उच्चारण (uccāraṇa) is Beyond Articulation
The Sanskrit word उच्चारण uccāraṇa is usually understood as pronunciation, articulation, enunciation. Recitation or chanting of the Vedic Mantras is called मन्त्रोच्चारण mantroccāraṇa. To the ancient Rishis the word bore a deeper meaning than mere articulation or outer manifestation of the sound. The ancient Rishis were in better possession of speech who could feel the pulsation of the original vibration of the sound that they heard, uttered or used for expressing their ideas and experiences.
The word उच्चारण uccāraṇa is constituted of two components: उद् ud and चारण cāraṇa. The first component उद् ud is a prefix in Sanskrit, attached to the verbs and nouns in the following senses: up, upwards, over, above. The word चारण cāraṇa is derived from the root-sound चर् car which means ‘to move or travel through, pervade, go along, follow’ etc. The very literal sense of उच्चारण uccāraṇa then is ‘to move upward’. How does it express then the idea of articulation or chanting? For this we need to understand the original idea behind articulating or reciting the Mantras.
To the Vedic mind any word having the sense of going or moving also possessed the sense of singing, expressing, holding etc. For example let us see a few words belonging to the family of the sound ग् g. The sound ग् g suggests application, contact or a gentle force or insistence. It is from this seed-sound come the root-sounds गम् gam, meaning ‘to go’, गु gu, meaning ‘to sound or shout’, गै gai meaning ‘to sing’, गॄ gṝ meaning ‘to call, invoke, pronounce or recite’. In all these cases we see how the sense of going or moving and the sense of singing or invoking or calling or making sound go hand in hand with each other. To the Vedic mind this was a living experience. When, for example, the Vedic singer said उद्गायामि udgāyāmi, he did not mean singing aloud, but he had in his mind the ‘idea of the Inner Self rising up in song to the gods and fulfilling in its meeting with them and entering into them its expressed aspiration’. The Vedic words उद्गीथ udgītha and उद्गाता udgātā bore the same sense.
From the point of view of what has been said above, the word उच्चारण uccāraṇa means ‘the rising of the Inner Self with the sound’. Also when any Mantra has to be chanted, it has to move upward from the level of वैखरी vaikharī, gross most speech to the level of parā परा, the subtle most speech or the highest speech belonging to the supra-mental world. And along with this the soul must rise in its aspiration and prayer. This was the original idea behind the word उच्चारण uccāraṇa; behind invoking gods by reciting the Mantras.
