he mourned his wife Manoramā, to be patient: by the grace of Dattātreya he had great jñāna, and all saṃsāra is like a water-bubble that lasts a moment. The Ākāśavāṇī said that Manoramā, a supreme pativratā born of an aṃśa of Lakshmī, had gone to Vaikuṇṭha, and that Kārtavīrya was to give up his life on the battlefield and go to Vaikuṇṭha; hearing it, he gave up his grief for his wife. When the brothers were about to hurl Śaṅkara’s śūla at the King of Matsya, an Ākāśavāṇī told them that Durvāsa Muni had given the king the divine Śiva kavaca, which was still on his neck, and that they should first beg it from him; Śṛṅgi, a son of Jamadagni, then came as a sannyāsī and begged the king for it (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Gaṇeśa Khaṇḍa, Chapter 35). An ākāśavāṇī told Devī Pārvatī: “O Śivā, by severe tapas obtain Śiva as your husband” (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 38).

Related terms: Ākāśa · Vāṇī · Vāk · Vara

Sources

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 7, Chapter 4; Skandha 8, Chapter 11; Skandha 10, Chapters 1, 36, 61
• Brahma Purāṇa, Gautamī Māhātmya, Chapters 8, 27, 53, 56, 65, 68, 78, 90–91, 103
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Brahma Khaṇḍa, Chapters 17, 21; Gaṇeśa Khaṇḍa, Chapters 9, 35; Śrī Kṛshṇa Janma Khaṇḍa, Chapter 38